Sunday, July 21, 2013

Wheel Chairs Take Over Skateboarding Plaza At Venice Beach






I was going to ride on by the skateboard plaza, but there were lots of people, speakers and music, and flags all around, so I stopped to see what it was.










The skateboard plaza is in the background where all the people are.









Life Rolls On and Ezekiel  were sponsoring They Will Skate Again.

This Saturday July 20th from 9:00am - 4:00pm at the Venice Skate Park we're sponsoring the Life Rolls On Foundation's (LRO) annual "They Will Skate Again Shoe City PRO" event & contest. Every year we design and donate their event tee and we'll join hundreds of volunteers who come out to support the They Will Skate Again adaptive skating workshop, pro skate exhibition and adaptive skate competition (prize purse over $10,000). Featuring participants from all different levels of assisted mobility, giving everyone an opportunity to hang out, skate and compete in the park for the day. Our skate team including Derek Fukuhara, Justin Cefai & Vince Duran will be out there in donating their time along with skate legends Jay Adams, Bob Burnquist & Christian Hosoi and stars including Scott Can & Sal Masekela. Come by, say what's up and help out if you're in the neighborhood....stop by the Ezekiel Booth for games and giveaways at the interactive festival village!


I got there while they were warming up for the big events later on, but here's a bit of video of these folks taking over the Skateboard plaza.  The announcer was promising the good stuff later on, but I needed my own exercise and getting back. I know I'm supposed to put the best on in the beginning to get your attention, but I've saved the best for last. 





I'm sure YouTube will have much better stuff that people took later on, so check there.  There's an "inspirational" video that looks like from prior years at the Ezekiel link.

In the world of serendipity, I had  just posted a picture of my mom being wheeled down the ramp in front of her house.  And when I got home I was telling her there was life still to live in her wheel chair.  She gave me the look. 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

What's Reasonable Public Particiaption? Will It Come To The Anchorage Assembly?


When the Assembly shut down public testimony over  Mayor Sullivan's stealth anti-labor ordinance, there was a big public outcry.  I don't use terms like 'stealth' lightly.  The ordinance was hidden in a notice to the Assembly about an ordinance revision, with no hint at what the topic was or that this was a huge policy change.  It was rushed through less than two months before an Assembly election when the Mayor's one vote majority on the Assembly might be lost.  And Assembly Chair Ernie Hall stopped further public testimony, even though there were lots of people still left to testify.

This is, of course, in sharp contrast to when then Assembly Chair Debbie Ossiander declared that public testimony would continue on the ordinance to add gays to the anti-discrimination clause forever or until the last person had spoken.  At that time there was a majority to pass the bill.  Weeks and weeks of testimony, including people bussed in from Matsu, ensued.  Long enough for new Mayor Sullivan to be sworn into office and to veto the ordinance after it passed.

The rules of a democracy are set up to be fair and treat each situation the same.  But, people have manipulated the rules from the beginning of rules to get what they want.

This new task force, as I understand it, was established to recommend rules for public testimony for the Assembly.  Former Anchorage Assembly members Jane Angvik, Arliss Sturgulewski, and Jim Barnett are on this task force.  The Anchorage Press has a little more on this.

Meanwhile here are the dates of the first three meetings.  Since I won't be back in Anchorage for the first one, I hope at least three of you who read this find a way to be there for me. 




Open your computer calendar and add these dates. . . Participate!



Municipal Task Force on the Assembly  Public Hearing Process 
Meeting Schedule

Municipal Task Force Meetings (they'll meet, and people can listen)


Thursday, July 25, 2013
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
City Hall 632 West 6th Avenue, Suite 155 Anchorage, AK 99501

Thursday, August 22, 2013
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
City Hall 632 West 6th Avenue, Suite 155 Anchorage, AK 99501

Thursday, September 12, 2013
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
City Hall 632 West 6th Avenue, Suite 155 Anchorage, AK 99501


Public Hearing Process  (people can make their suggestions)

Tuesday, September 3, 2013
6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
Assembly Chambers Loussac Library
3600 Denali Street Anchorage, AK 99503

Tuesday, October 1, 2013
6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
Assembly Chambers Loussac Library
3600 Denali Street Anchorage, AK 99503


Even though the first three are meetings where the public will be listening it's worth going for two reasons:
  1. If these are small meetings, chances are people will be able to contribute.  If not during the meeting, they'll be able to talk to Task Force members during breaks and after the meeting.
  2. People attending the meetings will hear what the issues are so they can focus their experience and thoughts to addressing those issues.

