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Immigrants Want Redistricting to Reflect the Changing City


redistricting
Photo by Gail Robinson
At a redistricting hearing in Manhattan earlier this fall. Asians called for the new boundaries to reflect their growing presence in the city.

Ten years ago, there was not a single elected official of Asian descent in the entire state of New York. But since then, Asian Americans, more than 1 million of whom now reside in the state, have made great strides in New York politics. They currently occupy one seat in the State Assembly, two seats in New York City Council and the office of New York City comptroller.

Much of this happened thanks to the rapidly growing Asian American population and their greater participation in voting. But there is another important factor: redistricting.

John Liu, the first Asian American elected to the City Council and who now holds the comptroller's office, owed his success partly to the redistricting efforts in 2001, when his district in Queens was redrawn to include downtown Flushing, Murray Hill and Queensboro Hill. The redistricting left out Corona, Bayside and Douglaston, where the percentage of Asian voters is lower.

Ten years later, with another redistricting process underway, immigrant communities throughout the city are weighing in on the process, hoping the new boundaries reflect the true face of New York.

Looking at Lines

Redistricting is a political process that occurs every 10 years. The electoral districts get redrawn based on the population change in the latest census. This affects elections at all levels, from school board, city council, state assembly, to the U.S. House of Representatives. The federal Voting Rights Act requires that the new boundaries be drawn in a manner that provides minority communities with opportunities to elect representatives of their choice.

Based on the 2010 U.S. census results, the 435 congressional seats will be re-apportioned according to population shifts among the states. New York will lose two seats, from 29 down to 27. Texas will gain four seats, while Midwestern states like Michigan, Iowa, Illinois and Ohio will each lose one seat.

At the state and city levels, boundaries will be redrawn to reflect changing demographics. Currently the redistricting effort is led by the New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment, which is comprised of four legislators and two non-legislators. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a number of good government groups want the process to be more independent of the legislature. So far, though, they have not succeeded in changing the existing system. At the same time, though, several civic groups are calling for keeping communities of shared interests and backgrounds in the same districts so they can elect candidates who best represent them.

However they are drawn, the proposed districts must be approved by the state legislature and the governor. Meanwhile, the districts in three counties of New York City -- the Bronx, Kings and New York -- are subject to additional review and approval by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Some other rules also apply. Districts must be compact and no more than twice as long as they are wide. A district has to be contiguous, meaning that all of its parts much touch or be connected by a bridge or tunnel. If a district covers two boroughs, no other district may cover the same two boroughs.

Work in Progress

The current redistricting effort is focused on congressional, State Assembly and State Senate elections in 2012. According to the New York State Constitution, the number of state assembly districts will remain 150. Last time around to avoid losing a GOP seat, the state added one seat to the Senate, bringing it to 62 members. Reports have surfaced that Republicans might try to add another seat – the 63rd – in this redistricting. The redistricting for the 2013 city council elections will start later this year.

Whatever the exact boundaries of the new districts, Asian American activists want them to reflect the growing Asian presence in the city and the state.

Rachana Shah, the redistricting campaign director at Taking Our Seat, a South Asian civic group, said the significant increase in the South Asian population in the city is the driving force behind her organization.

"We did the data work ourselves," said Shah. "There are 351,000 South Asian Americans in New York City, which is a 51 percent increase. And 60 percent of them live in Queens."

"There are areas where the communities have common interests and needs that need to be served, and currently they are not," said Shah. "A lot of it is the funding for organizations that serve the communities. It is often how the elected officials are able to help the organizations that help the communities." Shah was referring to funding opportunities like Community Development Block Grants, which can be directed to community groups based on local elected officials' discretion, and direct funding from the City Council and other government agencies.

Noting that there is no elected official of South Asian descent in New York state, Shah said that her organization is focusing on four areas with large South Asian communities in Queens: Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park, Briarwood and Jamaica Hill, Jackson and Elmhurst, and Bellerose and Floral Park. Currently these neighborhoods are cut up in pieces and divided among several districts.

"Redistricting is not just for immigrant communities, but for communities all over New York City and the state," said Shah. "It's about finding where those natural boundaries and keeping those people with similar interests together. … When a community is larger within the electoral district, they are going to get more attention."

A Joint Effort

Shah's organization is part of an umbrella group called the Asian American Community Coalition on Redistricting and Democracy, also known as ACCORD. It includes 14 organizations, such as the Asian American Bar Association of New York, Asian Americans for Equality, and the Korean Community Service Center for Metropolitan New York.

