Hill - (noun): Vernacular for Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill is the neighborhood where Congress is located in Washington, DC.

The Hip Hop Caucus works from the Hood to the Hill, to make our political process transparent. To be involved in the policymaking process and to hold elected officials accountable, we need to be educated on how legislation is created. Below are some easy to use resources available online that track the legislative process.

GovTrack.us: GovTrack.us centralizes information on the legislative process into a Web site Users can search through member of Congress profiles, bills, votes, and committee action. Users can also create their own Congress-tracker by subscribing to email updates or by creating RSS feeds to keep informed on the latest developments related to bills, issues, members of Congress and committees.

 
WashingtonWatch: WashingtonWatch determines the average cost, or savings, per individual of each bill introduced in Congress by performing calculations on government estimates compared to the US population. The Web site provides users with pro and con arguments for each bill, allows comments on each bill, allows users to vote “yes” or “no” on the bills and provides a “write your rep” function. WashingtonWatch also provides a wiki that allows users to add content to each bill.

Congresspedia.org: Congresspedia.org is an online wiki-based citizens’ encyclopedia on Congress hosted on the Center for Media & Democracy’s SourceWatch wiki. This resource includes individual pages for every member of Congress, as well as information on congressional committees, specific legislative topic areas, congressional rules and practices and individual bills. As a wiki, its content can be drafted and edited by anyone.

Project Vote Smart: Project Vote Smart provides detailed information – biographical information, campaign finances, interest groups ratings, issue positions, and public statements – on elected officials including the President, members of Congress, state officials and leadership in state legislatures.

Open CRS: Open CRS aggregates Congressional Research Service reports that have been released to the public by members of Congress in a searchable database for free public access. Since CRS reports are not typically available to the public, Open CRS encourages users to submit any acquired CRS reports for inclusion in its public database.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW): CREW monitors government ethics and works to hold public officials accountable for their misconduct. On their website you’ll find investigated reports on corruption, lawsuits filled by crew filed by the Crew Legal Team, as well as the latest news on ethics.

Center for Responsive Politics: OpenSecrets.org provides a searchable database for the campaign finance data of all federally elected politicians since 1989. The site contains individual campaign finance profiles of each member of Congress and each presidential candidate. The site relies on data compiled by the Federal Election Commission. The user is able to search by member of Congress, by donor, or by industry sector.

MAPLight.org: MAPLight.org provides a detailed analysis of legislation by tracking bills, the support and opposition bills garner from interest groups and the campaign contributions given by those interest groups to members of Congress.