While all of tonight’s commentators were critical of the council majority’s redistricting plan, the overall turnout was a discouraging sight for citizens concerned about New Rochelle’s future political legitimacy. The inattention of the city’s minority communities was positively “deafening!”
Concerned New Rochelle Citizens’ Redistricting Committee chair Mark McLean, Assemblyman Ron Tocci and Mayor Len Paduano presented a blistering critique of the Democrat-authored map. The most pointed objections concerned: the contrived layout of several districts, particularly number 6 whose “reach” southward through the core of the City of New Rochelle recalled to some in attendance the famous “Salamander”-shaped Massachusetts legislative borough of Elbridge Gerry which gave the corrupt practice its name – Gerrymandering; the hurried and careless schedule of public outreach/input which seems inadequate to the task of inviting and facilitating citizen involvement, and most important; the careful exclusion of African-Americans and Spanish-speaking Americans from districts 5 and 6 and the consequent concentration of same in districts 3 and 4, respectively.
Other speakers lamented: the continued unhelpful numbering of the voting boundaries, instead of a more descriptive naming system (North end, Central core, Shoreline, etc.) and most interestingly; the majority’s willful disregard of the city population’s ever-shifting “mean center” (a term of precise demographic importance describing the relative geographic concentration of residents) as it gradually moves south/southeastward from census to census.
What this all means, in essence, is that the liberal aristocracy is intent on maintaining its stranglehold on the city body politic. It aims to preserve its permanently incumbent status by ignoring mandates of federal law and straining to perpetuate two traditional northern districts against all logic, notions of geometric cogency and demographic progress. The Democrat establishment’s actions are of dubious legality and offend norms of political fair play; but the greatest objection may be their apparent disdain for the political rights of our growing minority population.
In plain English; an established power structure refuses to accommodate the lawful expansion of new ethnic power bases through the natural increase of general and voter populations.
New Rochelle African-American and Spanish-speaking American voters will, for the next ten years, be doomed to constant political subjugation as a result of the majority plan’s clever projection of north end primacy. If these minority voters do not recognize the real threat to their interests and fail to register their concerns through established political parties, concerned citizens’ groups and at the few public hearings being made available, they will be the “BIGGEST LOSERS.” It’s that simple.
Who will alert New Rochelle’s African-American and Spanish-speaking American “sleeping giants” to this purposeful threat to their political empowerment? Keep your eyes trained on the speakers’ podium at city council hearings in the coming weeks.
Tues. Meeting
This is on the mayor’s blog:
-The draft redistricting proposal submitted on Friday will be posted on the City website and another round of letters will be distributed to the same wide spectrum of community leaders.
-The City Council will discuss the draft plan in public session on Tuesday, April 12.
-The City Council will hold a public hearing on the draft plan on Wednesday, April 20.
-If changes are made to the draft, revisions will be posted online and an additional public hearing will be held to consider the amended plan.
The Council will complete its work by May 10th at the very latest.’s
If last night’s meeting was a discussion, I missed something. I understand the council will vote on Wed., April 20(we all know how that will turn out).
Their are no revisions because the mayor wants what he wants. Why was an expert hired and at what cost to the taxpayers?
Noam Bramson is NOT for diversity or inclusion
I recently heard that the Mayor, through the City Clerk’s office, sent out an invite to members of the community to view and review the redistricting model he had developed. I asked the City Clerk for a copy of such a list. His response was as follows:
_________________________
Good morning Mr. Sanchez,
The mailing list used to inform the citizens of New Rochelle about redistricting and the opportunity to send comments is the City’s list ofcommunity leaders. More specifically, it is not broken down by anyethnic group, but rather by the various organizations.
I suspect that there are quite a number of Latinos within some of theorganizations that received the mailing.
That mailing list is available at the City Clerk’s office for tendollars should you wish to purchase one.
I apologize for not being able to answer your direct question; however,information that specific is not available.
Take care,
Bennie F. Giles, III
City Clerk
_______________________
So I stopped by City Hall and paid my $10. The list had 197 names in it with affiliations and home addresses. I concluded that only one Spanish surname was on the list. So, I thought that it would have been a good idea to have had at least two former Hispanic elected officals invited to view this list, Roberto Lopez and myself. We were both excluded. What does this say about Mayor Noam Bramson’s effort at reaching out to the Latino Community of New Rochelle? Does he care? Does it matter to him?
CouncilDems to community; “We don’t care what you think””
As I learned in law school many years ago, “Res ipsa loquitor.” To those untutored in Latin (including myself), meaning; “the thing speaks for itself.”
The council’s unwillingness to throw the question of redistricting out to the entire community speaks, shouts, volumes; and the content itself is insulting. The administration seems to have learned nothing from the 2003 consent decree issued by the US District Court in White Plains. That text clearly requires New Rochelle to utilize improved mechanisms and tools to advance the essential objective of the lawsuit; remediation of past wrongs and enhancement of minority-group political empowerment.
By any standard, the council majority is falling disgracefully short of the letter and spirit of the court’s decision. Democrats, Republicans, independents, the unaffiliated, conservatives, liberals, traditional majorities and ethnic minorites both Spanish-speaking and African-American should be incensed by council’s disdain for the common law and Constitutional precedent.
When the council Democrats wanted the community’s approval of the GreeNR “initiative,” they couldn’t get enough of us! Let us get this straight: something required by the Constitution, must be over and done with in a couple of weeks; something required by Al Gore and his band of extraterrestrials, gets a year-and-one-half of New Rochelle City Hall’s undivided attention.
So it goes in the “Bill of Rights Vacuum Chambers” of NR City Hall.