By Bill Mosley

As the summer of 1997 settled into full swelter, the outlook for the District of Columbia achieving its goal of full democratic rights looked more distant than ever. For two years, the District had been subject to the rule of a congressionally imposed Control Board that not only had final say on DC's financial matters, but virtually all other aspects of local governance. Brought into being as a result of the District's financial difficulties - and in no small part in response to Marion Barry's election as Mayor in 1994 - the Control Board expanded its authority in 1996 when it unilaterally stripped the elected Board of Education of its powers and assumed direct control over DC schools through a Board of Trustees that it appointed without consultation with or input from the citizens of the District. Rather than working for expanded rights, DC residents were fighting to keep what rights we had from being chipped away.

But an even greater blow struck the citizens of the District in July 1997, when Congress - in the guise of helping the District with its financial problems - effectively stripped the DC government of nearly all of its remaining authority. The so-called "DC Revitalization Act" - enacted largely at the behest of Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-NC) - made the Control Board the de facto legislature of the District, and the Board's CEO the de facto mayor. Not since before the advent of Home Rule in 1974 had the voters of the District been so disenfranchised.

When the full impact of what Congress had done became known, anger grew among DC residents to a level not witnessed for decades. Activists quickly organized a demonstration in front of the Hart Senate Office Building, the location of Faircloth's offices. Meetings and strategy sessions took place almost immediately. During these meetings it became clear that the District lacked a broad-based, non-partisan organization that could unite citizens in the struggle for full democratic rights - including full representation in Congress and control over its own budgets, laws and criminal-justice system. And so just such an organization came into being: the Stand Up! for Democracy in DC Coalition. Stand Up!'s founders included such luminaries as Jesse Jackson, Walter Fauntroy and Dr. Dorothy Height, but also included a cadre of grassroots activists ready to take to the street. The coalition also garnered the support of numerous organizations ranging from the American Friends Services Committee of DC to the National Council of Negro Women to the local NAACP to the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.

The anger and energy that launched Stand Up! carried it through an active first year that gave the fledgling organization immediate visibility and attracted a new wave of activists eager to carry the banner. The coalition's maiden activity was an August bus caravan to Faircloth's home in Clinton, North Carolina. Some 600 DC activists brought the District's concerns directly to Faircloth's constituents, registering them to vote and educating them about how much of their Senator's schedule was occupied by the affairs of a jurisdiction 300 hundred miles distant from those he was allegedly representing. (The trip no doubt played a part in Faircloth's defeat for re-election to John Edwards the following year).

In the months that followed, Stand Up! kept the pressure on Congress. The coalition held weekly rallies on Capitol Hill, many of them involving nonviolent civil disobedience and the arrests of activists. These culminated in a major rally in September in which over 1,000 DC residents marched from the Capitol to the Hart Senate Office Building to demand the restoration of home rule. Another rally in December resulted in the arrest of two dozen DC activists in front of the White House.

After the District regained most of its pre-Revitalization Act responsibilities in 1999 and the Control Board disbanded in 2001, the intensity of anger at Congress diminished in some quarters. But Stand Up!, realizing how much work was yet to be done, continued to pressure Congress and to educate the public - both within DC and beyond - about the need to continue the struggle. While statehood and full voting representation remained long-term goals, the members of Stand Up! - with the abuses of the Revitalization Act still a fresh memory - took a leading role in campaigning to get Congress out of local affairs and to expand the democratic rights available to District citizens. Stand Up!'s work over the past 10 years has yielded an impressive record of accomplishment (see "Highlights and Accomplishments Summary" below).

As Stand Up! enters its second decade, its members look back on how much has been accomplished - and how much more work remains to be done. Even though the District has greater control over its own affairs than ten years ago, and the public (both in DC and beyond) has a greater awareness of the antidemocratic treatment of the citizens of the nation's capital, the District remains a ward of the federal government, without a vote in Congress or a guarantee that we will be permitted to carry on our local affairs without federal interference. If Stand Up!'s first ten years were focused on building a movement with the voice and vision to demand full democratic rights for the District, the second 10 years must be about completing the struggle.