Oakland Local

More than 70 Oakland residents came together on September 18th at Hub Oakland to share their vision for Oakland and ideas about new district boundaries for City Council and School Board. The event was hosted by the Oakland Votes coalition, of which Oakland Rising is a member. It was the single biggest event to solicit community input about how political boundaries are drawn.

Barbara Grady at Oakland Local reports, “At issue is how to carve seven voting districts into Oakland so that the principles of the U.S. Voting Rights Act of ‘one person, one vote’ and representation of ‘communities of interest’ are represented.”

At the September 18th meeting we spoke about the importance of the Voting Rights Act protections before breaking into small groups to identify neighborhoods and communities of interest, and then draw our own maps.

You can find the maps here, they were also submitted to the city to be considered in the map selection process.