APA Legal Center’s campaign to protect communities during redistricting

Los Angeles — The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), a member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, has launched a campaign to engage Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in redistricting, the process of redrawing voting district boundaries every 10 years based on census data.

APALC anchors a statewide network of AAPI community organizations called the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans for Fair Redistricting (CAPAFR), which is holding community meetings statewide in January and February to assist AAPI communities in understanding and participating in the redistricting process.

The Coalition aims to help AAPI communities provide input to California’s new Citizens Redistricting Commission, the governmental body responsible for conducting redistricting for the Assembly, State Senate, Board of Equalization, and California’s 53 Congressional seats. The commission also will hold public hearings throughout California in the next few months.

Community input at the hearings will influence whether the commission draws district lines that keep communities together or splits them apart.

The goal of CAPAFR’s meetings is to provide AAPI community members with an opportunity to review potential district configurations and to collect feedback on which configurations best articulate regional AAPI interests and concerns.

The Coalition encourages a broad range of AAPI community members to attend the meetings, as their feedback will be incorporated by CAPAFR into statewide Assembly and State Senate mapping proposals.

Sometime after the Census Bureau releases Census 2010 redistricting data in March 2011, the Coalition will submit these statewide mapping proposals to the commission. The CAPAFR mapping proposals will illustrate how they believe AAPI communities of interest should be kept together. CAPAFR also will prepare community members to testify before the commission about their communities’ interests and concerns. The commission will hold two rounds of hearings this year, and has a deadline of Aug. 15 to establish new district boundaries.

Questions about CAPAFR should be directed to Deanna Kitamura, statewide redistricting manager at APALC, who can be reached at (213) 241-0232 or dkitamura@apalc.org, or Eugene Lee, voting rights project director at APALC, who can be reached at (213) 241-0212 or elee@apalc.org.

Additional information about CAPAFR can be found at www.capafr.org. The Commission’s Website is http://wedrawthelines.ca.gov.

Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans for Fair Redistricting community meetings

San Diego County

Sacramento County

Fresno County

Santa Clara County

Alameda County

Los Angeles County – South Bay

Los Angeles County – San Gabriel Valley

SF and San Mateo Counties