Beach Break After Day With Nonagenerians



My mom's caregiver took her down the new ramp to get some sunshine yesterday.  Then I went off to the valley to visit I (91) and F (97).  Say what you want about living to a ripe old age, if you can't walk and take care of yourself, it's not an easy time.  Especially for people who were active and independent all their lives. My mom and I discussed, last night, whether it was better to lose your physical abilities or your mental abilities.  These are questions one shouldn't even have to think about.  But we do.  My guess is losing the mental abilities is better for the person, worse for the people around them.  But I guess it depends on which mental abilities and which physical abilities and what the person liked to do in life. 

It was about 20 degrees warmer in the valley with I and F, but I did take F for a 20 minute wheelchair stroll around the neighborhood.  Then I went to the library to pay off my mom's fine for losing an audio tape.  When I explained that my mom is sure she returned the tape and that on things like that she's usually right, the librarian looked me in the eye and said, "If your 91 year old mom thinks she returned it, that's good enough for me" and cancelled the $85 fee for replacing it.  I offered to pay anyway because the library has given my mom lots of pleasure listening to her tapes and ended up taking a Friends of the Library application form, which I have to fill out and send in. 

Then to the market, another challenge.  Mom's regular caregiver left for the Philippines Thursday where her mom is sick.  Her sister-in-law is subbing for the two weeks she's gone.  So I went to Trader Joe's (near the library) and grabbed a lot of frozen items that I thought my mom might like as the new caregiver tries to prepare things my mom will eat.  I just wanted some back up items with a lot of variety.  I think they'll be fine.  My mom likes the new caregiver a lot. 

I finally got home and we talked a while,  then I needed a break and got out the bike and rode down to Venice Beach.  I was just going to ride on the biketrail, but the surf was big and noisy, so I parked the bike and walked along the surf. 



There was an almost full moon in the sky and the tide was high - almost up to the life guard stations.  Lots of people were in the water and I was jealous I hadn't worn trunks underneath.  This shot is looking north about 6:45pm.  


And this one is looking south.   I'm looking forward to joining my kids and wife (and Z who had her 6 months birthday Thursday) in Seattle Monday. 
 


Friday, July 19, 2013

Thursday Meeting, ADN Article on Fairbanks Plaintiffs' Coming Legal Challenge, Where to Find Documents

Here's the agenda for Thursday's Alaska Redistricting Board meeting, most of which was scheduled for executive session.  I missed the first three items, but listened in after that.  But there was nothing while they are in executive session.
  1. Call to Order 
  2. Roll Call 
  3. Approval of the Agenda 
  4. Executive session to discuss litigation issues
    The board will disconnect from the teleconference network and call back in for the executive session.
  5. Re-connect to the teleconference network. 
  6. Board actions if necessary Adjourn
I'm at my mom's in LA and she needed a number of things and I had some calls come in and missed the Board's reconvening.

But the Anchorage Daily News had an in depth article about what happened and the likelihood of a lawsuit because the Board couldn't didn't respond as the Riley plaintiffs requested regarding the Senate pairings in Fairbanks.  


Meanwhile, Ernie Weiss, who works for the Aleutian East Borough has filled a gap left by the Redistricting Board.  Last year, the Board, to its credit, posted all (I assume) the briefs that were filed regarding the Redistricting Board.  Anyone could see, not only the orders of the Courts, but also what all the parties filed.  That list of links can still be found here. 

This year the Board has most (maybe all) of the orders and opinions up, but almost none of the 2013 ancillary documents that help someone understand what the order means.  (Sometimes the order is clearly explained, but the last one simply said the Board's petition was denied.)  There is also a new pleadings page with three documents dated July 18, 2013.  Be careful though.  The first document is 739 pages. 

