Implying that a secret, racist agenda may be in play to eliminate Congressional districts drawn to represent black voters, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to stop Florida’s redistricting effort. On Wednesday the Florida Senate released a proposed map that would redraw many of Florida’s 27 Congressional districts to comply with an order from the Florida Supreme Court. That order came following a lawsuit that charged the state’s 2011 redistricting map had been gerrymandered, drawn to assure that certain seats would always be won by one party or another. Brown’s district would be most affected under the proposed map. And her district was specifically cited for change in the Florida Supreme Court order. The new proposal would lop off District 5’s snake-like appendage that meanders from Jacksonville south to Orange County, taking in black communities along the way. Instead, the map proposes District 5 stretch due west from Jacksonville to Tallahassee.
She would no longer represent Central Florida, and, specifically, would no longer represent the predominantly black neighborhoods of Central Florida.
At a press conference on the steps of the Federal Court House in Orlando, Brown expressed anger, charging that the whole point of her district was to bring together black communities, and that was being undermined.
Florida has 27 seats; why is the attack always on the one district that puts communities together and [gives] the African Americans, who have suffered, an opportunity to have a representative?” she challenged. “This [redistricting effort] is about me. But this [lawsuit] is not about me. What happens if I die today or tomorrow? I want somebody who looks like me, an African American,” to represent the black communities, she said.
Full Article: Brown sues to stop Florida redistricting – Orlando Sentinel.