James Hong, a spokesperson for ACCORD, said that redistricting has to ensure that voices in the Asian American communities are heard.

"It is a chicken-and-egg thing," said Hong. "If the district is drawn well, then you see candidates that reflect the interests of the community. But before you get there, you need to have the district redrawn. … The place to begin is redistricting."

When it comes to the State Assembly districts, Hong said that while downtown Flushing has been kept as a whole, Bayside, home to increasing Korean and Chinese American populations, is split into several districts.

In Brooklyn, Chinese Americans are concentrated in Bensonhurst, Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, which are close to one another but split into several electoral districts. The borough has experienced a rapid boom in Asian populations, with a 70 percent growth in Sunset Park and 40 percent overall.

In Manhattan, ACCORD proposed that that Chinatown should be separated from Tribeca and Battery Park City since the residents have different socioeconomic backgrounds. Instead, Chinatown should join the Lower East Side because the two communities share similar economic characteristics if not ethnic backgrounds.

Unity Map

Meanwhile, other civic groups have proposed a map for the 2012 state legislative elections. Calling it a "unity map," the groups say their plan would ensure that new districts reflect the demographic changes of their communities.

The Center for Law and Social Justice, based at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York in Brooklyn, developed the maps with LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Institute for Latino Politics.

"What we are trying to do here is shared power. There is enough for everyone," said Esmeralda Simmons, executive director of the center. "People know that Flatbush, East Flatbush and now even Canarsie have huge Caribbean immigrant communities. Our task is to go where the people are and see where the populations have commonalities and make sure those commonalities are protected."

Even though the black population in New York City is decreasing, Simmons said there are increasing influxes of black immigrants from Jamaica, Trinidad, Senegal and Haiti in Brooklyn, and other parts of the city. She said transportation is among the biggest community-wide concerns.

"Not so long ago, there was a proposal to eliminate the Franklin Avenue shuttle," she said Simmons, referring to the subway that connects between the A, 2, 3, 4, 5, B and Q lines, providing important links between several heavily Caribbean neighborhoods. "And everybody -- the African immigrants going to the mosque on Bedford Avenue, the African Americans in Prospect Heights and Crown Heights, the Caribbean immigrants all along Franklin Avenue -- all gathered together and made sure that that didn't happen."

"Redistricting means change. Things have to move," said Simmons. "Human instinct to change is to resist. Change happens. You have to go with the population."

Simmons said the proposed map will be revised based on additional comments from community members and elected officials. Meanwhile, LATFOR will come up with its own version later this year and hold another round of public hearings before finalizing its plan.

Larry Tung is a Brooklyn-based journalist and media artist.

Bill Curtails City Role in Deportations


gate foundation
Photo by William Alatriste, New York City Council
Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, shown here at a recent hearing on city cooperation with deportations, supported the council bill.

With states such as Arizona and Alabama passing immigration laws that go far beyond those of the federal government, the New York City Council weighed in on the issue yesterday and took a decidedly different stand.

By an overwhelming majority, the council passed a bill sponsored by Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan that would end the Department of Correction's policy of cooperating with federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. The bill, said by supporters to be the first of its kind in the country, will end two decades of cooperation between the city jail system and federal immigration authorities, now called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

This bill, Intro 656, Mark-Viverito said shortly before its passage, "sends a strong message we will no longer be complicit in this country's broken immigration system."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn cited another message as well. "When signed by the mayor," she said, "the entire government of New York will send a message the city of New York is supportive of, friendly to and welcoming to immigrants."

(At the meeting the council also passed two measures relating to space on city streets, one on bike lanes and one on parking. For more on those, go here.)

Detained and Deported

Under the current system, the city gives names of people arrested -- whether or not they are convicted of any crime and regardless of the severity of that crime -- to the federal agency, which then can check whether the person is here legally. If the person is undocumented, ICE can then request that he or she be detained for additional time so ICE can arrange to transfer the immigrant to a federal facility to await deportation proceedings.

Of the people detained under this system in 2010, Quinn said, almost half -- 49.5 percent -- had no prior criminal record. She estimated that some 1,000 to 1,500 people deported in 2010 would not have been detained if the measure passed yesterday had been in effect.

Overall, according to council, 13,295 people born outside the United States spent time in city jails in fiscal year 2010. ICE took custody of 2,522 of those people for possible deportation.

In passing the bill, council member cited what they saw as various abuses of the immigration and deportation system, including detention of people in facilities far from New York and deportation of people who came to the United States with their parents as small children.