In any case, **Ernie Weiss has set up a website** where he's putting up the various petitions and amicus briefs, etc. that are being sent to the court. 



Thursday, July 18, 2013

Did Redistricting Board Intentionally Target Tea Party Members?


At the Sunday Redistricting Board meeting, I met a woman who had an email that had been sent out to, I think, Republican legislators from Randy Ruedrich with a:
  • list of sitting Senators
  • what percent of their district remained the same
  • if they had to run in 2014
The woman was angry.  The Board had gerrymandered, she told me,  so that two Republican senators and two Republican representatives had to run against each other.  And a third Anchorage area Republican Senator only had 50% of her old districts while a bunch of Anchorage Democrats had 100% of their old districts.  And that Senator had to run again in 2014 and only for a two year term.

I pointed out that the Board was made up of four Republicans and one Democrat.  That didn't seem to matter - she said something about them not being real Republicans.  I also mentioned that since there are a lot more Republicans in the legislature than Democrats, so if every thing was done without bias, Republicans would be more likely to be affected than Democrats.  She seemed to have her mind made up and nothing I said made a dent. 


Rep. Tammie Wilson


Sen Fred Dyson Introducing Joe Miller 2012
But as we look at the Republicans who got pinched in these things - Tammie Wilson in Fairbanks (paired with Doug Isaacson) and Fred Dyson in Eagle River (paired with Anna Fairclough) - we see that both Wilson and Dyson supported Tea Party favorite Joe Miller in 2010. 

Cathy Giessel, the Anchorage Republican Senator who lost half her constituents and who, thus,  has to run again in 2014  and for only a two year seat is also of that far, far right Republican persuasion.  Is this all a coincidence?  The Republican Party has had a big internal fight between Tea Party activists and the traditional power brokers of the Party.  Randy Ruedrich, until recently the Chair of the Republican Party, has feuded with the Tea Party Republicans.  He was also very involved in creating the AFFER map and actually made a comment from the audience when the Board was discussing truncation and determining how to figure out the two year and four year seats.  Although audience members are not allowed to speak, they let him, took a recess, and came back with the solution he had suggested from the audience: to renumber some of the districts.  

But, in fairness, both Isaacson and Wilson are listed as from North Pole and one of the principles in redistricting is to leave political subdivisions intact.  So perhaps it was the previous redistricting that allowed two different North Pole districts that was the problem.  Also, though not as critical, pairing the two Eagle River house seats into one Senate seat makes a lot of sense.  Finally, Giessel's old Senate district included the northern Kenai House district and this time they tried to keep Kenai more intact.  But those issues didn't prevent the Board from breaking Matsu twice, even though Calista offered a map that would have kept Matsu whole.  And I'm sure if they had wanted to, they could have kept these incumbents in different districts.

Anyway, below is an adaptation of the chart from the email.  I added the letters of the current (2012 election) and new (2014 election) Senate seats and I added the last column, because the email didn't say how long the terms would be for people not running in 2014. 

Republican or D
(current - new District)
Kept of 2012 District Status Next Term
Kelly  (B-A) 97.6% running 4 yr seat
Coghill (A-B) 77.0% not running 2 years
Bishop (C-C) 46.8% running 4 yr seat
Huggins (E-D) 96.9% not running 2 years
Dunleavy (D-E) 52.0% running 4 yr seat
Open (M-F) 49.3% running 2 yr seat
Fairclough (M-G), Dyson (F-F) 50.1% running 4 yr seat
D-Wielechowski (G-H) 100% not running 2 years
D-Gardner (H-I) 100% running 4 yr seat
D-Ellis (I-J) 100% not running 2 years
D-French (J-K) 100% running 4 yr seat
McGuire (K-L) 100% not running 4 years
Meyer (L-M) 100% running 4 yr seat
Giessel (N-N) 50.1% running 2 yr seat
Micciche (N-O) 50.3% running 4 yr seat
Stevens (R-P) 51.3% running 2 yr seat
D - Egan (P-Q) 92.7% running 4 yr seat
Stedman (Q-R) 90.7% not running
D - Hoffman (S-S) 54.3% running 4 yr seat
D - Olsen (T-T) 80.3% running 2 yr seat



Some background for people who haven't been keeping track of these things:

Senators have four year terms.  The terms are staggered so that ten senators run in one election and ten in the next.  That way there are always at least ten Senators who aren't brand new.

