Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The Inane Mysteries of Redistricting

It's that time of decade again. Atlanta City Council, after reviewing the results of the 2010 US Census, has convened to draw new districts. They will vote on a final map on 5 December, which will be submitted to the federal Department of Justice for review next year.

I have never felt so ignorant as I did upon finding out what I had failed to learn until today. As a Downtown resident, I currently live in District 2, represented by who happens to be my favorite Councilperson, a man who knows what Atlanta needs, come sun or moon. Under any of the three redistricting plans, the most popular of which is Plan 2, I and the rest of south Downtown will be moved into the district of Cleta Winslow, who is reported here and there to be rather inept and selfish, and is unpopular with Atlanta's police union.

To be fair, she has at least once helped underprivileged homebuyers find homes in such neighborhoods as Mechanicsville, Pittsburgh and Peoplestown. Still, this effort seems mostly irrelevant to the concerns of south Downtown, which consists of high-density government offices, a handful of multistory residential buildings, and no detached housing.

The proposed redrawing of District 4 is also blatantly gerrymandered. It appears, upon a glance at the Census results from last year, as though the drawers of the district (most likely Cleta herself) worked to make it as black as possible; notice that its peninsular, northernmost Census tract, comprising Centennial Place, is 69% black, and is immediately across North Avenue from one that is only 9% black and thoroughly contains Georgia Tech. That tract would go to a new District 3, whose Councilperson, Ivory Lee Young, Jr, has threatened to hire an attorney over his district's dilution of black constituents.

Although the public comment period has passed, there's still ample time to call or email your current Councilperson, and voice whatever opinion you may have regarding the new maps, which differ slightly between the three plans. As I will end up in District 4 no matter which plan passes, the only recourse available to me, and others who will dearly miss Kwanza Hall, is to work hard to vote out Cleta Winslow in 2013. Perhaps she'll pleasantly surprise me, but I don't expect it.

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