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New York’s Soul at Stake
February 26th, 2010
Right now, we’re working to pass legislation that would change New York’s antiquated practice of adding the count of people in prison to the population of the district where they are incarcerated – as opposed to their home communities. Folks keep asking me how “upstate” benefits from the change in legislation.
My first problem: the term “upstate.” Can you please tell me which of these communities best represents upstate?
Is it Elsmere Street in Buffalo, a hip strip of shops and restaurants and single and double family homes?
Is it the small Adirondack town of Lake Placid where the hot spot is the local bait and tackle shop?
Is it the Southwest Syracuse, a community of low-income neighborhoods where many community clinics and centers are stretched thin trying to serve an underserved population?
Is it rural Cazenovia, population 6,481.
The correct answer is obviously ‘E ‘ – all of the above represent upstate. The reality is, “upstate” is as diverse as its geography, its people and, therefore, its policy needs. There are times when New York City has more in common with Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and even Albany, while Pittsford (Monroe County) shares some of the assets of Larchmont (Westchester County) and Northport (Nassau County).
In fact, depending on where you live, upstate means different things. I grew up in Orange County. My dad commuted every day to New York City where he worked as a water inspector. In fact, my parents, my older brother and sister were all born in New York City and we regularly visited my grandparents who lived there until they passed away. So for the first 18 years of life, I considered myself a “downstater.” However, my boyfriend in college, from Long Island, informed me that everything north of Manhattan was upstate, but maybe, just maybe, he might include the Bronx.
So let’s go back to this question of how the bill to end prison-based gerrymandering impacts upstate.
Well, for folks in the cities, where unfortunately, we have the highest rate of sentencing and are therefore the largest contributors to the prison population, folks will have the right to be represented back in their home communities, whether we are talking about the North Side of Rochester or Salina Street in Syracuse. This would definitely help these communities be more accurately represented.
For folks who live in the counties with prisons, they also would benefit from accurate representation. At this point, these counties find themselves out of whack. If a county consists of 7 or 8 towns, the one holding the prison suddenly has unrealistically inflated numbers and therefore disproportionately high representation, which is why many – in fact 13 counties with prisons – have stopped the practice of counting the prison population for purposes of county-level redistricting.
But do any of these arguments really matter?
Do we remember the 3/5ths compromise to count slaves, who could not vote, but counted as 3/5ths of a person to beef up the numbers in communities who would consistently vote to maintain slavery?
The practice of counting prisoners in their place of incarceration is an antiquated process when we lacked the computers and databases to track people otherwise. But now, it’s turned into an unjust process which ends up commodifying human beings for the benefit or profit of others.
It is no secret that while equal numbers of black and brown people are arrested as whites, the majority of people actually in the prisons are black and brown. The impact of counting prisoners any place other than their home communities results in an unintentional oppression of some people to the benefit of others.
I know that no New Yorker, upstate, downstate, whether they live in the country or the suburbs or the city, would condone that. Nor would they ask their elected representative to do so.
And that is what really is at stake: the soul of an entire state – our state. Because, if we maintain this practice, we are all guilty.
What Massachusetts Really Means
January 20th, 2010
When I opened my email this morning, I found dozens of emails analyzing the outcome of the Massachusetts Senate election, but most of them seemed to miss the boat. In a state where almost everyone already has health care, this election was about who ran the better campaign – NOT a mandate for giving up on America’s desperately needed health care reform.
The outcome of this election is about one side executing a better strategy than the other, plain and simple. The Democratic Party should have been on the ground on day one with all of the resources they could muster. If they thought this was a safe seat, they should have pushed for a landslide victory. I am really angry with them. It was not a general election where resources were splintered because they were running hundreds of campaigns across the country. We know how to do this – we know how to win elections. They didn’t do the hard work. Instead, they were comfortable, lazy and clearly absent. (Of course, they may have been a little busy with the business of running the country.) The Republicans, however, decided that even if they lost, but made the race close, then the left would turn on itself, convinced it was about health care and not about which side worked harder to get out more votes. Why do we constantly have to prove the right right?
In a special election, when such a small percentage of people vote, the outcome is always about how many doors were knocked, how many calls were made, how many voters were turned out on Election Day, and how many political operatives were on the ground. And which side were they working for.
Clearly the answer in Massachusetts was not enough Democrats and too many Republicans.
Now, the left is playing right into their hands and questioning moving forward on health care reform. Some people want to go back to the drawing board. Some people want to just raise questions. The bottom line is, we need this win. We need it for the 30,000,000 people who don’t have coverage today who can’t wait any longer. We need it to show that we are still a country that cares for and stands up for those who have less, rather than sit at our computers debating the details.
If the left hopes to have any chance at winning midterm elections and keeping President Obama in the White House, then we need to stay strong and move forward. If we back down now, we lose all momentum, we splinter apart and the Republicans come in and take over again.
Some people say that if we accept this health care reform now, we will never have another shot. I say the opposite is true. If we lose on health care now, we begin a snowball effect that puts the Republicans back in control. If we push forward, together, for this bill, we can come back again and make it better. We should be setting the terms of debate and telling legislators what we want them to work on, not letting our representatives dictate the terms.
But the final lesson here is that we need to stay mobilized and engaged. We can take nothing for granted.
Right now we are in a fight for our lives, the lives of our neighbors, communities, and our nation. And we just lost a really important battle merely because we were lazy, or maybe just not strategic. But, we can’t lose the bigger war. I’m committed to making sure that we win meaningful health care reform, and everyone who believes that health care is a right needs to keep fighting.
