I went to the Southern Communities Coalition meeting tonight. As you might expect, it was a meeting of folks who rejected the Map 1-R redistricting solutions; who saw the map that lopped of the top half of the 6th district west clear to Holmes and sent the north west border clear up to 59th street in spots. South KC residents saw both loss--to the 5th of commercial and civic resources--and threat--from the wishes of the richer and more highly connected Waldo/Brookside area. To many it felt as if the 6th was paying the price for the failings of the 5th and 3rd districts--the districts losing population to both other KCMO areas and other cities in the metro due to high crime and other quality of life issues.
You can't think about redistricting without ending up thinking about race matters and we did end up talking after more explicitly afterwards. I hope to share more later, and some photos taken at the meetings, as well as the "community map."The citizen's committee meets tomorrow at 3:30 at City Hall to issue its decision. It would be nice for the committee to do the people of south KC the courtesy of passing on the "community map" on to the council as well as the so-called "done deal" map 1-R. We may still end up being sliced up pretty well but at least they will have heard us scream.
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2 comments:
Hmmm.
Tony, bless his heart, attended this last meeting of the redistricting committee and reports that only Map 1-R is being recommended and passed on to the city council.
It certainly was worth the effort to band together in SKC and try and stop this, but odds were against the 6th here.
This work in fact will make it harder for the people of south KC to band together across racial lines to work for their community because now a council district line runs right through it.
Pits race against community and neighborhood--nice.
The Observer
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