The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and the National Urban League today announced a strategic collaboration to educate and empower historically underserved urban communities on redistricting issues in 2011.
With each Census cycle, more legislative districts reflect sophisticated calculations executed far from the public eye. The resulting districts split cohesive communities and produce legislatures that neither meaningfully represent constituents, nor reflect the diversity and views of the public. In contrast, an open and transparent redistricting process can help ensure that elected public servants actually serve citizens.
The Brennan Center and the National Urban League will team up to educate local Urban League affiliates and other community and grassroots groups, and to bring the public back into the process and to advocate successfully for their communities to be represented in the process.
“The National Urban League’s mission is to empower communities to improve their economic conditions,” said Marc H. Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League. “Empowerment necessarily includes taking part in the electoral process at all levels. Through this collaboration, the National Urban League will educate and inform our communities. The use of webinars and our online platforms shows how the National Urban League is at the cutting edge of using innovation to reach our goals”.
“The historically underserved communities the Urban League represents are among the most commonly marginalized by the redistricting process,” said Michael Waldman, Executive Director of the Brennan Center. “Giving communities the tools to understand and engage in the line-drawing process will help assure that those communities are recognized, preserved and represented in our government.”
The Brennan Center will partner with the National Urban League’s national staff on a series of regional webinars open to community and grassroots groups and their members interested in learning more about redistricting. The webinars will explain the redistricting process and provide information about how community groups and leaders can engage in the redistricting process.
The schedule of webinars is as follows:
Southeast Region: March 2, 2011, 2:00 PM EST/1:00 PM CST (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia West Virginia).
Western Region: March 8, 2011, 2:00 PM EST/11:00 AM PST (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming).
Midwestern Region: April 7, 2011, 2:00 PM EST/1:00 PM CST (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin).
Northeast Region: April 22, 2011, 2:00 PM EST (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont).
Please visit the following link to register and obtain information about the webinars:
http://www.iamempowered.com/article/2011/02/22/web-based-census-redistricting-training
For more information, please contact:
Madura Wijewardena at the National Urban League, mwijewardena@nul.org, (202) 629–5753
Erika Wood at the Brennan Center, erika.wood@nyu.edu, (646) 292–8319