Michigan has taken on the challenge of redrawing its congressional district lines across the entire state under the leadership of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC). The commissioners include thirteen Michiganders from all parts of the state with varying backgrounds, including a woman from Wayne County.
The process began with a the introduction of countless maps submitted by the commission members themselves (all which were named after types of trees) and Michigan residents as well as national organizations. With the support of the Voter Access for All Coalition (VAAC) I was able to identify the most appropriate maps for my community as a Wayne county resident, being those submitted by Promote The Vote (PTV), a national organization with an interest in keeping communities of color whole as well as ending prison gerrymandering.
The practice of prison gerrymandering has been embedded in our legislative process since prisons were built in Michigan. As it stands, representatives in the legislature are assigned based upon the number of people counted in the district where they were voted into office. As a political official, their interests are governed by those people that they represent (a small percentage of which who actually voted them into office). This democratic structure sounds good, but its inherently biased against minority groups due to the fact that the majority of citizens do not vote (often less than 10%) and for those who do vote, there’s always a minority that voted for some opposing candidate. While this is “normal”, what isn’t acceptable is the fact that in many, often rural, districts there is a silent population of bodies without the privilege of speaking to their candidates, researching their candidates or especially voting for one. This population of detained citizens are counted, bolstering the voting power of their district, but are not allowed to participate in the distribution of that power. This is prison gerrymandering at work. Prisons export individuals out of the communities where they do maintain residency, in order to place them in areas where they usually have no family or prior experience. For example a young man who was born in Detroit, graduated from Detroit Public Schools and worked in the city prior to being arrested for a crime will most certainly be sent to serve his time outside of that metropolitan area (simply because there are no state prison facilities in that area). The closest prison to Wayne County would be in Macomb or Branch (Coldwater) county, more than an hours drive for family to visit, the most are sent to serve time even further from where their permanent residence is. As a result of this institutional failure to ensure that incarcerated citizens are housed local to their support networks and within their areas of sociopolitical influence, the legislature fails to accurately represent those communities in the development and implementation of policy. In order to combat this I had the opportunity to speak to the members of the Redistricting Commission during the second round of public comment held in Wayne County at Cadillac Tower in downtown Detroit on behalf of individuals incarcerated across the state, the entirety of my statement I’ve included below:
As resident of Wayne County I am showing up for the tens of thousands of citizens incarcerated across our 31 state prisons who have been entirely whittled out of the democratic guarantee of representation due to prison gerrymandering. A third of the state’s prison population was sentenced in Wayne County, but the only prison in Wayne, Mound, closed in 2012, meaning that 100% of Wayne County sentenced residents are exported out to be counted in other counties.
Fortunately this year we have the valuable opportunity to reverse this injustice. To do this the Commission must use the decennial data it receives from the U.S. Census Bureau as its starting point for its legislative redistricting, regardless of which map is selected through this process. A dozen states have already implemented this reform (including New York and Maryland over a decade ago as well as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington during this past 2020 election). The PTV maps account for this.
As a supporter of keeping our communities whole. I plead with the commission to ensure that incarcerated citizens are represented in those counties that they call home, where their families live, where their children go to school and where over 90% plan to return. Remember, They are apart of our communities.
Amani Sawari, statement to the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (MICRC), December 16. 2021
I heard some applause from the audience as I left the podium, a few people even followed me to share their gratitude for my raising the issue. Along with public comments, dozens of comments from VAAC members were submitted online to the Redistricting Commission supporting an end to prison gerrymandering. Those initial maps proposed by the commission failed to address these issues. For example, the Nzetela map split up the city of Detroit into less influential voting blocks, while the Pine Map reprinted the worse of the worst of redistricting outcomes, there were no ideal prospects to choose from for Detroiters to gain, or at least maintain, their political influence.
With an EOY deadline before them, on December 28, 2021 the commission voted in approval of three maps including the Michigan Congressional Chestnut map, Michigan State Senate Linden map and the Michigan State House Hickory map. These maps do not do an effective job of keeping communities of color together and actually remove a Black congressional seat that was once held in the 14th district. In response to this, on January 3, 2022, state lawmakers sued the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, on the basis that the congressional redistricting plan would dilute the voting power of minority communities. My hope is that the use of decennial census data to calculate the appropriate positions of incarcerated citizens in their home districts would be used to alleviate this. I look forward to learning how this suit will impact the future of Michigan’s district lines.
