April First Monday Call, Census And Redistricting: Power By The Numbers
Funders' Committee for Civic Participation, Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Neighborhood Funders Group's Working Group on Labor and Community, and the Women Donors Network
present …
Census and Redistricting: Power by the Numbers
The Fourth Briefing in the Co-sponsored Series
Philanthropy’s Role in Ensuring a Fair and Accurate 2010 Census Count
And, FCCP’s April First Monday Call
Monday, April 6th, 3-4pm ET/ 12-1pm PT
Dial-in Number: (218) 844-0860 | Passcode: 117184#
Speakers:
Terri Ann Lowenthal
Consultant, Funders Census Initiative
Nina Perales
Southwest Regional Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund [bio]
Anita Earls
Executive Director, Southern Coalition for Social Justice [bio]
Moderator:
Thomasina Williams
Program Officer, Governance and Civil Society Unit, Peace and Social Justice Program, The Ford Foundation
Recommended Resources on Redistricting: A Citizen’s Guide to Redistricting, Brennan Center, and, from 2000, The Impact of Redistricting to Your Community: A Guide to Redistricting, MALDEF, NAACP LDF, and AAJC, and Redistricting for Inclusive Democracy, Advancement Project
Note: Participation is limited to representatives of grantmaking institutions, individual donors and philanthropic advisors.
Monday, April 6th, FCCP hosted Census and Redistricting: Power by the Numbers to discuss the importance of the 2010 Census to redistricting and the importance of redistricting to representative democracy. This fourth phone briefing in the series Philanthropy’s Role in Ensuring a Fair and Accurate 2010 Census Count provided participants with an update on recent census developments and a 101 introduction to the redistricting process, timeline and issues. Subsequent dedicated calls and sessions at convenings will provide the FCCP membership with additional opportunities to go deeper on selected redistricting issues.
The data gathered from the 2010 Census will provide a comprehensive snapshot of thousands of local communities across the United States and will be used to determine the yearly distribution of over $400 billion dollars in federal funding. Additionally, government agencies, the private sector and non-profit groups will assess trends and develop programs based on the Decennial Census numbers, and these same numbers will underlie the reapportionment of political representation, helping determine everything from Congressional and state legislative district boundaries to school board districts and voting precincts.
As a snapshot, however, the decennial census has historically undercounted marginalized populations, specifically people of color and low-income communities, as well as children, especially those under the age of 10. And for the 2010 Census, the challenges of achieving a complete and accurate count are particularly daunting -- from an increase in hard to count populations, due to both migration trends as well as current economic conditions, to the current underfunding of 2010 Census preparation at the federal, state and local levels.
Call Agenda
I. FCCP Announcements & Calendar Items
Changing the Game: the Power of New Alliances and Messengers in Ballot Measure Campaigns, Co-sponsored FCCP and the Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health and Rights Phone Briefing, April 23rd, 2-3pm ET/ 11am-12pm PT – This call will feature speakers: Jacy Montoya, Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights; Linda Meric, 9to5, National Association of Working Women; and, Dave Metz, Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates, and will be moderated by Teresa Purcell, Purcell Public Affairs. This call was organized by the General Service Foundation and Ms. Foundation for Women. More information coming this week …
Save the Date! FCCP’s Annual Spring Convening, May 19th – 21st, Denver, Colorado, The Curtis Hotel – Mark your calendars today for FCCP’s national Spring Convening in Denver, Colorado. Registration will open in the next few days, but to learn more before then, please contact Mario Lugay, mlugay [at] funderscommittee [dot] org (mlugay [at] funderscommittee [dot] org).
II. What FCCP Members are Seeing in the Field
Call participants share observations and information.
III. First Monday Calls
This call was organized by Thomasina Williams, Program Officer, Governance and Civil Society Unit, Peace and Social Justice Program, The Ford Foundation; if FCCP members would like to suggest topics and help organize a call, please contact Mario Lugay at mlugay [at] funderscommittee [dot] org (mlugay [at] funderscommittee [dot] org).
IV. Focal Topic:
Census and Redistricting: Power by the Numbers, The Fourth Briefing in the Co-sponsored SeriesPhilanthropy’s Role in Ensuring a Fair and Accurate 2010 Census Count
Recommended Resources on Redistricting: A Citizen’s Guide to Redistricting, Brennan Center, and, from 2000, The Impact of Redistricting to Your Community: A Guide to Redistricting, MALDEF, NAACP LDF, and AAJC, and Redistricting for Inclusive Democracy, Advancement Project
V. Speaker Bios:
Anita Earls, Executive Director, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, www.southerncoalition.org
Anita Earls has been a civil rights attorney for over 20 years, working on issues of structural racism, voting rights and community empowerment. She is an adjunct professor at UNC School of Law, where previously she was Director of Advocacy for the Center for Civil Rights. Ms. Earls served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998-2000. Anita also worked for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C. Ms. Earls is a 1988 graduate of Yale Law School, where she was a Senior Editor for the Yale Law Journal. She graduated from Williams College and was awarded a Thomas J.
