Pat Brown Institute Public Policy Lecture Series (2004, No. 2)
April 14, 2004
Voting Rights Advocacy and Latino EmpowermentAlan Clayton
Director of EEO
Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association
This lecture will discuss how the redistricting process is critical to the political empowerment of the Latino community. The discussion will start by describing the 1986 City Of Los Angeles redistricting and its positive results for Latino community. The 1986 Los Angeles City Council redistricting led to the creation of an additional Latino voting rights district. Supervisor Gloria Molina was elected to that district in 1987. The next example of the positive results of redistricting for the Latino community was the 1991 Los Angeles Unified School District redistricting that led to two Latinas being elected to the seventh member school board. The election of a second Latino to this 70% Latino student school district had a tremendous impact on programs for Latino students and their parents. Also, in the California legislative redistricting process in 1991 we were very successful, as a result of a tremendous effort in the redistricting process, in shifting political power to the Latino community over the next eight years. For example, in 1991 we had only 4 Latinos in the State Assembly, 3 Latinos in the State Senate, and 3 Latinos in Congress. Our redistricting efforts had a tremendous impact on creating a significantly larger number of districts where the Latino community could elect candidates of its own choice. By the year 1998, we had more than tripled the number of Latinos in the State Assembly and doubled the number of Latinos in the State Senate. Without our redistricting efforts these huge success would not have happened. In addition, if we had not been successful in our redistricting efforts we probably would not have had three Latinos elected to the position of Assembly Speaker in the last 10 years.
In the rest of the 1990’s there were several other redistricting efforts. In the 1991 Los Angeles City Council redistricting we were able to create a third district with strong Latino voter registration. State Senator Alarcon was elected to that district.
In the 2000 redistricting process we had mixed results. We were able to achieve only minimal gains in the California legislative redistricting process. In the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors redistricting we had no success. However, in both the Los Angeles Unified School District redistricting and the Los Angeles City Council redistricting we were able to pick-up an additional Latino Voting Rights Districts.
Overall, the redistricting campaigns I have been involved in, over the last 16 years, have led to an increasing ability of the Latino community to achieve positive outcomes on many policy issues because of the increased numbers of Latino elected officials at the city, county, and state levels of government.
Location: CSLA Maxwell Theatre (Student Union)
Time: 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m.