Aug 23, 2010
New York’s Changed Map
The New York Times discusses the meaning of banning prison-based Gerrymandering in New York.
Aug 13, 2010
Redistricting Reforms Worth Watching
Back in my first blog post here a few months ago, I briefly described how the research and production of my film Gerrymandering led me inexorably to the conclusion that our redistricting system needs an overhaul and that, having made a movie about it, I might be in a position to help. Last week, in the wake of the New York State Senate's passage of a bill ending prison-based gerrymandering, I received an e-mail from one of my film's stars, the dynamic Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative (who will be guest blogging about the prison gerrymandering issue in this space shortly), telling me to take a little bit of credit for the win. He'd been screening the section of the film covering prison gerrymandering at events around the state and streaming it on his website; he felt that our little clip helped explain the issue to voters more succinctly than anything previously available. Of course I really can't claim any responsibility, but was flattered to think that my film had played any small part in a reform effort, especially so far from its wider theatrical release.
But Peter's e-mail got me thinking: this is really the moment to be actively involved in redistricting reform. There are battle lines being drawn that will determine what our legislative bodies look like over the course of the next decade, and there are a host of redistricting-related ballot initiatives and pieces of legislation circulating around this fall that voters should know about. I'm going use some space in this column in the weeks leading up to our release (more on that later) to discuss these initiatives, starting with the two highest profile, both of which the Gerrymandering team wholly supports, and, in some cases, is actively working with. Both will be hotly contested in November.
California voters will have a golden opportunity to finish overhauling their state's redistricting system by voting Yes on Proposition 20. Prop. 20 extends the jurisdiction of the independent commission established by the passage of Prop. 11 in 2008 (which we cover in-depth in Gerrymandering) to include congressional districts. Currently those lines are drawn by the state legislature, with healthy input from the California congressional delegation resulting in a set of uncompetitive races "won" by longtime incumbents who have often crassly carved up emerging communities to preserve their power. As with most attempts at taking redistricting away from the parties in California, Prop. 20 has been described as a Republican power grab, even though it's being supported by many of the same folks who pushed Prop. 11: California Common Cause, AARP, etc. My own personal politics might land somewhere left of Karl Marx, and while I hope Democrats maintain control of government at all levels, our side's electoral successes shouldn't rest on shaky foundations. I'd like Nancy Pelosi to continue her tenure as Speaker of the House, but she should still have to compete for the privilege. (California folks will know this is a somewhat hyperbolic example: it'd be VERY difficult to draw a competitive district for Pelosi to run in, but the point holds for many others in the delegation.)
There's also a major reform push underway in Florida, one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, courtesy of a bipartisan group of folks calling themselves Fair Districts Florida (we interviewed many members of the campaign, but opted to tell a different story of Florida districting in the film, one that includes swamp cabbage, armadillo races and a 200 mile-long district). Obama won the Sunshine State by a wide margin, but the Republicans took home a whopping two-thirds of legislative and congressional seats due to creative line drawing back in 2001. This November, voters will have the chance to approve Amendments 5 & 6, which set standards the legislature must follow when drawing the lines. There will be no independent commission established, but putting these standards in place will not only give those who wish to challenge a plan a legal leg to stand on in court but should also give the legislature pause before enacting another heavily partisan gerrymander (though the shamelessness of a legislature in line-drawing heat can never be underestimated). Notably, the Democratic party supports this effort, while largely opposing Prop. 20 in California. One important thing to know about redistricting reform is that support for change is most often opportunistic.
And, finally, for those interested in seeing the film, Gerrymandering will be in select theaters nationwide on 10/15. We will announce dates here shortly (and regularly). Stay tuned.
But Peter's e-mail got me thinking: this is really the moment to be actively involved in redistricting reform. There are battle lines being drawn that will determine what our legislative bodies look like over the course of the next decade, and there are a host of redistricting-related ballot initiatives and pieces of legislation circulating around this fall that voters should know about. I'm going use some space in this column in the weeks leading up to our release (more on that later) to discuss these initiatives, starting with the two highest profile, both of which the Gerrymandering team wholly supports, and, in some cases, is actively working with. Both will be hotly contested in November.
