(Above, Inset: l-r): Anh Nguyen, Census Bureau demographer; Karuna Ramachandran, Director of Statewide Partnerships with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta; Victoria Huynh, Center for Pan Asian Community Services; Glory Kilanko, Founder and CEO of Women Watch Afrika; and Maria Rosario Palacios, Founder, Georgia Familias Unidas. (Siliconeer/EMS)
At a Georgia Immigrant Rights Alliance and Ethnic Media Services briefing on Georgia’s Redistricting process and what’s at stake for the state’s fast-growing immigrant and refugee communities.
Every decade Georgia’s state legislators draw new electoral district maps to reflect population ships documented by the Census. The goal is to ensure equal representation for all Georgians, but what does representation mean?
It’s about more than having the right to vote. It’s about making your vote count so that when you call your representative you get a response, because the office holder knows you represent a community, a voting bloc, he or she can’t ignore.
What if you vote in an electoral district with much larger voting blocs that don’t share your interests; what if your community isn’t even visible as a voting flock; what if legislators draw the districts to deliberately reduce your community’s clout in favor of communities they know, will vote for them; what can you do? These were some questions speakers – Anh Nguyen, Census Bureau demographer; Karuna Ramachandran, Director of Statewide Partnerships with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta; Victoria Huynh, Center for Pan Asian Community Services; Glory Kilanko, Founder and CEO of Women Watch Afrika; and Maria Rosario Palacios, Founder, Georgia Familias Unidas – explored the briefing, just two weeks before the state’s special redistricting session begins.
For months, the Georgia Immigrant Rights Alliance has been engaging community members through zoom meetings, holding webinars on map drawing, and speaking at hearings to demand fair representation where is the process at what’s at stake and what will this group of advocacy organizations plan next.
Anh Nguyen, a demographer and data dissemination specialist at the Census Bureau, provided an overview of the population ships in Georgia as they compare to changes nationwide, and presented the tool that’s available for public to access the data.
“The Census reported more than 331.4 million people living in the United States. More than 348,000 live overseas. This is the so-called apportionment population for the purpose of redistributing the 435 congressional seats among the population at once every 10 years after the decennial census. There are some changes across the board for example, California is, for the first time in its history, losing one congressional seat. Why the state of Texas picked up three more. There were no changes in state of Georgia, even though Georgia has been gaining more congressional seats in the 2000 Census and 2010 Census, Georgia gained zero this time around, and Florida picked up one more congressional seat.
“If we take a look at the demographic shift, in the state of Georgia was actually where among the top five population gains in the last decade, Georgia ended up with more than 10.7 million people in the state. That reflects of the state gained about one more than one million people over the past decade and that reflects a 10.6 percent change since 2010 to 2020. The national growth rate was 7.4 percent, so Georgia’s getting growth at 10.6 way above the national average. The ‘some other race’ category seems to be trending up and from the last census.
More than 52 million people reported ‘some other race.’
“The voting registration landscape in the state of Georgia is not the result of the 2020 Census but actually the census conducted a supplemental survey right after its presidential election,” said Nguyen.
“Fundamentally, redistricting is a good thing because it gets us to that principle of one person one vote. We should all have equal representation under the law. However, we are concerned that this process is going to be used to take voting power away from immigrant communities, to take away our power to elect candidates of choice, and as our populations are growing at very fast rates here in the state, we should be having more representation in government, not less. We’re very concerned about that. Unfortunately, our legislature has no process that includes public input transparency allowing the public to give input on draft maps. Advocates have repeatedly asked for a process where our community can be involved because if we don’t have a way to get involved how can we safeguard our voting districts, how can we ensure that our communities are not being gerrymandered,” said Ramachandran.
“We demanded language access because this crucial and vital process has only been conducted in English. It excludes so many Georgians who are more and more diverse than ever,” said Ramachandran.
“In two weeks, the special session starts on November 3rd, the day after municipal elections and we have already received one draft congressional map from the Georgia senate side.
The process that is unclear is how are these maps being discussed, what input is being received on the draft maps; and when they receive input about desired changes to these proposed maps, are they incorporating those changes into the drafts. Those are the questions that are left unanswered, but we can expect in during the special session that the Congressional map, the State House of Representatives map, and the State Senate map will be voted on and passed in November,” said Ramachandran, asserting the need for a collective message from the ethnic media to amplify the need for fair representation.
Maria Rosario of Georgia Familias Unidas, a collective aid organization to help out poultry plant workers, said absence of language access has been key throughout this entire process and it has denied Latinx Hispanic communities, fair representation.
Glory Kilanko represented Women Watch Afrika, a non-profit grassroots international social justice organization that provides multi-service including civic engagement to refugees and immigrants, men and women, in metro Atlanta, majority being from Africa.
“Currently women Watch Afrika house 23 African nations coming into the redistricting conversation. It is important to have the strong understanding that this is a once in a decade process.
“The way district lines are drawn will determine political representation, resource allocation, and the weight of our voice. Redistricting language is alien to my community. We do not even have a word that defines what redistricting is.
“Women Watch Afrika has been seeking inclusion for our voice to be heard in the ongoing redistricting process in the state of Georgia ever since the 2020 Census. We have begun talking about being visible so we can make necessary impact as a community. We are worried that if our communities are divided up it will further diminish the way we have representation and our communities will be thrown apart which will have very devastating impacts including a negative impact on the health effect of a large number of the community that we have, that are already struggling from lack of health insurance. A large majority of our community members who look like, me who speak some of the same languages, and have similar culture, work in chicken factories and meat processing plants. They were the first to be laid off when COVID struck.
“Black population in Dekalb county increased with the 2020 Census. This had made us more visible and harder to be ignored. If this redistricting is conducted fairly, it will accurately reflect population changes and racial diversity, and should be used by legislators to equally allocate representation in Congress and state legislator. Women Watch Afrika is concerned that if the redistricting process is not transparent and hence makes us invisible, we will have a repeat of history when a bridge was built to divide our community. This will further disenfranchise communities of color.
“Redistricting to us means good roads. It’s about numbers and representation. It means schools, it means affordable housing and hospitals, to mention a few. We all need to be involved in the process. We should stay informed of the plans to redraw federal state and local district lines. We are available to attend all these meetings and plans whenever they are presented and evaluated. We have made this loan to our legislator, but the goal of redistricting is to provide fair and effective representation for all, and this is what we are asking for,” said Kilanko.
Victoria Huynh represented the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, serving immigrants and refugees in over 25 different languages, about 70,000 people a year, with comprehensive health and social services, doing work around advocacy as well as capacity building.
“When we look at redistricting, we see it as a public health issue. We’re looking at transportation issues, education issues, immigration issues, and issues that are very relevant to our immigrant and refugee communities,” said Huynh.
“There were already existing barriers that may prevent our communities from completing census and we knew how important that was. If our communities didn’t complete census, there was going to be lack of resources that would come in to schools, housing, even representation right. Who is going to represent the communities if our communities aren’t showing up in data?” said Huynh.
