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Community Boundaries, Alliances Redrawn After Redistricting in NYC

By Shirley Lin
Special to AsianWeek

Figures released by the Census Bureau this spring confirmed that Asian Pacific Americans are the fastest-growing ethnic group in New York City. But whether the upsurge will mean greater political representation for the population is at issue this fall with the redrawing of the city’s districts.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), a New York-based civil rights group, submitted a 51-seat City Council redistricting plan last week to the NYC Districting Commission. The plan encompasses over a year’s worth of community input in which hundreds of residents citywide were asked to identify the boundaries of their neighborhoods as well as common issues of concern. Among the new districts proposed in AALDEF’s plan are: one majority-Asian district in Flushing, Queens; three Asian/Latino coalition districts, in Lower Manhattan (spanning Chinatown and the Lower East Side), in Brooklyn and in Queens; and three Asian “influence” districts in Brooklyn and Queens.

AALDEF director Margaret Fung believes the creation of the city’s first majority-Asian district is crucial to keeping together the “communities of interest” mandated by the New York City charter and the U.S. Supreme Court. “At the most local level, I feel it’s important that Asian Americans have a sense that their voices are heard in the City Council,” she said.

The APA population in New York City grew 55 percent since 1990, numbering close to 800,000. (After factoring Census respondents who identified as Asian in combination with another race, the number soars to roughly 873,000 — a 71 percent growth rate.)

AALDEF 51-seat city council redistricting plan. White areas indicate proposed N.Y.C. council districts (draft one: Oct. 8, 2002). Map provided by AALDEF.

What is clear is that APAs cannot always elect their candidates of choice alone. AALDEF consulted extensively with Latino and African American advocacy groups in trying to harmonize its redistricting proposal with those submitted by the Latino Voting Rights Committee (LVRC) of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and those of the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College. The 2000 Census also revealed that the Latino population had experienced such dramatic growth that Latinos now slightly outnumber blacks, the city’s largest minority group. With the city’s numerous multiracial neighborhoods, competing district lines were inevitable.

Said Fung, “In districts where Asian Americans and Latinos live in the same area, it’s very hard. The LVRC was trying to draw a majority Latino district, but that would have divided the Asian American community.” AALDEF’s plan for the pan-Asian and Latino Elmhurst-Jackson Heights section of Queens, District 25, proposed to keep the Asian communities united and left the adjacent majority-Latino District 21 intact.

“Hopefully those various considerations will be balanced when those overall plans will be developed,” she added.

Other cross-racial “communities of interest” include a South-Asian/black coalition in Richmond Hill and Ozone Park in Queens, one Asian/Latino coalition in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, and another in the Chinatown/Lower East Side area of Manhattan. Chinatown is currently drawn into District 1 with the mostly white and affluent TriBeCa, SoHo and Financial District neighborhoods, a grouping that AALDEF staff attorney Glenn Magpantay believes is illogical.

In proposing a coalition district with the heavily Latino Lower East Side area, AALDEF considered not only the race and ethnicity of residents, but also class and community concerns of residents such as language access, health care and housing. Noted Magpantay, “Chinatown has never been able to elect a candidate of choice.”

Rick Wager, a spokesperson for the Commission, said AALDEF’s submission was “taken very seriously along with the other proposals.”

The next step for the commitee is a second round of public hearings, and review by the City Council’s in mid-December. The redrawn lines would be effective for the 2003 fall elections.