If a new Senate district is changed so that a substantial number of people are new, the seat is truncated.  Truncation means that instead of serving out their full term (if it would not be up at the next election), their term is cut to two years and they must run in the next election.  The reasoning here is that a substantial number of people will now be represented by someone they didn't have an opportunity to vote for (or against.)

So, how many is substantial?  Last year's discussion of truncation said that any district that had more than a 10% change would be considered substantially changed.  Last year there was only one district that was less then 10% - Juneau - and the next was 65%.  This year they decided that the cut off would be 70%, which allowed Sen. John Coghill (75% change) not to have to run for reelection in 2014.  (Generally, people set standards before they know who will meet them and who won't so they aren't biased by knowing how the standards will affect real people.)  In any case, Coghill was also a Joe Miller supporter, so that would suggest that they weren't necessarily after Tea Party folks.

The gerrymandering charges this year were from Democrats.  But might it be possible the Tea Party is going to challenge the redistricting plan?  Can you charge gerrymandering when it's Republicans out to get Republicans?  (I'm not saying that happened here, just a hypothetical.)  Maybe this isn't over yet. 

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

". . . are there not hangmen enough?"

I'm reading the second Hilary Mantel novel on Thomas Cromwell, Bring Up The Bodies.  Like the first one, Wolf Hall, it has won the Man Booker Prize. The prose sings, quietly.  Reading the sentences is pure pleasure.  So spare, just the essentials, as she paints the world of commoner Thomas Cromwell, the most powerful man in King Henry VIII's England.  The man of many languages and skills who makes things happen.

I've wanted to share something, but much of the book is the slow building up of background and foreground, that short excerpts don't make much sense out of the context of the whole book.

But I found this passage of Cromwell's failed attempt to get Parliament to pass laws that would hire the unemployed to build infrastructure for England,  It's a good example of Mantel's prose and it's also fitting for our present political and economic challenges.
In March, Parliament knocks back his new poor law.  It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor;  that if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, on the wool trade, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field.  England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges.  Men need work.  It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure.  Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?

But Parliament cannot seee how it is the state's job to create work.  Are not these matters in god's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order?  To everything there is a season:  a time to starve and a time to thieve.  If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it;  for God knows his trade.  It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy.  And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality;  well, are there not hangmen enough?

Not everyone in our book group is enamored by this book.  For some it's slow.

What happens in this book would never show up on television news.  There's not a lot of action.  But there's lots of texture.  The real power is the slow putting into place all the pieces.  It's the bureaucratic minutia It's the tedious behind the scenes machinations that makes things happen.  This book focuses not so much on the visible, but rather reveals what's normally invisible.  And she writes so damn beautifully.
 

Soft Foods, Sex In A Canoe, Translation, Hate Speech, and Fighting Over Words - "New" Books At The UAA Library


I'm back in LA to check up on my mom - a night flight that leaves me a little sleepy.  But my mom sounds like my mom again which is much better than the way I left her last week.  Before I left Anchorage late last night, I took some books back to the UAA library and checked out the new book section.

I'm not recommending any of these because I haven't read them, but the point is to remind folks that there's lots of interesting stuff out there.  People with a regular Municipal library card can check books out at UAA.  (Or even from your local library.)  This is just a small sampling of what's there.  I also noticed, doing this post, that what's new to the University of Alaska Anchorage's Consortium Library, isn't necessarily a new book.  One was published in 2007.

Also, as you look at these, think about guidelines you'd offer publishers about book covers. 


