Schneiderman and Sharpton Begin Statewide Push to End Prison Gerrymandering

Summary

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[Eric Schneiderman] added that the bottom line of all of this isn't a battle against the upper regions of New York State. It's about doing what's right for all of its citizens. "Every 10 years, the state of New York acts in a way that is fundamentally unjust, in a way is not consistent with our most basic principles of democracy," he said. "We count prisoners who come from poor, urban communities in New York as residents of the rural communities where prisons are located for the purposes of reapportionment. We essentially transfer a population to these rural areas. This is not an upstate/downstate thing because we're also taking people from [poor areas in] Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and Yonkers."

"I think that this is the voter rights and civil rights issue this year in the state of New York," said [Al Sharpton]. "There's nothing that is a more blatant violation of the civil and voter rights of citizens in this state." Sharpton also acknowledged how some areas upstate use the prisoners' vote against them when it comes time for the senators to vote for reform. "Those seven illegal senate seats were used to vote against the Rockefeller Drug Laws, to vote against job development [and] to vote against the very programs that would help to rehabilitate those that were incarcerated," stated Sharpton.

Cramped up in a conference room on the 19th floor of 250 Broadway, the politicians, along with Demos Senior Program Director Steven Carbo, took to the podium to call for an end to a practice that hurts poor Black and Brown urban areas by denying them resources that could reduce recidivism.

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Schneiderman and Sharpton Begin Statewide Push to End Prison Gerrymandering

Last Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton, New York State Sen. Eric Schneiderman and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries held a news conference to announce they're full speed ahead in their campaign to end prison-based gerrymandering in...

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