3 Ethnic Groups to Join Forces in Fight for New City Council District Boundaries

Leaders of Latino, black and Asian groups announced Thursday that they will join forces in fighting for new Los Angeles City Council districts that would increase minority representation.

The announcement was apparently aimed at countering reports of tension between blacks and Latinos, who along with Asians have joined in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the current districts.

At a downtown press conference, attorneys for the three minority groups said they have agreed to cooperate in drafting new district boundaries that would protect the interests of various ethnic groups.

It was unclear Thursday whether the effort could actually produce a single plan acceptable to all the groups.

“This case does not have to be a tug of war between ethnic groups,” said Raymond Johnson Jr., president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “Our commonalities far exceed our differences.”

Linda Wong, associate counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, also said the cooperative effort “means the City Council cannot play us against each other.” The other group represented was the downtown-area Chinese-American community.

It was on behalf of Latinos that the U.S. Justice Department sued the city last year over its 1982 district lines. Latinos, despite accounting for 27% of the city’s population, did not have a representative on the City Council until last year.

In March, the legal defense fund, the first minority group to join the lawsuit, submitted a proposed remapping that would have significantly changed several districts and created a second Latino district. The plan was bitterly attacked by City Council members, who agreed shortly afterward to redraw the current lines in an effort to settle the suit.

Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, one of three black council members, was particularly upset because the legal defense fund plan called for downtown, a rich source of campaign contributions, to be shifted from his district into the largely Eastside district of the only Latino council member, Richard Alatorre.

The NAACP, moving to protect the interests of blacks and concerned about losing representation of the Central City, then joined the lawsuit and began work on its own plan. Johnson said Thursday that the NAACP plan is being designed “to bring greater harmony and equity” among the ethnic groups.

If the groups are able to unite behind a single redistricting proposal, which some of those involved acknowledge may be difficult, the City Council would find it harder to disregard than a series of conflicting plans drafted by different ethnic groups.

Council President Pat Russell said she would welcome a single plan from the minority groups, but she predicted that it would be hard to achieve and would not necessarily receive council support. “It depends upon how it all fits together,” she said.

“It does strengthen their hand if they are unified,” said Tom Sullivan, press aide to Alatorre, who chairs the council committee that will redraw the lines. “But what has to come out of that united effort are some boundaries for districts which are first acceptable to the City Council members and also to the court.”