Terri Ann Lowenthal, Consultant, Funders’ Census Initiative, funderscommittee.org/funderscensusinitiative
Terri Ann Lowenthal is a consultant specializing in issues related to the census, the federal statistical system, and the use of data for policy purposes. She has worked with non-profit, corporate, and federal agency clients, as well as scientific associations, that produce and use statistical information. Ms. Lowenthal currently is a consultant to The Census Project (www.thecensusproject.org), a nonpartisan collaborative effort of census stakeholders to promote a fair and accurate 2010 Census through education and communication with policymakers, the media, and the public. Prior to establishing a consulting practice, Ms. Lowenthal served as a congressional staff aide in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate from 1981 – 1995. She served for eight years as staff director of the House Subcommittee on Census and Population (later renamed the Subcommittee on Census, Statistics, and Postal Personnel), where she guided the panel’s oversight of the 1990 census and the 2000 census planning process. She also was chief of staff to Representative Tom Sawyer (D-OH), an aide to Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (R-CT), and held staff positions on several House Post Office and Civil Service subcommittees and the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Nina Perales, Southwest Regional Counsel, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, maldef.org
In that role, she directs MALDEF's litigation, advocacy and public education in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and six additional southern and western states. Ms. Perales specializes in voting rights litigation, including redistricting and vote dilution challenges. She served as lead counsel for Latino plaintiffs in the redistricting cases in Texas in 2001 which secured a Texas House of Representatives redistricting plan containing an increase of four Latino- majority districts.
Ms. Perales was lead counsel for Latino interveners in Arizona in 2003 and successfully defended the Latino- majority Congressional District 4 against an attempt to dismantle it.
Ms. Perales was lead counsel for Latino interveners in Arizona in 2003 and successfully defended the Latino- majority Congressional District 4 against an attempt to dismantle it.
On March 1, 2006, Ms. Perales successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in LULAC v. Perry, a Latino vote-dilution challenge to the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan. In June, 2006 the Court struck down the redistricting plan as a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition to her own cases, Ms. Perales supervises the work of six staff attorneys who conduct impact litigation and advocacy on behalf of Latinos throughout the Southwest in the areas of education, immigrant rights, employment discrimination and political access.
Ms. Perales received a Bachelor's degree from Brown University and earned her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law in 1990.
Thomasina Williams, Program Officer, Governance and Civil Society Unit, Peace and Social Justice Program, The Ford Foundation, www.fordfound.org
Thomasina Williams joined the Ford Foundation in March 2005 as the Program Officer with responsibility for the Foundation’s portfolio on Participation and Representation in U.S. Politics. She is an attorney who was trained as a commercial litigator, but also has an extensive background in civil rights and voting rights litigation. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, she was in private practice in Miami. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Michigan Law School. After graduating from law school, she clerked with the Honorable Joseph W. Hatchett of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and in the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of the Virgin Islands. She then joined one of the largest law firms in Miami, where she became a partner after only three years. Thomasina remained with that firm for an additional four years before starting her own law firm. In 2003, Thomasina was recognized by the South Florida Legal Guide as one of the “Top 250 Lawyers in South Florida.” She wrote one of the key legal briefs in the Florida Supreme Court case that defeated the Ward Connolly-led effort to place on the ballot four different initiatives that would have rendered affirmative action in Florida unconstitutional. Among the several voting rights cases in which Thomasina has been actively involved is the case of NAACP v. Harris, a class action lawsuit filed against a number of state actors, including Florida’s Secretary of State and seven of Florida’s largest urban counties in the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential election. Thomasina was the only Florida counsel on the team of national civil rights law firms and advocacy groups that represented the NAACP and individual Black voters in the case. Having worked on redistricting, felon disenfranchisement and a host of related community and political issues in Florida, in addition to civil rights and voting rights litigation, Thomasina served as a community and media resource on election-related issues, and was acknowledged in the credits of Fahrenheit 911. She hosted a live call-in radio talk show on WMBM, AM-1490, and was an active member of the board of several non-profit organizations, including Florida Memorial College, South Florida’s only historically Black college, (now Florida Memorial University), and the Urban League of Broward County (Fort Lauderdale area), one of the country’s largest and most highly acclaimed Urban League affiliates.
The subject matter of this call is strictly limited to discussion of nonpartisan civic participation work as set forth in the agenda. Please refrain from any discussion or references to partisan activities.