California voters will have a golden opportunity to finish overhauling their state's redistricting system by voting Yes on Proposition 20. Prop. 20 extends the jurisdiction of the independent commission established by the passage of Prop. 11 in 2008 (which we cover in-depth in Gerrymandering) to include congressional districts. Currently those lines are drawn by the state legislature, with healthy input from the California congressional delegation resulting in a set of uncompetitive races "won" by longtime incumbents who have often crassly carved up emerging communities to preserve their power. As with most attempts at taking redistricting away from the parties in California, Prop. 20 has been described as a Republican power grab, even though it's being supported by many of the same folks who pushed Prop. 11: California Common Cause, AARP, etc. My own personal politics might land somewhere left of Karl Marx, and while I hope Democrats maintain control of government at all levels, our side's electoral successes shouldn't rest on shaky foundations. I'd like Nancy Pelosi to continue her tenure as Speaker of the House, but she should still have to compete for the privilege. (California folks will know this is a somewhat hyperbolic example: it'd be VERY difficult to draw a competitive district for Pelosi to run in, but the point holds for many others in the delegation.)
There's also a major reform push underway in Florida, one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation, courtesy of a bipartisan group of folks calling themselves Fair Districts Florida (we interviewed many members of the campaign, but opted to tell a different story of Florida districting in the film, one that includes swamp cabbage, armadillo races and a 200 mile-long district). Obama won the Sunshine State by a wide margin, but the Republicans took home a whopping two-thirds of legislative and congressional seats due to creative line drawing back in 2001. This November, voters will have the chance to approve Amendments 5 & 6, which set standards the legislature must follow when drawing the lines. There will be no independent commission established, but putting these standards in place will not only give those who wish to challenge a plan a legal leg to stand on in court but should also give the legislature pause before enacting another heavily partisan gerrymander (though the shamelessness of a legislature in line-drawing heat can never be underestimated). Notably, the Democratic party supports this effort, while largely opposing Prop. 20 in California. One important thing to know about redistricting reform is that support for change is most often opportunistic.
And, finally, for those interested in seeing the film, Gerrymandering will be in select theaters nationwide on 10/15. We will announce dates here shortly (and regularly). Stay tuned.
Aug 13, 2010
In Rhode Island
Aug 05, 2010
Empire Step?
New York stands on the brink of ending prison-based Gerrymandering. Assembly member Hakeem Jeffries featured in GERRYMANDERING and State Senator Eric Schneiderman have led the charge.
Aug 03, 2010
You Can’t Please Everyone
In the few months since Gerrymandering premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, "Jeff Reichert Gerrymandering" has rocketed to the top of my most frequently Googled phrases. I'm not proud of this fact, but like all filmmakers I am a nervous parent: we anxiously scan for any sign of our offspring's success or failure out in the world at large. Happily, the bulk of the response has been positive (with some caveats, many of which I can agree with -- no film is perfect), suggesting that our small filmmaking team managed to do what so many along the way said would be impossible: take an unknown, unfilmable subject and make it into a feature film worth watching. Bonus points for ending up, in the words of New York magazine, "surprisingly bipartisan."
Not long after Tribeca, my daily searching led me for the first (and last) time over to Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog, where "Joe Bendel" had posted a festival roundup called "Plenty for Conservatives to Love and Loath [sic] at Tribeca '10" that included my film. His reaction was rather strong:
Bendel goes on, noting in particular the film's overall dullness and tone-deafness. I can't argue with anyone who finds Gerrymandering boring -- as they say, to each their own. However, the charges of lefty partisanship seemed misguided; the movie we made criticizes Barack Obama for tailoring himself a State Senate district, Nancy Pelosi for opposing redistricting reform in California, the Democratic party for using black voters to "sandbag" white Democratic districts in the South, and opens with a clip of Ronald Reagan decrying Democratic gerrymanders! (The last, admittedly, a calculated decision meant to tweak the expectations of the largely liberal documentary audience.) Tom DeLay is mentioned, at most, a few times over the course of one short sequence in the middle of the movie; Bendel's fixation serves as proof positive that there's a certain breed of conservative that can dish it, but definitely can't take it.
Immediately after reading his post, I began planning an outraged response that would level his cretinous assessment and prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my film was that rarest of rarities: a nonpartisan political documentary.
A few minutes passed, I calmed down, and just let it go. (Filmmakers publicly fighting with their reviewers are, in most cases, about as appealing to audiences as wailing infants.) I dredge up Bendel now as a recent round of review searching turned up further charges of partisanship, only this time they came from the left. From a post entitled "Conservative Screed":
This from an audience member at the Seattle Film Festival where we screened to sold-out audiences over Memorial Day weekend. The reaction from the very liberal crowd (at least so I assume -- many heads nodded in assent along with our opening epigraph from Thomas Pynchon) felt terrific -- they laughed at the right places, asked good, challenging questions during the Q&A, and wanted to know how they might reform the process in their state. Yet, someone in that audience had a completely opposite political reaction to Joe Bendel. The film was the same, so what happened?
