Alaska Redistricting: Meeting Wednesday Dec 15; Law Suits Due Soon; VRA Language Requirements Alaska

 Let's just get a few things out here:

NEXT MEETING OF THE BOARD 

"The Alaska Redistricting Board will be meeting virtually on Wednesday, December 15 starting at 2:30pm. The meeting can be accessed in the following ways:

Listening to the audio stream on the legislature’s website at: www.akl.tv.

Calling in to the listen-only teleconference using the legislature’s teleconference system:  from Anchorage 563-9085; from Juneau 586-9085; from anywhere else: 844-586-9085.

The agenda and backup materials are posted to our website at: Alaska Redistricting Board - Minutes & Audio (akredistrict.org). They are also attached to the public notices on the State of Alaska’s Online Public Notice system at: http://notice.alaska.gov/204673 and on the Legislature’s website here.

Note: public testimony will not be taken at this meeting."

Looking at the Agenda, I'd say there won't be much public discussion of anything important.  

Agenda

1. Call to Order and Establish Quorum
2. Adoption of Agenda
3. Adoption of Minutes from previous BoardMeetings
4. Litigation review in Executive Session with Legal Counsel
5. Litigation management discussion
6. Adjournment 

There's also a link to documents - "Board Packet" -  that includes:

1.  Board Minutes Since September 2020 - I'd note that while the Board has been good about putting lots of documents up on the website, including audio and video, in a timely manner, none of the parts that said "minutes" on the site had links.  Now, we get them.  Some over a year old.  How did these get approved?  It would seem that decision, at least how it was going to be done, should have been public.  That said, the minutes are far more detailed than the minutes kept by the 2010 Board.  

I'd point to his from the February 26, 2021 meeting about contacts Board members had with members of the public:

"Although it may be helpful for there be a policy for individual board members not to engage in off-record discussions, this is also a valuable way to gain public input.

• Ms. Bahnke suggested that if the board allows itself to individually engage with the public and community groups in their formal role as Redistricting Board members, a record of the engagement activities of each board member should be publicly shared."

It would be helpful to hear from members Binkley, Marcum, and Simpson detailing the contacts they had with people not on the Board concerning advice on making maps, pairing House districts into Senate seats, and allocating senate terms.  After early testimony that voiced concern that partisan politics had played a big role in the early maps, Members Borromeo and Bahnke publicly said they had not had contact with anyone except other Board members and staff concerning how they made their maps.  The other three Board members remained silent on this.

2.  A copy of the Matsu Borough lawsuit 

 

LAWSUIT DEADLINE IS 30 DAYS AFTER PROCLAMATION - BY MY COUNT FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2021

 One lawsuit is already in and available at the end of the Board packet.  I believe there will be at least one more filed, possibly more.  So today (Thursday December 9) or tomorrow we should know.

VRA LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS FOR ALASKA BALLOTS 

This twitter thread explains this better than I can.  [Click on the Tweet to get to the whole thread] But I'm putting up the image with the list of Alaska communities required to have ballots in languages besides English.  I had a few questions - still unanswered:

1. Why is there a Yup'ik requirement for Kenai and Kodiak?  
2. My first reaction was why Filipino?  I thought that there were many languages spoken in the Philippines - the main one being Tagalog.  Well, Wikipedia answered my question:

"Filipino (English: /ˌfɪlɪˈpiːnoʊ/ (About this soundlisten);[2] Wikang Filipino, locally [wɪˈkɐŋ ˌfiːliˈpiːno]) is the national language (Wikang pambansa / Pambansang wika) of the Philippines. Filipino is also designated, along with English, as an official language of the country.[3] It is a standardized variety of the Tagalog language,"

NEW: The Census Bureau has released an updated list of state and local governments that are required to provide language assistance to voters who do not speak English very well, per Section 203 of the Voting Rights Acthttps://t.co/OJn5Vfi8Pg pic.twitter.com/jGCDeudY4j

— Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) (@hansilowang) December 8, 2021

The American Apology T-Shirt

Back in 2003, during the W. administration, my son went to work in Denmark for a year.  As a way to  let Europeans know about his feelings for the then US president, he created the American Apology T-Shirt on CafePress.

On one side it said, "I'm sorry my president is an idiot.  I didn't vote for him" in the official languages of the United States [Nations] [thanks Kathy].  On the other side it said, "American Traveler International Apology Shirt" also in the various languages.

He'd made this for himself and sales were low.  He wasn't trying to make money, just get himself a few T-shirt.  But one day and anti-Muslim website posted a story about the t-shirt calling it traitorous and soon it was one of the top subjects on the internet for a few days.  Sales shot up.  And he wound up with $10,000 half of which went to Doctors Without Borders.

Well, lately there's been an uptick in sales again.  (And also some copy cat versions have shown up.)
In any case, travelers who wants to let the rest of the world know where they stand,   can go to CafePress.    (There are a lot of different versions and colors.  And all the profit this time goes to Doctors Without Borders.)

No Such Thing As Tone Deaf - As La Scala Orchestra For The Tone Deaf Demonstrates

Having learned one tonal language (Thai) and struggled with two others (Cantonese and Mandarin) I realized that people who say things like "I can't sing because I'm tone deaf" really aren't tone deaf.  They just think that.  After all, people in Thailand and China who can hear, all understand what people say to them, and if you are tone deaf, you simply can't do that.

My test for English speakers who tell me they are tone deaf is to offer the most tonal two phrases I know in English - listen to the short audio below.




And 100% of them understand that the first one means 'yes' and the second means 'no.'  The phonetic sounds are nearly identical.  The key difference is in the tones.  I first became aware of these tonal words in English when some of my high school students in Thailand came up to me after class and asked, "Ajaan Steve, What do mmm hmmm  and mmmm mmmm mean?"  I'd been using them in class unconsciously.

In Thai and Chinese the tones are part of each individual word - each syllable actually - but in English our tones are embedded in the sentences.  We tend to have a rising intonation for questions, for example.  Just say "no'
1.  As though this is the third time your four year old asks if he can have an ice cream.
2.  As though your girl friend has just turned down your marriage proposal, and you are checking in shock if she really said, "no."

Totally different tones.

This all came to mind today as I read a short piece about La Scala setting up a chorus for the tone deaf.  I smiled when I got to this sentence:

"Maestro Maria Teresa Tramontin has directed the choir for the tone deaf since its formation, in 2010, at the suggestion of Luigi Corbani, who was until recently the director general of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, known as La Verdi. "He believed that tone-deaf people didn't exist," Tramontin said." (emphasis added)

"In many cases, tone-deaf people have to be unblocked from a psychological point of view," Tramontin said. . .

Note:  There may be some people who cannot distinguish tones, I guess.  But then these people would have serious problems listening and understanding, let alone speaking, in countries that use tonal languages, as well most other languages, like English, where tones are connected to sentences rather than individual syllables.  They wouldn't be able to say in perfect English, "I'm tone deaf, so I can't sing."