EDITOR: Was there ever a gerrymandered district that made less
sense than the 11th Congressional? I don
’t think so. We in the 11th live in four different counties,
stretching from east of Lodi, south to Morgan Hill and almost to
the Sacramento River in Brentwood. On the southeast corner lies
Tracy. The city of Stockton is partly in our district and partly
not. Tracy is tied to San Francisco cultura
lly, Brentwood and Discovery Bay are tied to San Francisco by
employment, Blackhawk is not tied to anything but Blackhawk and is
made up of one-third Democrats and two-thirds Republicans.
EDITOR:
Was there ever a gerrymandered district that made less sense than the 11th Congressional? I don’t think so. We in the 11th live in four different counties, stretching from east of Lodi, south to Morgan Hill and almost to the Sacramento River in Brentwood. On the southeast corner lies Tracy. The city of Stockton is partly in our district and partly not. Tracy is tied to San Francisco culturally, Brentwood and Discovery Bay are tied to San Francisco by employment, Blackhawk is not tied to anything but Blackhawk and is made up of one-third Democrats and two-thirds Republicans.
Morgan Hill is a Silicon Valley outpost and the 680 Highway corridor from Pleasanton to Danville is a mixed bag of political affiliation and levels of affluence. We of the Eleventh are farmers. Union people, white collar and blue collar employees, generally affluent but not exclusively so, and most of us are struggling with mortgages, and all but the farming community, are commuters.
How in the world can we create a community of interests in such a diabolically conceived collage of different cultures and different needs. If I want to contact all the Methodists in the 11th I can go to the Yellow Pages and the directories of churches.
If I want to reach out to all the union members in our catchall district I can go to the union halls. But if I want to reach all of the disabled or disadvantaged how can I identify them? Or, if I want to reach all of the Howard Dean supporters, as I do, where in the world can I go? I think this district was designed to keep us all strangers to each other and divide us even more than we have divided ourselves. In the long run this only works to keep the rich in power.
I want to see if anything good can be made out of this mishmash of political expediency. Will the Dean supporters who read this please contact me? I’m the convener of the 11th Congressional District Dean Caucus. You can reach me via [email protected]. Please don’t send me spam, I won’t read it. I don’t have time for juvenile hostility. I’m not trying to sell anybody anything. I’m only trying to see what we the people can do to bring civility back into American life. I think that’s a very Howard Dean thing to do.
Peggy Radford, Danville
