Would Fresno’s underserved populations receive fair representation in draft voting districts?
Advocates for Fresno’s Black, Hmong, Muslim and Punjabi communities worry the underserved populations will remain underrepresented at the state and federal levels after draft maps released by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission split up those communities.
The commission released draft maps earlier this month for congressional, state Assembly and state Senate districts. When drafting the maps, the commission must take into consideration a number of criteria set by state law, such as equal population and compliance with the Voting Rights Act.
Another criterion is to minimize the division of cities, counties, neighborhoods and communities of interest to the extent possible. This is where the draft maps for Fresno are problematic, advocates say.
“There’s this continued ‘Tale of Two Cities’ if these maps are adopted,” said Eric Payne, executive director of the Central Valley Urban Institute. “It will continue to contribute to the systemic racism of historical disinvestment that we’ve seen for the last 30 years.”
The maps still may change during an upcoming revision period that begins Nov. 30.
Communities of interest split
Coalitions of advocacy groups representing the underserved communities have submitted lots of public comments to the commission regarding Fresno. They’ve also submitted other mapping options for the commission to consider.
So why is it important to keep communities together in the same district?
“We want to ensure that rooted and established communities who have not had adequate representation in the past now have the ability to have their voices uplifted and represented,” said Oussama Mokeddem, policy and advocacy manager for CAIR California’s Sacramento and Central Valley offices. “We want to ensure that our communities are kept whole and in the same district so that we can at least build some sort of political power, some sort of influence, and directly translate that into resources and policy impacts that benefit our community and other marginalized communities in the region.”
In Fresno, a community of interest was identified near Masjid Badr on North Milburn Avenue, a mosque with a large Yemeni-American following. Many Punjabi families also live in that area. Yet the draft maps for state Senate, state Assembly and the congressional districts all split this community along the Highway 99 corridor.
The maps also split up Hmong populations centered in Tarpey Village, Sunnyside and Sanger.
Tammy Vang, an organizer in Fresno for Hmong Innovating Politics, said that while the Hmong population already is split, the community would be better served if it is kept whole.
“When it does get split, it’s really hard to represent the population there and also to provide the correct resources in that area considering they do have different cultural needs and different supports and resources. So the budget shouldn’t have to be split into different districts,” Vang said.
Splitting communities isn’t the only concern with the maps in the Fresno area. The California Black Census and Redistricting Hub disagreed with the congressional draft map that places Fresno’s historically Black neighborhoods in the same district as Clovis, which has a majority white population.
“We recognize that west Fresno now cannot be paired with unfavorable cities like Clovis, and we recognize the institutional harm that can be done to a community if this is to move forward,” Payne said. “It is our hope and desire that the commission is responsive to the concerns that our coalition has brought forward to help mitigate the issues of historical disinvestment in our community.”
The Hub also submitted visualizations to the commission and took into consideration keeping whole other communities of interest, such as the AAPI community.
Redistricting commissioner: ‘We hear you’
While none of the commissioners are from Fresno, the redistricting process has educated them on all of California’s communities.
Commissioner Neal Fornaciari from Tracy said he was surprised to learn Fresno was so diverse and which areas of the city different communities live in.
Fornaciari noted that while the commission is paying attention to keeping communities whole, it also must ensure it’s meeting the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. In the Fresno area, that means creating a solid Latino Voting Rights district since there’s a large Latino citizen voting-age population.
“There was a lot of discussion about all the communities of interest input that we’ve gotten around Fresno, and we were working on trying to balance the desires of all the communities of interest with the higher-ranking criteria of the voters’ rights,” he said.
Tuesday is the last day for people to submit input to the commission.
“We’re hearing you,” Fornaciari said about the input and feedback from communities of interest. “We’re doing our best to accommodate those communities of interest. I mean, we’d like to accommodate everyone. It’s challenging because there’s a lot of conflicting communities of interest, and there are higher-ranking criteria that we have to follow.”
This story was originally published November 25, 2021 at 5:00 AM.