The bill singles nine categories of people, including possible terrorists, whose names would still be turned over to ICE. In Quinn's eyes, this removes any public safety concerns.

The Administration's Shift

The bill now goes on to the mayor, who in a reversal of previous policy, is expected to sign it.

In response to criticism of the cooperation earlier this year, the mayor's office maintained helping ICE improved public safety. John Feinblatt, the mayor’s chief policy advisor and criminal justice coordinator, went so far as to write a letter to the Times raising the specter of terrorism. "As our country has learned tragically, when government agencies fail to cooperate and share information, not only is public safety compromised, so is national security," he said.

With more than 30 City Council members, including Quinn, supporting a change in the policy, the issue seemed sure to incite a rare public clash between the Bloomberg administration and the council. But in October, the mayor changed his position, indicating he would support a bill limiting the cooperation with ICE. Feinblatt then told the Times that the council bill "strikes the right balance."

The Bloomberg administration "truly came around in offering their support," Mark-Viverito said.

The Opposition

Some council members, though, have doubts. Four members voted against the bill though only one – Peter Vallone of Queens, who has emerged as a frequent opponent of Quinn's policies in recent months, spoke out against it.

"This will make us less safe," Vallone said, faulting the measure for not making a distinction between violent crime on one hand and less serious offenses, including misdemeanors on the other. Under it, he said, a man recently arrested for assaulting a woman would have been released. "With this law," Vallone complained. "this groper would be out on the street groping our women."

As the vote drew to a close, Councilmember Lew Fidler weighed what he saw as pros and cons. "The immigrations system in this country is badly broken," he said and so, "in an effort to be compassionate and fair, … we will be endangering public safety."

Having said that., Fidler said, he would abstain in protest of federal immigration laws.

Organized Occupiers Frustrate Mayor and Landlords


rapid response
Photo by Shankbone
Protesters gather to demonstrate on Wall Street.

In the damp, pre-dawn darkness over Zuccotti Park, three thousand people were ready for a confrontation. Police vans interspersed with news vehicles surrounded the block. Volunteers with brooms hastily swept up the last of the debris in advance of the coming order to evacuate.

But the order didn’t come. At 6:30 a.m., the crowd broke into wild cheers at the announcement that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the landlord company of the park, Brookfield Office Properties, delayed a planned cleaning session. This would have driven out Occupy Wall Street members and subsequently made it harder for them to return and assemble. Despite some scuffles and fifteen arrests at the subsequent victory march down Broadway, a big showdown was averted.The protests grew over the weekend and lead to even more arrests.

The delay, which occupiers claimed as a victory, showcased the high level of social organization and political capital the movement has amassed. The cleanup was announced on Wednesday but most protesters didn’t learn of it until Thursday, giving them 24 hours to rally the opposition.

A massive cleaning campaign by park volunteers, a call summoning thousands of supporters to the park at 6 a.m., an emergency press conference convened by City Council members and a public relations bombardment of Brookfield Office Properties all occurred in a single day, causing the company to withdraw its request and agree to negotiate with the protesters over park sanitation.

“This shows that [Occupy Wall Street] can mobilize lots of people in a short amount of time,” said Daphne Carr, a demonstration supporter.

The following day, movement supporters rallied across the United States and the world to show solidarity. Close to ten thousand people arrived in Times Square and had a tense standoff with mounted police. About 70 people were arrested throughout Saturday, including 24 people who gathered at a Citibank. Bank employees said that the protesters were disruptive but the Occupy Wall Street website says that the arrested were trying to withdraw money and close their accounts.

Bloomberg expressed displeasure with the political pressure exerted by elected officials on his weekly radio show, Friday morning. “If those elected officials had spent half as much time trying to promote the city to get jobs to come here we would a lot more ways towards answering the concerns of the protestors," he said.

A Showdown Looms

Brookfield Office Properties owns Zuccotti Park but the space is open for public use as a result of a zoning agreement that the company has with the city. In exchange for making the space available, the city granted Brookfield leeway in how tall adjacent buildings can be built.

The company sent a letter to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, saying that the “manner in which the protesters are occupying the Park violates the law, violates the rules of the Park, deprives the community of its rights of quiet enjoyment to the Park and creates health and public safety issues that need to be addressed immediately.” The letter also said that conditions in the park have deteriorated to unsanitary and unsafe levels and tenants in nearby buildings have filed many complaints. The letter went on to ask the police to help clear the park in order to undertake “cleaning, inspection, damage assessment and repairs.”

