Redistricting Plan ‘Racist,’ Say African-American Officials

Redistricting has become a civil rights matter, according to a group of 20 to 30 African-American community members and elected officials gathered at the federal courthouse at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn on Thursday.

Civil rights attorney and founder of the Center for Law and Social Justice in Brooklyn Esmeralda Simmons (C) talks about the disadvantages to Brooklyn’s African-American community if Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann’s redistricting plan goes into effect. Behind her stands, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (R), Councilman Jumaane Williams (C), and Councilman Charles Barron (L). Tara MacIsaac/The Epoch Times

NEW YORK— Redistricting has become a civil rights matter, according to a group of 20 to 30 African-American community members and elected officials gathered at the federal courthouse at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn on Thursday.

The lines proposed by federal Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann on Tuesday cut right through African-American communities in Brooklyn, thereby weakening their political power, the group said.

“I’m no demographer,” said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, “but I don’t think Howard Beach has anything in common with Bedford-Stuyvesant.”

The African-American majority in Bedford-Stuyvesant has more in common with the African-American majority in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill than the Caucasian majority in Howard Beach, said Jeffries.