Queens South Asian community groups keep redistricting fight going
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John Park (left) and Mohamed Q. Amin (right), who spoke with the Eagle on Zoom on Thursday. As part of the APA Voice Redistricting Task Force, Park and Amin submitted a FOIL request to the NYIRC for more information on why draft Assembly maps were changed despite widespread public support for them. Screenshot by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Members of the Queens Asian American community are not giving up on their efforts for a more unified Assembly district in South Queens.
The APA Voice Redistricting Task Force, a coalition of groups who argue for Asian American interests in the redistricting process, have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the New York Independent Redistricting Commission in order to figure out why a draft version of their district that received widespread community support was scrapped at the final moments of the tumultuous redistricting process.
In February, members of the task force and other advocates all but took over the NYIRC’s Queens public hearing at York College, not criticizing the IRC, but applauding them. They were applauding the commission’s district lines for a new 24th Assembly district, which entirely unified a bulk of the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities in Richmond Hill and South Ozone Park. Had the maps passed into law, it would have been the first time the neighborhoods, which are home to the largest population of South Asian residents in all of the city, would have been unified in one Assembly district.
Now, they are looking for more information about why those plans were erased and replaced with district lines nearly identical to the ones illegally passed by lawmakers last year.
“At the Queens hearing, we celebrated the IRC draft map for AD24 because that map represented our entire redistricting advocacy, all three years of it starting in January 2020, all the way to 2023,” said Mohamed Q. Amin, the founder and executive director of the Caribbean Equality Project and Richmond Hill resident. “We felt heard, we felt seen, we felt validated.”
But when the maps were revised, Amin said he was “devastated” and “outraged.”
“We demand answers,” the coalition said in a statement attached to the FOIL announcement.
The group says the FOIL request is a final attempt to right what they say is a wrong.
On April 25, the coalition drafted a letter to the IRC looking to meet with commissioners to discuss the maps and their decision making. They were denied a meeting, and were told the IRC doesn’t meet with individual groups, and that since the maps were signed into law, their job was done.
“The New York Independent Redistricting Commission’s public comment period spanned from December 1, 2022 through April 1, 2023,” the response letter read. “During that time the commissioners held twelve public hearings across the state. The Commission also invited and received thousands of written submissions through its website and through the mail. The Commission did not and does not meet privately with any individual, interest group, or other stakeholder.”
The FOIL request, sent on Thursday, requests all media and records “created or received by the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission, that impacted the IRC’s deliberations and/or decision to draw proposed AD 24 in its draft map.”
Specifically, the request seeks any of the commission’s communications with state legislators or other officials.
“When they refused to meet with us so that we could get answers, then we felt the FOIL request was the next step,” said Elizabeth OuYang, of the APA Voice Redistricting Task Force. “We need to know what happened behind closed doors.”
John Park, the executive director of the MinKwon Center for Community Action, said that they are “trying to find more information about the internal process of how redistricting works outside of the community voices aspect and how that decision making happens.”
“If we do find something that is a little bit askew than that, we'll use that to hold the system accountable or to transform it,” Park added.
The 2020 redistricting process was the first ever taken on by the IRC, which was put into the state’s constitution in 2014.
The process did not work as intended.
Originally, the IRC was designed to take the district line drawing power out of the hands of legislators, who may have an interest in drawing lines that protect their incumbency. But partisan squabbles among the commission’s members prevented the IRC from reaching an agreement on a final set of maps.
The map drawing powers were kicked up to the legislators, based on their interpretation of the state’s constitution.
Those maps, which included congressional, Senate and Assembly lines, were struck down in court, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Appeals.
