Don’t Divide the Great 9th District!
February 3rd, 2012
If you’re proud of the great unity and strength of 9th District communities, we need to mobilize and stop the Los Angeles Redistricting Commission from ripping the district apart!
I won’t stand for that! I hope you won’t either. But, we need your help to ensure the map represents the will of the people.
Please join me in urging the Redistricting Commission to reject their draft map plan and keep the historic Great Ninth District whole. Please send the Redistricting Commission a letter (and send us a copy) supporting a united 9th District, demand that they adopt a map that represents the will of the people, and /or attend the public hearing at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, February 8, at Los Angeles City Hall, Council Chambers, 3rd Floor, 200 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 and make sure your voice is heard.
What is Redistricting? Every ten years, following the census, the City needs to redraw the City Council boundaries so that the districts have equal population in conformance with the Voting Rights Act. To meet the requirements we need to make minor adjustments to our boundaries.
If you want to learn more about redistricting, please check out our Redistricting FAQ.
What this means is, that while a shift in boundaries may occur, the data supports only minor changes. At the redistricting hearing in December, many Council District 9 communities of interest from downtown to South Los Angeles expressed a strong desire to remain in the Ninth District. This can and should be respected. In fact, I supported a map that was submitted to the Redistricting Committee from the Coalition on Fairness in Redistricting, a group comprised of stakeholders from the 8th and 9th Council Districts. The map reflected the need to make minor changes to the district while respecting our cultural and historic ties that make ours a strong coalition district.
The map that the Redistricting Commission presented ignored our testimony the facts and the wishes of the people. They created maps that ignored public testimony and created a 9th District that severed downtown from south Los Angeles and if approved with make it one of the poorest districts in history of the City. This does not represent the interests of the people. Redistricting should not be used to define council district boundaries to advance political careers. It should not be a process that will economically divide the people of the Ninth Council District. I call this economic apartheid.
If you want to see the map being considered by the commission, you can take a look right here.
For over seven decades, the Ninth District has been comprised of the communities of downtown, South Los Angeles, and Little Tokyo. These communities have worked together as a multi-ethnic coalition to achieve great progress throughout the district. The Ninth District’s communities of interest have a strong history of cooperating politically with a balanced racial coalition.
Working together this past decade has brought unprecedented investment and development to the Ninth Council District. Business and Non-Profit interests have come together to address homelessness. We have built mixed-income communities, including thousands of units of affordable housing throughout the district. The promise made decades ago to the people of both downtown and South Los Angeles for investment, infrastructure improvement, job creation, affordable housing and retail services has been made real for the people living and working in the district.
A strong, multi-ethnic coalition of Ninth District stakeholders from Little Tokyo, Central City East, the Historic Core, Fashion District, Vernon-Central, and South Los Angeles came together last week to send a clear message to the Commission that the Ninth District should remain fundamentally the same, to ensure that our diverse communities of interest remain united. It was a powerful expression of community interests.
If you missed the rally, you can view the video here.
How do we stop them from dividing our community? Let your voice be heard. Stand up for our neighborhoods. Defend the 9th District. Send us a letter and attend the public hearing next week. Demand that the Commission adopt a new map that represents us and what the people of the Ninth District deserve—a map that Keeps the Ninth United! Also, please be sure to share this message with your friends and neighbors. Every voice counts!
We need to stop this proposal now. We need to demand that our voice is heard. We need to demand that historic boundaries are respected and that the will of the people is respected.
Join me in demanding that the Redistricting Commission restore the historic fabric of the Ninth District!
Public Redistricting Hearing
City Hall Council Chambers 3rd Floor
200 North Spring Street
Wednesday February 8 at 6:30pm
Address your letters to the Redistricting Commission and send them to my staff.
Councilwoman Jan Perry
Ninth District
City of Los Angeles