(Above: Clockwise from top left): Speakers at an Ethnic Media Services briefing, held Sept. 22 – Victoria Grijalva Ochoa, Redistricting Program Manager, One Arizona; Reginald Bolding, Co-Executive Director, Arizona Coalition for Change and candidate for AZ State Secretary; Sandy Ochoa, Mi Familia Vota; Jennifer Chau, AZ AANHPI for Equity; Jaynie Parrish, Navajo County Democrats; and Andrea Varela, One Arizona Coalition/Rural Arizona Engagement. (Siliconeer/EMS)

 

Redistricting is the process by which the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC), a five-member body appointed by the legislature, redraws the boundaries for Congressional and legislative districts to align with demographic changes documented by the 2020 Census.

How the IRC draws these boundaries could have important political consequences.

In a state where Republicans have lost seats over the last decade, and the state’s voters have moved from red to a more competitively balanced. The commission, as the Associated Press recently reported, could let that trend continue or tip the scales by how it divides up populations and registered voters.

Between July 23 and late August, the IRC held fifteen listening tours to solicit public input and produced a grid map that breaks the state’s 7.15 million people into equal parts. As it prepares to draw more detailed draft maps, it is scheduled five public hearings to get additional public input. The draft map is due Oct. 27, the final map is scheduled to be approved Dec. 22.

Speakers at an Ethnic Media Services briefing, held Sept. 22 – Victoria Grijalva Ochoa, Redistricting Program Manager, One Arizona; Reginald Bolding, Co-Executive Director, Arizona Coalition for Change and candidate for AZ State Secretary; Sandy Ochoa, Mi Familia Vota; Jennifer Chau, AZ AANHPI for Equity; Jaynie Parrish, Navajo County Democrats; and Andrea Varela, One Arizona Coalition/Rural Arizona Engagement – represent a broad coalition of community organizations working to ensure equitable representation for all Arizonans, communities of color, and rural residents.

They shared their experiences, trying to access the first round of hearings, highlight the issues that matter most to their communities, and outline their demands for greater transparency representation and accessibility by the commission.

Victoria Ochoa of One Arizona gave an overview of Arizona’s increasingly diverse population and what she sees at stake for communities of color in the redistricting process.

“As most folks, Arizona has had an increase of population of nearly 12 from 2010 and that population has largely been driven by communities of color. Latinos are now over 30 percent of the population in the state, Black population grew over 30 percent in the state, and Asian Americans are actually the fastest growing population here. Considering all of the growth that’s coming in from our communities it’s absolutely critical that we are incorporated into this part into this process, that we’re included, and that we are constantly asked for advice, and for feedback as the commission rolls forward in a process that’s going to impact our next 10 years,” said Victoria.

“We’re still not seeing enough support or enough outreach to communities of color,” pointed Victoria.

“They did not reach out to multilingual media outlets to help in these efforts. There was a lack of consistency with translation and interpretation services in the first round. The commission had an opportunity to improve on this from last time and yet it actually failed to do that, it did things worse – one week notice for hearings that start on weekdays at 4pm which is impossible for most working folks to be able to join,” said Victoria.

There was no opportunity to participate in hearings virtually with no additional COVID precautions being put in place. The commission’s virtual mapping tool is only available in English and there have not been any training materials offered in additional languages. To sum it up, the commission has not done the work to make themselves accessible, Victoria said.

Being able to get funding for COVID vaccine locations, or for schools, are all issues that are based on redistricting and will impact the next 10 years.

Commissioners are not really thinking about issues like how access to funding will impact communities of color in the long run, concluded Victoria.

Reginald Bolding gave a perspective on the redistricting process from the advantage of Arizona’s growing African American population.

“We have not seen these meetings in African American communities. African Americans in the state of Arizona are in all different districts, in all different cities. The city of Maricopa has the largest percent population of African Americans of any city, so making sure that that voice is heard in the city of Maricopa is extremely important.

“We are currently in the middle of the COVID pandemic and the delta variant, and that is affecting communities of color at a broader level than it’s affecting other communities. Providing as many opportunities as possible for voices to be heard such as virtual settings make the most sense in this scenario,” said Bolding.

“I think the biggest opportunity for ethnic media is the education process. In many of our communities, with regards to COVID, people of color were the first ones fired, and the last ones hired back, economic stability is an issue for communities of color.

“The redistricting process, and who will be representing us for the next 10 years, have the ability to impact both our economic situations and policies that are directly impacting communities of color,” said Bolding.

Sandy Ochoa said, “Redistricting is the next fight in the battle to protect our democracy the same anti-democratic forces that are trying to hold on to power by pushing voter suppression bills in the states will also attempt to manipulate the maps in their favor. Doing redistricting gerrymandering is a key part of Conservatives plan to secure majorities in the house of representatives and state legislators for the next decade, regardless of what the voters want. Mi Familia Vota fights these attacks, as it strives to honor democracy.

Jennifer Chau said that when she went to the Tucson public hearing, which had about 200 people, there were only four Asians, three or four black people, three from the indigenous native community, while 95 were white people. The next meeting in Mesa, the next day, was a little better. There were more people of color, but still a handful of Asians.

“We need better outreach to communities of color, translation services, and I feel the ethnic media would help out, but at the end of the day IRC should be doing better at outreaching,” said Chau.

“Educating our community is really important when it comes to redistricting,” said Chau.

Her organization helped hold a redistricting training in partnership with AAPI vote and had about 49 people who participated. It was held via Zoom.

Evaluating a question – What is your knowledge on redistricting? – it was 0.8 on a scale of 0-5, in other words, the Asian community barely knew anything.

Jaynie Parrish, with the Navajo County Democrats, talked about the stakes in fairer redistricting for Arizona’s native population.

Andrea Varela reflected on what is redistricting, how it impacts, and how it has engaged or not engaged rural Arizonans.