Leroy Johnson and Mike Sayers from Southern Echo present a fantastic workshop about the 2010 Census and Redistricting process as part of Southern Partners Fund’s inaugural Social Justice Institute.
In the room are organizations like Alliance for Justice, Latinos for Educational Justice, and SEIU, all wanting to learn more about next year’s census process and what it means for communities of color and other marginalized groups.
Why is the 2010 Census and Redistricting so important? Watch this brief video from Mike Sayers to find out.
Community Organizers Can Ensure “Hard to Count” Populations Get Counted
The workshop serves to underscore the importance of making sure “hard to count” communities get counted. Leroy says that there has been “drive by counting” from folks who don’t care about our communities, and we need to be the ones to go in and ensure the accuracy of next year’s Census. Right now the Census Bureau is in its 2nd round of hiring, and you can find out more about becoming a census taker here. Community organizers have the opportunity to connect census work with organizing work, to integrate with the work we’re already doing. We can we use this process to expand participation of people to carry this through the next ten years. It can be understood as a building block that we need to organize for a complete and full count to help our communities. There was a 67% participation rate in the last Census, meaning one-third of people did not get counted. The goal this year is just 69%, even though the constitutional mandate is that everyone gets counted.
The Census Bureau knows they can’t get it done alone. We are the people who have to breathe life into “we the people” in regards to this Census. 69% is not good for our folks, for those who are hard to count. Hard to count populations: people of color, people of low wealth, people of limited English, people in apartments, young people, Black and Latino males, people without a permanent residence. Yet the outcome is important to our folks who are marginalized & “invisibilized.” The Census impacts electorate for presidential and congressional elections, $400 billion dollars is allocated among communities based on census data which is sensitive to the redistribution of the population. This is our opportunity to put out analysis and understanding – to address directly people’s fear of coming out of the dark into the light of the political process. The U.S. Census is the largest, most accurate poll in the world – 300 million people. Their margin of error is smaller than other polls because of size. This poll is about finding our folks. Who are we and where are we?
Importance of Census in Redistricting Process
Leroy informs us that despite the Census’ relative accuracy, we do have both an undercount and an overcount problem with people either not being counted or being counted twice. Middle and upper-income whites often get counted more than once, enabling a shift in representation of resources and power in relation to undercounted communities. Many upper-class folks have two home, children at colleges, etc. which contributes to an overcount.
Overcounts also created where there are prisons, inmates counted at home and in the prison, creating “phantom districts.” An entirely new district can be created because of a large prison population, yet only the people who can vote in that community can benefit. Often the whites in certain communities receive extra political power due to this distortion. In 2000, there was a 3.6 million overcount and a 3.8 million undercount.
Some states will get additional seats through redistricting due to shifts in populations, but there will be a disproportionate benefit. States can lose districts when population shifts and can lose when other states gain disproportionately larger numbers of people. See the census map for each state here.
The 2010 Census will be a “hard count” instead of the way it was done in 2000, augmented by accurate statistical sampling. If you’re not physically counted, you don’t count. How good the count is though, is not the only measure of success. That’s where organizing process comes in – some officials only want to count legal U.S. citizens, setting certain populations up for every legal and civil discrimination. Redistricting is about redistribution of power and there are always goals in mind. These goals can be fair or unfair depending on your perspective. Redistricting was used in the past to restrict people of color from voting themselves into power. What basis was used? Census data. The redistricting process was used successfully because people in our communities didn’t participate in a meaningful way. In the past, when redistricting has been done well, the organizing hasn’t been done afterwards. But now we need to go from a “my district” mentality to an “our district” mentality. The districts don’t belong to the candidates. They belong to the community. We need to make these candidates more accountable to the people who live in the districts.
Challenges to Getting a Complete Count
One problem is that our communities are not always of one mind. We don’t want to fight against officials of color who treat us just as bad as the white politicians. So we have to combine organizers with elected officials to build good policy and make sure it’s implemented. Census is not just about 2010, but the next steps to take beyond that. Freeedom is a constant struggle. Before you know it, another ten years have gone by. Many have been trying to create fear tactics to prevent immigrants from filling out Census forms. Fear that census data will be used and accessed by Homeland Security. Yes, there is risk, we can’t say that won’t happen illegally. There is no basis to know that the ban on the government of using census data trumps the Patriot Act. So we need to show the overriding benefits of creating power in communities which will ultimately mean less risk. We can disperse it, but not eliminate it.
Leroy and Mike encourage us to join or start “Complete Count Committees” in our state – the Census is a political animal and community organizers need to be involved. Southern Echo can also design Census and Redistricting trainings for your group or create customized factsheets like these. Contact them at 601-982-6400 or souecho@southernecho.org.
Full disclosure: Southern Partners Fund paid me to provide blogging services for this event to leverage the power of social media to share their stories with the wider philanthropic community. The views expressed here are solely my own, however, and I stand by my commitment to authentic coverage of these issues. Would you like to hire me? Visit my portfolio to see samples of my work.