 I lumped these first three together because they all are connected to words (or speech).  The first, Roger Shuy's Fighting Over Words:  Language and Civil Law Cases.  A Times Higher Education 2008 review says, in part:
Fighting over Words is a short book, packed with corporate cases. These range from contract disputes and deceptive trade practices, through product liability, copyright infringement, discrimination, trademarks and fraud. The legal categories group together complex lived experiences in which language became a crux of dispute: whether, as an insurer maintained, an airline pilot's final words before a fatal crash showed evidence of having been overcome by toxic gas in the cockpit; whether, in a housing case, people's ability to recognise ethnic accents on the telephone offered a means of racial discrimination; whether warning statements provided with a potentially dangerous product were comprehensible and sufficiently prominent; whether a company's public pronouncements showed a tendency towards age discrimination in employment; whether a contractor misrepresented its cost calculations in bidding for a government military aviation contract. It is impossible to read through such actions without constant toing and froing between the case in hand and general issues in corporate and governmental communication that make such cases topical.
Clearly related to the recent post I had on the Asiana crash in San Francisco. 


 Words, Images, and Performances in Translation, edited by Rita Wilso and Brigit Maher, is summarized by the publisher, Bloomsbury:
This volume presents fresh approaches to the role that translation – in its many forms – plays in enabling and mediating global cultural exchange. As modes of communication and textual production continue to evolve, the field of translation studies has an increasingly important role in exploring the ways in which words, images and performances are translated and reinterpreted in new socio-cultural contexts. The book includes an innovative mix of literary, cultural and intersemiotic perspectives and represents a wide range of languages and cultures. The contributions are all linked by a shared focus on the place of translation in the contemporary world, and the ways in which translation, and the discipline of translation studies, can shed light on questions of inter- and hypertextuality, multimodality and globalization in contemporary cultural production.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart - something I dealt with first hand doing research in China with my Hong Kong students able to tell me later what really was said when the official translator strayed.  Actually, my students disagreed with each other, highlighting that the miscommunication is already in the original language and only compounded by going to another language.


The last of the first three, Jeremy Waldron's The Harm In Hate Speech appears to be a response to those who reject hate speech laws as contrary to the First Amendment.  You can read more about the book at Harvard University Press and get links to podcasts of the author.  There are also links to responses to his book. 


There was a bunch of Alaska related books.  Below are just a few.


Leff Continuity turns out to have been published in 2007 and the back said it was about a woman's adventure with her husband to Alaska followed fairly closely by her husband's death and her life in Alaska since.

The bluish volume is one of several theses by APU students.  This one is by Leeann B. Tyree and is titled Teaching Literacy - today and tomorrow, Literacy Vocabulary Development for Students and Teacher Practices - Grades 4-12 in Rural Alaska.

Cracking the Code is a small handbook by Cindy Roberts that is an attempt to give people an overview of the gas pipeline proposal(s?). 

There were two cookbooks on soft foods:  The Dysphagia Cookbook and Soft Foods for Easier Eating. 


I have to believe there's a reason why there are two books on this topic. 



This next one  On Extinction:  How We Became Estranged From Nature.  by Melanie Challenger looked interesting, The Guardian only gave it a so-so review::
Challenger's privilege is great, her courage exemplary, and no one could doubt her passion. This book is an urgent attempt to understand how we got into this mess, and how we might go forward, knowing that we are capable of causing, and of feeling, great loss. Assiduous editing might have helped, because while Challenger has a good eye and a nice turn of phrase, there is a piling up of references that seems born more of anxiety than erudition.



 Here are a couple about Soviet literature and theater.






Here's a short excerpt from an interview with TV on Strike author, a Variety deputy editor, at the Syracuse University Press:
“The book looks at the upheaval in the television business during the past decade through the prism of the 100-day strike by the Writers Guild of America in late 2007-early 2008. The strike was a fight about many of the issues that are roiling Hollywood – digital distribution, changing viewer behavior, competition from lower-cost entertainment alternatives and shrinking margins in traditional profit centers. I realized about a month after the strike ended that the story of the conflict, and the colorful characters who drove it, provided the perfect framework to examine what would otherwise be an unwieldy subject, namely the transformation of the television business.”




Did you forget to think about guidelines for good book covers?

