jugged by US police while participating in a protest rally against a federal government budget bill that will enforce major spending cuts.Vincent Gray, who was among a group of protesters blocking traffic, said the government has not offered a "response" to his recent letter regarding budget cuts that affect the Washington DC public, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday.
"In the recent past, I sent a letter just a couple of days ago to (Republican) Speaker Boehner (of the House of Representatives) and the Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid,... the charismatic former Senate majority leader ...
making the case once again and asking for their support to give the citizens of this city ... [but] I got no response," he said.
"What Congress has done is just complete disrespect and contempt for us as colonial subjects," said a member of the DC Statehood Green Party.
One of the protesters, who had left Ethiopia for lack of voting rights, said she did not expect the same thing in the United States, describing the matter as "upsetting."
Despite US promotion of democracy throughout the globe, the residents of the US capital city do not have the right to have representative in the US Congress.
Washington D.C. is "Federal City." In theory the government can buy up all the land in the city for federal use. Until relatively recent times it was run by the federal government as an island of political neutrality. The denizens of any capital have the capacity to exert pressure on the government through simple proximity. The Founding Fathers were familiar with the Roman republic's long series of gang wars between the Sullan and Marian factions -- which led to the eventual emergence of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus -- and wanted to avoid the possibility in their own republic. Yon Gray hath a lean and hungry look.
Many years of protest and the city's official efforts to gain the right of representation in Congress has produced no results, despite promises by a number of Democratic presidents, including Barack
B.O.Obama, to push for the basic right.
US politicians had earlier agreed on a record $38 billion in spending cuts to avert a government shutdown that would seriously affect its troubled economy.
The budget bill would prohibit the capital from spending its own local money for reproductive health care services -- affecting low-income women -- on procedures such as abortion, etc. It could also even eliminate initiatives that help prevent the spread of AIDS.
The White House earlier expressed concerns in case the congressional Republicans fail to raise the $14.29 trillion debt limit by May 16.
Republicans at the House of Representatives say that Obama has to agree to further budget cuts, other than the $38 billion, in exchange for his demand over raising the debt limit.