(JAI: Anaheim, scene of recent police murders and vigorous protests against them is in the political hands of the representatives of the locality's wealthy. The attempted change to district voting from city wide selection of representatives (in which all the voting members of the locality select from the same list of candidates) would mean that the domination of money funneled in to support a slate of candidates backing issues favored by those donors of that money would find it more difficult to not only, as they do now, overwhelm the airwaves but also enable massive mailings, lawn sign and billboard postings, and recruitment of 'volunteers' for these candidate mouthpieces' of the sources of that dough.
Such a change would, of course, not mean that the workers--and those dependent upon them--of that city would elect their own representatives but it would make that more of a possibility.) Two decades ago, Santa Ana was at a crossroads. The Orange County seat was two-thirds Latino, but in citywide elections white Republicans candidates dominated. After a long battle, the city was eventually broken into six council wards, and today all are represented by Latinos. Anaheim faces a similar demographic shift now, and many see it at the root of recent angry protests over the fatal police shootings of two Latino men. According to the latest U.S. census, Anaheim is now majority minority. About 52% of the city's 336,000 residents are Latino, but only a handful of Latinos have ever won council seats. Anaheim is also the largest city in California that still elects council members at large, meaning council members are elected on a citywide basis. Source: LA Times. Aug 4th, 2012: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/04/local/la-me-adv-anaheim-divisions-20120804 In Anaheim, voting by district could alter the power dynamic Anaheim is now under growing pressure to switch to district voting, which usually makes it easier for minority groups to win council seats. August 04, 2012 <http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/04>|By Nicole Santa Cruz, Doug Smith and Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times - [image: A demographic shift in Anaheim -- it is now majority minority -- is seen as the root of recent protests over the fatal police shootings of two Latino men.]<http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-08/71584648.jpg> <http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-08/71584648.jpg> <http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-08/71584648.jpg> <http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-08/71584648.jpg> Two decades ago, Santa Ana was at a crossroads. The Orange County seat was two-thirds Latino, but in citywide elections white Republicans candidates dominated. After a long battle, the city was eventually broken into six council wards, and today all are represented by Latinos. Anaheim faces a similar demographic shift now, and many see it at the root of recent angry protests over the fatal police shootings of two Latino men. According to the latest U.S. census, Anaheim is now majority minority. About 52% of the city's 336,000 residents are Latino, but only a handful of Latinos have ever won council seats. Anaheim is also the largest city in California that still elects council members at large, meaning council members are elected on a citywide basis. Like Santa Ana in the 1990s, Anaheim is now under growing pressure to switch to district voting, which usually makes it easier for minority groups to win council seats because voting is broken up into smaller geographic segments. The City Council could decide next week to put the question on the November ballot. Anaheim is just the latest California city to reach this threshold, where traditional minority groups attain majority status in population but still struggle to get more political power. This gap is especially pronounced in cities with large immigrant communities, where many residents cannot vote. Only half of the voting-age Latinos in Anaheim are citizens, according to census data. Compton recently agreed to switch to district voting, a response to a voting rights lawsuit. The city is two-thirds Latino, but the council is traditionally made up of blacks. Civil rights activists have sought the same shift in a number of other California cities in recent years, including West Covina, Tulare and Visalia. District elections in Anaheim could dramatically change the political dynamic. A neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of census data by The Times shows that the city is deeply segregated along ethnic lines. There is a strong white majority in the city's newer, more affluent east side, including picturesque Anaheim Hills, an enclave nearly physically separated from the rest of the city. About 58% of the residents are white. The area has a median income of more than $100,000. Latinos dominate in the central core of Anaheim generally between the 5 and 55 freeways, an area marked by barrios and dense apartments. Here, 68% of the residents are Latino and incomes fall below the Orange County average. Pockets of this community have poverty rates exceeding 25%, the analysis found. The western section of Anaheim, near Disneyland, represents a third demographic. This area is the most diverse section of the city, where Latinos make up about 51% of the population. The majority of the city's blacks and Asians live there. Census records show a dramatic disparity in education. Nearly half the adults age 25 and above in the east have graduated from college, with one in six holding a master's degree or higher. Fewer than one in five in the central and western areas have college degrees, and about the same number were high school dropouts. Anaheim Councilwoman Lorri Galloway believes district elections "will totally change the way in which the city of Anaheim is governed." Anaheim's white minority is better organized and more politically active, and therefore able to sway elections under the current system, she said. "People say, 'The Hills come out and vote,'" Galloway added. "The flatlands, you're not sure; depends on the issue." Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait said he too supports the creation of voting districts, pointing to the expense of running for office in an at-large system in a 50-square-mile city. "You have to get votes from a population of 350,000 as opposed to 50,000," he said. "I think the district elections will connect people closer to their representative.... I think there's areas of our city that frankly deserve more attention." In mid-July before the shootings and the protests the public was invited to a workshop on whether to replace Anaheim's at-large election system with districts. "The people who spoke for it were Hispanic, the people who spoke against it were not," Galloway said. "It was the big elephant in the room nobody wanted to speak about. But it was true. There was an [ethnic] divide." Bardis Vakili, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued the city to force it to adopt voting districts, sees a direct link between the recent protests and the election system. "This bubbling over of anger, it's symptomatic of the larger problem, which is this overwhelming feeling of being dis-empowered," Vakili said. At-large elections remain popular with some Anaheim residents, however. They argue that the current system ensures that the candidates focus on the big issues facing the entire city, not simply neighborhood concerns. They also worry that carving out districts could lead to fiefdoms. <http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-08/71584648.jpg> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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