Posted on 04/10/2011 6:48:22 AM PDT by Bluestateredman
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The Boston Globe Activists prepare for battle over districts Demand voting maps increase minority clout By Michael Levenson Globe Staff / April 10, 2011 E-mail this article To:
Voting rights activists, 10 years after the Massachusetts House enacted a redistricting plan that illegally diluted minority voting power, are dramatically revamping their strategy, pressuring the Legislature sooner and more aggressively than they have in past decades.
Emboldened by census data showing an increasingly diverse Massachusetts and by the successful lawsuit against the House’s 2001 redistricting plan, the activists are planning to preempt the Legislature by producing their own maps of legislative and congressional districts, months before lawmakers unveil their plans in the fall.
They are already sifting through 2010 Census data, hiring cartographers and lawyers, and cajoling lawmakers to enact plans that increase the odds of minorities winning seats in the state Legislature and Congress. Subtly and sometimes explicitly, they are threatening to sue the state again, if the Legislature does not adopt their plans or ones like them.
“The black community has been too passive in the past, and such passivity has led to injury to the black political establishment,’’ said Kevin C. Peterson, cochairman of a new activist group, the Massachusetts Black Empowerment Coalition for Redistricting. “Our goal is to get aggressively out in front of this process and drive it toward specific outcomes and new political arrangements.’’
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
They have now mastered the art of using threats and lawsuits to demand and often get their way. The cry of racism is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for these people and their masters.
They don't want to say Communist, do they?
This could be good for us in Mass. Mass reps are all dems anyway, If they create supermajority minority districts, some of the other districts might be in play. It’s still wrong, but could work in our favor.
... They are already sifting through 2010 Census data, hiring cartographers and lawyers, and cajoling lawmakers to enact plans that increase the odds of minorities winning seats in the state Legislature and Congress.
These sheep don't seem to realize that the way to really dilute the voting power of any group of people is to lump them all together. This only insures the election of Sheila Jackson Lee types in electoral ghettos and insures that normal sane, sane politicians don't have to care what these people think, since their groupthink vote is a foregone conclusion.
Gerrymandered US house districts help assure a natural GOP majority, and a natural Dem minority stocked with idiots and criminals. How does a seat for life for the corrupt and insane Maxine Waters in an impotent and loony minority serve the interest of any black voter?
The Black Caucus is a bad joke, and it is the bone the Democrat Party throws to its black constituents to keep them in line. The creation of a black congressional district, and the reduction of a house seat in Mass, will cause nothing but trouble for the Dems. Wait and see.
“separate but equal?”
If the republicans had won a seat in Massachusetts last year it would have vanished like a fart in a hurricane by redistricting.
Drawing a few districts that over represent blacks means that Democrats in general are underrepresented everywhere else!
lol
I had NEVER thought of this.
Concentrating Democratic voters into a handful of districts... means it's all the easier for Republicans to take the remaining districts!
Now I am FOR racial gerrymandering! I say every state should gerrymander every liberal community into ONE giant snaking district, and leave all the rest for Republicans :P
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