Politics & Government

Keep Our Community Together: Theme at CD 13 Redistricting Hearing

The Los Angeles Redistricting Commission heard from almost a hundred speakers Monday night at Los Angeles City College on Vermont.

The Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission made its next-to-last stop Monday night, touching down at the Los Angeles City College Theatre.

Located deep in the current City Council District 13, a panel of selected commisioners heard from almost a hundred people weighing in on how the district should be redrawn.

It currently includes parts of Echo Park, Silver Lake, Koreatown, Historic Filipinotown and East Hollywood.

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According to a Commission document, Council District 13 is 10.4 percent--or 26,299 people--short of "Ideal" after the 2010 Census.

"Council districts must contain, as nearly as practical, equal portions of the total population of the City," according to the L.A. City Attorney's office.

Find out what's happening in Echo Park-Silver Lakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Preserving the ethnic and cultural communities embedded in the current CD 13 together concerned many of the 94 who signed up to speak Monday.

Josely Geaga Rosenthal of the Filipinotown Neighborhood Council was representative.

The daughter of an immigrant,  who moved to Filipinotown after the redevelopment of Bunker Hill in the 1960s, she urged the panel to keep the "cultural gathering place" whole and in Council District 13.

She pointed to important landmarks like the city's oldest Filipino mural on Beverly Boulevard, its oldest Filipino-centric nonprofit on Temple and the Filipino Christian Church on Union near Temple.

Joseph Bernardo, a doctoral student in history, added that the last redistricting--which unified Historic Filipinotown inside one district for the first time--gave it real political power that should not be lost. 

Many also called for a similar unification of Koreatown in CD 13. The district is currently divided among four City Council districts: 1, 4, 10 and 13.

Speakers mentioned the comeback the area has experienced both as an economic and cultural center since the L.A. riots.

They stressed the importance of a unified political voice in sustaining that.

Still others asked the panel to respect the Thai and Armenian communities in East Hollywood when redrawing CD 13's boundaries.

"Please don't dilute our votes and divide our communities, said Boahos Patatian of East Hollywood. "Support the importance of the Voting Rights Act and keep neighborhoods like ours whole."

David Melville of Silver Lake's Independent Shakespeare Company reminded the Commission that communities come in all shapes and sizes.

"Atwater Village has a growing and vital artistic community," he said. "Don't divide it."

Meantime, outside the theater, participants like David Bell, president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, were reflecting on neighborhoods like Echo Park and Silver Lake. Each is split by two City Council districts: Echo Park between 13 and 1, Silver Lake between 4 and 13.

"Echo Park and Silver Lake seem to do okay by being split," said Bell, "But it's hard to know whether this would be a good thing for Hollywood, for example."

The Commission holds its fifteenth and final panel hearing Tuesday at Exposition Park. Hearings with the full 21-member commission will continue until Feb. 11

The Commission must finish drawing up its recommendations by March 1, 2012. The map then goes to the City Council, which has until July 1 to adopt it.

Want to learn more about redistricting and maybe draw your own CD 13, or CD 1 or CD 4 boundaries?

There's a resource right here in Echo Park.

The Advancement Project's Healthy City project has created ReDrawLA.org.

The website that lets you draw your own boundaries for districts and submit them to the Commission.

The project holds an online webinar Wednesday from 11 a.m. to noon about how to use the site tomorrow.

Register here.

The project also is hosting a Redistricting Study Hall on Thursday at its offices at 1910 W. Sunset from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

RSVP to Tahirah Farris at tfarris@advanceproj.org.


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