Coalition Reacts To Redistricting
Coalition Reacts To Redistricting
For weeks, members of a loose coalition of Latino activists, professors and concerned citizens had been lobbying for a redistricting map which would create four so-called Latino opportunity districts. These efforts challenged the city of Houston plan, which offered only two. However, these efforts also challenged notions by other parties, which promoted the idea that three Latino opportunity districts would be sufficient.
Due to recent population shifts, Latinos comprise forty four percent of the city’s population. With a total of eleven districts, a truly representative map would reflect at least five Latino districts. As a coalition, we were challenged to find or to produce such a map.
Late last week, we became familiar with a map, which did provide five potential Latino districts, and did so with a deviation of .5%, which is a deviation almost ten times lower than the city’s original plan.
Jerry Wood’s analysis seems to make no mention of the fact that the submitted map had five Latino districts, and seems to outright discount the map. He seems to refer to the plan in question as the Guerra three plan in his analysis, whereas our coalition referred to the map as the 5B plan when it was submitted. It is unclear as to whether our map has truly been considered or not.
Yesterday, the city unveiled a plan which would ostensibly create four potential Latino districts.
We are against any effort by the city to obfuscate any of the proposed maps. We call for all maps that our coalition has proposed to be properly evaluated and posted on the website. We understand that the vote on the map has been tagged, and we commend the efforts to provide the community with the time to evaluate the map.