It seems to me that there are two critical goals:
  • making the title and the author's name easy to read 
  • Some short description (or visual hint) about the topic 
The title of this last book,  The Great White North, meets those criteria.  I was totally misled by the title, but the subtitle pulled me back to what the author intended.    From a review at Alternatives Journal:
". . . Repeating an old saw, Margaret Wente previously wrote that what makes someone Canadian is having sex in a canoe. Maybe new immigrants should be taught to canoe, Wente said, so they could be more patriotic.
The editors of this book took her to task in their introduction. They wrote that this perception, “Canada = Canoeing,” was just one of the ways a European colonial mentality permeates both our sense of nation and nature. Wente lashed back in the pages of the broadsheet. I hope environmentalists will listen better than she did. .  .
Two early chapters contrast the way “nature” was moralized around ethnicity. City planners in Toronto at the turn of the 20th century advocated the creation of parks to “civilize” and Canadianize new immigrants. Nature was “good.”
The next chapter, an analysis of the rhetoric around Toronto’s SARS outbreak in 2005, demonstrates nature as “bad” or a threat. Media reports highlighted the virus’ origin in Asia, and as fear rose, nature – via SARS – became equated with the immigrants being a threat. Life-saving nurses were reframed as immigrant or ethnic nurses putting “us” at risk by possibly passing on the pathogen. "
 Just that little bit from the review is making me think about the divide between urban and rural Alaska, between Native and non-Native Alaska, and the role of immigration - which still means to most non-Native Alaskans, non-white immigrants and not non-Native immigrants. 

And stepping back a bit, for a more apt comparison to the book, how does  the Canadian mythology of the Great White North compare to the Lower 48 myths about Alaska? 




Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Alaska Supreme Court Denies Redistricting Board's Appeal

Here's what's posted on the Alaska Redistricting Board's website today:



IT IS ORDERED:  The Petition for Review is DENIED.

But what was in the petition?  The Redistricting Board staff member I called to find out said, no, those other documents aren't being posted now. (They were last year.)  One of the Board members, when I complained that they'd taken these sorts of documents down, told me that people should know how to get them themselves.  So I called the Alaska Supreme Court and was told, no, they don't post the petitions online, but I can come down to the Supreme Court office in downtown Anchorage and ask to see them.  The Board staff person said she'd try to get the other documents that explain what this order means up tomorrow.

So I went back to the video I posted this morning of the Board's attorney, Michael White, talking about how much time people will have to file objections.  Here's what he told me in that video tape:

"The original process is the Board proclaims and then sits back and waits 30 days to file.  The trial court filed an order recently that seemed to imply that we were back using the same process.  And our interpretation of the constitution is that’s wrong.  We’re not saying people can’t challenge this map.  We’re not saying that new people can’t come in and say we don’t like this one.  We’re saying, no, you don’t wait 30 days to see if there are challenges, you resubmit it and see if the court says file your objections in ten days, 15 days, whatever.  The Court still could give them 30 days I suppose. But given the time line he told the Board to operate under, maybe he gets 30 days maybe he doesn’t.  But that issue is still before our Supreme Court now.  We asked for their guidance before the 20th."
So, I'm guessing that the Board's assertion that they should submit the Plan to the court now and let the judge give people a time frame to object was denied.  Instead, I'm guessing the Board is to wait 30 days and then submit the Plan. 

Meanwhile, I was also told that the Board has a meeting scheduled Thursday, but the only thing on the agenda is Executive Session.  So I expect they'll be talking about what this ruling means and what their options are.  I know they can go into Executive Session to talk about litigation (discussion of their legal adversaries and their own legal strategy), but simply talking about the meaning of a ruling is something they've done publicly before and I would think is inappropriate for Executive Session.  But legal stuff is always subject to interpretation I guess.


They proclaimed the new plan on Sunday, July 14, so thirty days we be Tuesday, August 13. If my guesses here are correct, then people have until that day to file challenges. 

Will there be any challenges?  

When I interviewed Democratic Party Chair Mike Wenstrup Sunday, he said there were problems but they'd have to wait until they read the Board's findings.

A woman at the Board meeting Sunday showed me a list of Senators and pointed out that the Democrats in Anchorage had pretty much their same seats*, but some of the Republicans had had their seats split and suggested there was gerrymandering.  Particularly she complained about Cathy Geissel's district changing so much.  I pointed out that the Board had four Republicans and one Democrat and she said that they weren't really Republicans.  So, perhaps there could be a challenge from, say,  the Tea Party Republicans.