What makes these critiques interesting, and worth noting here, is how directly they speak to a fundamental quality of the redistricting process. Any given redistricting plan will look like a gerrymander to someone; there is literally no way to please every constituent within a given piece of geography. Put another way, there is no district in which all of the citizens will have voted for the winner of a given election. This reality of democracy riddled with disgruntled voters is certainly not what we learned in civics.
Redistricting shows how the idea of fairness is malleable, how democracy will always be imperfect, and how what our Constitution guarantees us has never been the right to the representation we want but to the possibility of participating in a system that could produce our desired representation. This always seemed to me like great material for a film. The innate contradictions of how these questions are perceived and the, ahem, energetic responses they engender prove that Joe Bendel, my anonymous friend from Seattle, and I agree on at least this one point. That's democracy, too.
Not long after Tribeca, my daily searching led me for the first (and last) time over to Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog, where "Joe Bendel" had posted a festival roundup called "Plenty for Conservatives to Love and Loath [sic] at Tribeca '10" that included my film. His reaction was rather strong:
Jeff Reichert's Gerrymandering was also pretty naked in its overt partisanship, notwithstanding occasional fig-leaves of bipartisanship (like a three second expository sound bite from John Fund). Throughout the film, he claims gerrymandering is practiced by both parties, but only presents Democrat [sic] politicians as the victims...[Gerrymandering] is clearly far more preoccupied with demonizing Tom DeLay.
Bendel goes on, noting in particular the film's overall dullness and tone-deafness. I can't argue with anyone who finds Gerrymandering boring -- as they say, to each their own. However, the charges of lefty partisanship seemed misguided; the movie we made criticizes Barack Obama for tailoring himself a State Senate district, Nancy Pelosi for opposing redistricting reform in California, the Democratic party for using black voters to "sandbag" white Democratic districts in the South, and opens with a clip of Ronald Reagan decrying Democratic gerrymanders! (The last, admittedly, a calculated decision meant to tweak the expectations of the largely liberal documentary audience.) Tom DeLay is mentioned, at most, a few times over the course of one short sequence in the middle of the movie; Bendel's fixation serves as proof positive that there's a certain breed of conservative that can dish it, but definitely can't take it.
Immediately after reading his post, I began planning an outraged response that would level his cretinous assessment and prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my film was that rarest of rarities: a nonpartisan political documentary.
A few minutes passed, I calmed down, and just let it go. (Filmmakers publicly fighting with their reviewers are, in most cases, about as appealing to audiences as wailing infants.) I dredge up Bendel now as a recent round of review searching turned up further charges of partisanship, only this time they came from the left. From a post entitled "Conservative Screed":
I was very disappointed in the film, which amount [sic] to a very one-sided, conservative perspective of the redistricting process. The film had an agenda: conservative ideas are good, liberal ideas are bad.
This from an audience member at the Seattle Film Festival where we screened to sold-out audiences over Memorial Day weekend. The reaction from the very liberal crowd (at least so I assume -- many heads nodded in assent along with our opening epigraph from Thomas Pynchon) felt terrific -- they laughed at the right places, asked good, challenging questions during the Q&A, and wanted to know how they might reform the process in their state. Yet, someone in that audience had a completely opposite political reaction to Joe Bendel. The film was the same, so what happened?
What makes these critiques interesting, and worth noting here, is how directly they speak to a fundamental quality of the redistricting process. Any given redistricting plan will look like a gerrymander to someone; there is literally no way to please every constituent within a given piece of geography. Put another way, there is no district in which all of the citizens will have voted for the winner of a given election. This reality of democracy riddled with disgruntled voters is certainly not what we learned in civics.
Redistricting shows how the idea of fairness is malleable, how democracy will always be imperfect, and how what our Constitution guarantees us has never been the right to the representation we want but to the possibility of participating in a system that could produce our desired representation. This always seemed to me like great material for a film. The innate contradictions of how these questions are perceived and the, ahem, energetic responses they engender prove that Joe Bendel, my anonymous friend from Seattle, and I agree on at least this one point. That's democracy, too.
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