NPR’s All Things Considered reported Monday, on the air and online, about how “unlikely advocates” are pushing for a reduction in the voting age in the District of Columbia.
Michelle Blackwell, NRS said, is “not your typical Washington politico. In D.C., the 44-year-old is better known as one of the top go-go singers around. … Off-stage, she’s now helping lead the effort to make D.C. the first jurisdiction to let 16-year-olds vote in federal elections.”
Blackwell told NPR, “A lot of young people feel very powerless and they don’t feel that their voice matters, and that’s part of the reason why there might be this absence of young participation as adults.”
She says she got interested in the issue after attending a community meeting after a fatal shooting. She said, “When it came time for young people to speak, they actually had some really great ideas and some concerns that I felt were being dismissed. And at one point, one of the adults even took the microphone from one of the young people and started lecturing them.”
Blackwell said she started researching lowering the District’s voting age that same night.
what even is a go go singer?
It is a genre of music (an offshoot of funk) that is unique to DC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-go