Jackson, MS – Raleigh, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Gulfport, Little Rock, Albuquerque…. For thirty days during July and August Echo census and redistricting team members bounced from city to city to engage in strategic planning with other activists, attorneys, academics and public officials from across the nation to build the fight for an accurate census count in 2010 and a fair congressional, state, county and municipal redistricting process in 2011 after the new census data is released.
Echo made presentations of its census and redistricting community organizing program in Raleigh, NC at the strategic planning meeting of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ); in Las Vegas, NV at the national Convening of the Pushback Network; in Atlanta, GA at the SCSJ national planning convening; in Gulfport, MS at the workshop co-sponsored by Gulf Coast Moving Forward, Mississippi Immigrant Rights buy cheap xanax no prescription Alliance and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; also in Gulfport at the MS Caucus of Black Municipal Officials; in Little Rock, AR at the Southeast Regional Caucus of Black School Board Officials; and at the Albuquerque, NM strategic planning retreat of the South X Southwest Experiment co-sponsored by South West Organizing Project, Southwest Workers Union and Southern Echo.
Echo has created maps for 18 states that show the “hard to count” census tracts and how many federal grant dollars sensitive to a census undercount each county received in 2007, the latest year for which data is available. Echo has also prepared 19 state-specific census flyers that detail how local communities can become actively involved with the census count process to work for a full count. These maps and flyers are posted on the Southern Echo website.
