ACLU, UL host info session to educate voters on redistricting efforts
10th January 2022 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
Dozens of concerned citizens turned out at the UNO University Center on Jan. 5 to make their voices heard on the critical issue of election redistricting, a process that participants and leading activists said holds the key to fair and full electoral representation for all of the state’s residents, especially people and communities of color.
Last week’s event was preceded the day before by a preparation session sponsored by the ACLU of Louisiana and aimed at laying out the complex issues at play in the redistricting process and preparing participants to present their best cases at the UNO forum.
The two sessions last week came as part of the Redistricting Roadshow, sponsored by the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, an alliance between the ACLU, the Urban League of Louisiana and several other advocacy organizations that are urging citizens to become informed and active in the battle to re-draw Louisiana’s state and federal election districts.
The coalition tutored and supported citizens as they presented three- to five-minute comments to members of the Louisiana State Legislature’s Joint Governmental Affairs Committee at UNO on Jan. 5. Committee members are soliciting input during similar open sessions across the state.
Speakers at the forum focused on all that is great about New Orleans, the many challenges it still faces and ways redistricting can empower vulnerable, disadvantaged populations in their effort to effect positive change in the community.
“The city of New Orleans is known for its unique culture, its music, its history, its food and its entertainment,” said Rita Burns Weary, a resident of New Orleans East and the president of the local alumnae chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. “However, New Orleans also has serious problems, among them poverty, an aging infrastructure, a shortage of affordable housing and severe vulnerability to flooding exacerbated by global warming. We’re requesting maps that create competitive districts that allow African-American citizens to have a reasonable opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.”
The 10-stop Redistricting Roadshow began in October of last year in Monroe. The effort will culminate next month when the State Legislature holds a special session to complete the redistricting process. State Rep. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat from New Orleans who represents the 93rd state legislative district and who has frequently attended the roadshow stops, said that, as the vice chairman of the State House’s House and Governmental Affairs Committee, he will do all he can to fully represent all of his constituents and make their voices heard.
He said that the redistricting effort “is one of those rare moments where the politicians actually show up and do the listening,” an experience he said is “refreshing” for all involved. He said legislators must convince a cynical constituency that this redistricting process will truly be an open, honest and fair one.
“Understandably there is a healthy level of skepticism that I’ve heard from people throughout the state that this is [only] performative,” Duplessis said, verbalizing the thoughts of a jaded populace. “’Is this just window dressing? Is this just a way to check a box? …
Representatives of the Power Coalition last week outlined a handful of key approaches forum speakers can take when presenting their comments to state legislators in order to maximize the impact of the comments succinctly and effectively.
“You could include that you want your lawmakers to draw maps that give your community a fair chance to elect candidates of choice,” said A’Niya Robinson, advocacy strategist for the Urban League of Louisiana. “You could also ask them to transparently share the criteria that they’re using to draw maps and make sure that there’s a lot of time and opportunity for the public to give feedback. You can ask for a second majority-minority Congressional district. Or you could just keep it simple and ask for fair maps so that everybody’s votes are counted equally.”
The redistricting process takes place all across the country every 10 years following each federal Census. The results of the latest Census, taken in 2020, reveal the demographic and population size changes and dynamics that took place in Louisiana and the rest of America between 2011 and 2020. These changes will now be used by state legislators to draw new election district boundaries.
While the redistricting process is supposed to result in election maps that are equitable and fully representative of every state citizen and community, political forces have traditionally used ethically dubious mechanisms, such as gerrymandering, to unfairly provide disproportionate overrepresentation of certain advantaged demographics and chronic, debilitating underrepresentation of other groups and communities.
In Louisiana, fairness and equity advocates say that biased, politically motivated process has resulted in the Republican, largely white majority in the state legislature wielding undue redistricting power and shenanigans to ensure that disadvantaged communities – particularly Black, Latinx and the poor – are effectively silenced and shunted on Election Day, while the state’s white, more affluent population is given more electoral power than their demographic numbers suggest they should.
On the ground, that currently means that the Democratic party, for whom people of color more often support and vote for, faces an electoral disadvantage, a situation often exploited by the Republican party, which derives much of its support from white, more affluent communities.
As a result, even though white citizens make up about 61 percent of the state’s 2020 population of 334.1 million – or roughly three-fifths – six of the state’s seven Congressional districts – or about 86 percent – are held by white representatives. Only one district, the 2nd, is represented by a person of color, Democrat Troy Carter.
Moreover, according to statistics kept by the Pew Research Center, while roughly the same percentage of Louisianans identify as Democratic or Republican – 43 percent and 41 percent, respectively, with 16 percent professing no political leanings – six of the state’s seven Congressional members, or 86 percent, are Republican, while Carter is the only Louisiana Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
During the Jan. 4 informational session, Robinson said one particular goal of the redistricting activism in Louisiana is the creation of another “majority-minority” Congressional district, in which a majority of the population is part of a delineated minority group, such as people of color. Currently, only Carter’s district is majority-minority.
Robinson cited the massive, recently-adopted federal infrastructure bill, in which Louisiana will receive $7 billion to improve the state’s roads and bridges, boost the state’s broadband network and fix crumbling water and drainage systems. She said that historically, disadvantaged communities have often been detrimentally altered or even destroyed by infrastructure projects, particularly construction of interstates, such as the way the building of I-10 in New Orleans divided and ravaged the once-vibrant Claiborne Avenue community.
“Maybe if we have the second [majority-minority] district, we wouldn’t have just one vote when it comes to these sorts of things [like infrastructure],” Robinson said. “Now, spoiler alert,” she added, “the only way to get that second district is through redistricting and the redrawing of the current maps.”
Fairness and justice advocates who spoke at last week’s Redistricting Roadshow events said such stark irregularities work to the detriment of people of color and the poor, and they negate the impact and effectiveness of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, federal legislation that resulted from the Civil Rights Movement and broke unprecedented equity and justice at the country’s electoral polls.
Activists say that the power and purpose of the Voting Rights Act has further been chipped away in recent decades by court rulings and, most recently, a spate of GOP-generated state laws supposedly aimed at eliminating voter fraud but that effectively remove Black, Latinx and Democratic voters from the electoral rolls.
Tori Wenger, an attorney with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, said on Jan. 4 that the new Census stats show an increased population in the urbanized, diverse New Orleans area, meaning that the upcoming redistricting process presents a golden opportunity to revive the spirit and thrust of the VRA.
“We’re at a critical moment,” she said. “The census numbers are in, and we’ve seen dramatic shifts in the population across the state, especially the Black population.
This article originally published in the January 10, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