And Sealaska seems to have some concerns as mentioned in this Juneau Empire article:
“This very much impacts our Southeast communities,” said Jaeleen Araujo, vice president and general counsel for Sealaska. “There is no cultural and socio-economic similarities between our rural and urban areas in Southeast.”
Two Tlingit lawmakers representing Southeast communities lost their seats in 2012 after proposed district map was allowed to be used for the election. Representative Bill Thomas lost to 23-year-old Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka by 32 votes. In the same election, redistricting pitted incumbent Senators Albert Kookesh and Bert Stedman against each other. Kookesh lost that race after redistricting separated him from most of the smaller communities he’d previously represented. .  .  .

"This whole process has been very disheartening,” Araujo said. “We believe very strongly that the viewpoints in our rural and urban communities are very different.”
Araujo said that Sealaska is still examining the new redistricting plans and maps.
“We’ll do what we can in the next couple of weeks to see if there are any legal arguments to pursue,” Araujo said. “If there are, we will definitely follow up on them.”
I'm not sure why every time someone talks about Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins they have to mention his age.  Is there some mystic connection between the 23 years and the 32 votes?  I would imagine that mentioning he's a Yale graduate is more significant than his age. In 2010, Peggy Wilson and other SE politicians put forth a Constitutional Amendment to expand the legislature so that rural Alaska (including SE) wouldn't have to lose legislators after redistricting.  But Alaska voters turned it down.

In any case, Haines, Bill Thomas' home town, is no longer in the same district with Kreiss-Tomkins.  Instead, the Board cited people  from Haines who testified at the public hearings in Juneau a couple of weeks ago, who said they should be in the downtown Juneau district and that's where the Board put them.  Downtown Juneau is probably the most Democratic district in the state, so that would make it even harder for Republican Bill Thomas. 


*I know this is confusing if you haven't been immersed in it.  When they paired the house districts to make Senate seats, in some cases, the districts were pretty much intact.  In other case they got paired very differently and as much as half the district had new constituents. 

Redistricting Board's Attorney and State Democratic Chair Talk About What's Next with Alaska Redistricting

Here are two more videos I got after the Alaska Redistricting Board approved its new plan.


Michael White, the attorney for the Alaska Redistricting Board, thinks the plan is solid, but doesn't rule out court challenges.  He explains his take on the still outstanding question about who can challenge and when. 






Outside the meeting I met, for the first time, State Democratic Party Chair, Mike Wenstrup, who talks about the next steps - will there be a legal challenge to the plan?

Monday, July 15, 2013

Begich and Ruedrich Talk About Redistricting

Sunday, the Alaska Redistricting Board met to approve its Proclamation Plan and Report.  If the plan is not challenged in court, this may have been the last Board meeting until the new Board is convened for the 2020 redistricting.

After the Board meeting I had a chance to video Tom Begich, who worked as a consultant to Calista Corporation on redistricting and helped them devise the plans they submitted to the Board, and Randy Ruedrich.  Randy was the Chair of the Alaska Republican Party for years and worked with AFFER (Alaskans For Fair and Equitable Redistricting) to develop the plans they submitted to the Board.

Both the Calista and AFFER plans in the end, looked a lot alike - with Fairbanks being the major difference.  Also Calista's plan kept Matsu borough intact while the AFFER plan broke the borough once.  The Board's final plan broke Matsu borough twice.

I asked Tom if this was the end.  Basically, I was asking if it was likely that anyone would be challenging the plan in court or whether the issues that were raised are now settled.







I asked Randy what he thought about the plan.  Then I asked him about an email he's sent out to Republicans listing all the new Senate districts and how they affected incumbents and the complaints I heard before the meeting from one Republican who felt that Republicans had been treated badly by the Board.




I don't know if I'm reading things into this, but it seems that seeing Randy talk gives a very different meaning than if you just read what he said.

I have two more videos from after Sunday's meeting to post - the Board's attorney Michael White and State Democratic Chair Mike Wentrup.