On Wednesday, Bloomberg announced that cleanup of the park would begin at 7 a.m. on Friday. Flyers were distributed throughout the park on Wednesday and Thursday. In addition, the mayor’s office, Brookfield and the New York Police Department issued a new set of rules prohibiting laying down and bringing tarps, mattresses and sleeping bags to the park, all necessary parts of the occupation’s infrastructure.

Many protesters said that the concern about sanitation and safety was a ruse and that the mayor’s and Brookfield Office Properties’s real desire was to shut down the demonstration. “It’s farce,” said Fox James, one of the ten members of Occupy Wall Street’s own cleanup crew. “He wants us out of here.”

Bloomberg’s girlfriend, Diana Taylor, sits on Brookfield’s board of directors, prompting suspicions among demonstrators and the media that there was collusion between the company leadership and the mayor. The mayor’s office did not return calls requesting comment about this issue.

The Response

Occupy Wall Street and its supporters issued a massive call for action in response to the upcoming cleanup and eviction. Online, the group told as many people as possible to arrive at 6 a.m. and form a human barricade around the park, to prevent the police from clearing everyone out.

Attorneys from the National Lawyers’ Guild who have donated legal expertise to the protesters, sent Brookfield Office Properties a letter saying that the upcoming action “raises serious First Amendment and other legal concerns” and that “there is no basis in law for [the company’s] request, nor has [the company] cited any. Such police action without a prior court order would be unconstitutional and unlawful.” The working group asked the company to sit down and negotiate with the protesters regarding the maintenance of the park.

Council members who support the occupation who received the news on Thursday, held an emergency press conference across the street from Zuccotti Park, organized by the Working Families Party.

As WFP’s Bill Linton tried to start the press conference, a white shirt police officer stood between him and the cameras, requested his driver license and asked that Linton follow him. Linton began the press conference in spite of the request. The officer eventually stepped out of the frame. At the end, he gave Linton back his ID, saying that this could have been averted if the organizers notified DCPI in advance.

Politicians who showed up to speak included Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio, Sen. Jose Serrano, former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and council members Leticia James, Linda Rosenthal, James Sanders, Ydanis Rodriguez, Charles Barron, Jumaane Williams, Daniel Dromm and Margaret Chin whose constituents include Zuccotti Park’s neighbors in District 1.

“My constituents wrote to me and said they support the protesters,” said Chin. “We call on the mayor to do everything he can to let this peaceful demonstration continue.”

A few of the council members struck a skeptical tone. “All of a sudden, the most important thing in the city is cleaning up Zuccotti Park,” said Williams. Brodsky added: “That Park has never been cleaner. If the cops are sent there, it will be to crush a movement.”

Occupy Wall Street mobilized dozens of volunteers to sweep trash, scrub and squeegee the pavement, throw out garbage and rearrange the piles of furniture and personal belongings. The volunteers worked through the night. In the morning, debris such as cigarette butts and small trash was cleared out of the space even though personal belongings still formed large, tarp-covered piles in the park. Some protesters took their things to nearby storage lockers donated by the United Federation of Teachers.

Cleanup Averted

By 6 a.m., the crowd had assembled and was ready for arrests. At 6:20 a.m., the deputy mayor released a statement saying that the cleaning is postponed due to Brookfield Office Properties withdrawing its request to the city. The statement reached the demonstrators about ten minutes later, prompting a massive cheer and temporarily breaking down the crowd-powered announcement system.

A group of protesters staged an impromptu victory march down Broadway, many of them walking off the sidewalk. This prompted multiple scuffles with police who tried to control the crowd on foot and on scooters. About a dozen people were arrested in the vicinity of Bowling Green.

Brookfield’s statement said “At the request of a number of local political leaders, Brookfield Properties has deferred the cleaning of Zuccotti Park for a short period of time while an attempt is made to reach a resolution regarding the manner in which Zuccotti Park is being used by the protesters.” The company’s spokeswoman declined to elaborate further on how these resolutions would be reached.

The mayor’s office did not say whether police would enforce new regulations against laying down and using tarps and mattresses in the park but the mayor suggested in his radio program that the decision will, for now, be Brookfield’s. A police officer on the scene, who did not wish to be named, predicted that the immediate future of the protest would be business as usual. “That’s what I like,” she added.

As the morning crowds began to disperse a little, Jordan McCarthy, a member of Occupy Wall Street’s cleanup crew, leaned triumphantly on her broom. “We better get a lot of respect for this,” she said. “Revolutions begin with cleanliness.”



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