From the folks who backed India Walton, a community-led approach to redistricting.
By Geoff Kelly, The Nation
A coalition of community activists here has once again thrown a spanner into this city’s political works.
It’s not as head-turning a rebellion as the one that helped democratic socialist India Walton, in her first run for office, beat a four-term incumbent mayor in last summer’s Democratic primary.
But it’s a lot of the same people, a lot of the same energy. And community activists elsewhere would do well to examine what’s happening here.
The current uprising has to do with redistricting the city’s Common Council to comport with 2020 US Census numbers, which showed Buffalo gaining population for the first time since 1950.
Redistricting is not a sexy topic. At its best it is wonkish, involving complicated formulas and tests for compactness, population deviation, and racial balance. At its worst it is corrupt—an opportunity for once-in-a-decade deals between politicians seeking to protect themselves and their allies from challengers.
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