Cuny Forum; 2010 Census: Who's Counted? Who Counts?

Good evening, my name is Bob Liff, and this is the CUNY Forum, a monthly town meeting that brings prominent New Yorkers together with faculty and students of the Edwettie Rogowski Internship Program in Government and Public Affairs. The obligation to carry out a census every 10 years comes from Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which speaks about Congress's role in overseeing a quote actual enumeration, unquote, except for slaves who counted as three-fifths of a person and untaxed Indians who weren't counted at all, to be carried out, quote, in such manner as they shall by law direct, unquote. That seems pretty clear, doesn't it? The 14th Amendment removed the three-fifths provision for slaves and all Indian tax so they get counted, but a whole lot more of us don't. This is especially true in crowded cities like New York with large numbers of legal and undocumented immigrants, for whom are not on the door by someone saying, I'm from the

government and I'm here to help you, is not the most welcome of greetings. Who is counted and who is not and how should those people be counted? Whether door to door and farm to farm is envisioned in that first census in 1790 or through a statistical analysis to offset the millions of mostly urban residents missed each decade. At stake is more than just pride. I grew up in Brooklyn, which was the most populous borough in the most popular city in the most popular state in the country. New York is now third of fourth most popular state in the country depending on how taxes and Florida wind up, and that means our 47 electoral votes in the 1940s have shrunk to 33 and 2000, and likely will shrink by two more for the 2012 election. In the census, however, determines far more than the number of congress members we sent to Washington. It determines how the federal government allows financial aid in areas such as hospitals, job training, schools, senior centers, emergency services, and capital projects like bridges, tunnels, highways, and mass transit. In New York, we once again lag far behind the 69% of the rest of the country's households

that mailed in the form sent to each and every one of us, just 51% of Brooklyn households sent in the form, it's 56% in Queens, 59% in the Bronx, 61% in Staten Island, and 64% in Manhattan. The outcomes of the time for the knock on the door, as the census takers will be going during the door to collect answers from those who did not mail the form in. Will the door be opened? Will we get our fair share? We're joined by four New Yorkers involved in various ways in the census. Andrew Beverage is a sociology professor at Queens College and one of the city's premier demographers. Ron Daniels is a professor at York College in the president of the Institute for the Black World in the 21st century. John Gibbs is General Counsel for the Mid-Year-Every Center for Lawants and Social Justice based in Brooklyn. And Erica Pearson is covering the census for the Daily News, My Old Hunt, who will tell us what it all means. Andrew, what is at stake? Well, really, as I tell my students, the census is only about two things, power and money.

And in fact, it's more really about power than it is about money. And in many ways, it's more important in New York City to respond to the census than it is to vote. Because as we know, many of the, at least vote in the general election. Because we know in New York, a lot of the general election is sort of a pro-forma after the Democratic primaries. But the census determines how big or how powerful your neighborhood is. And so if people don't respond, your neighborhood is weakened. And you'll have less power. And because of your have less power, you'll have less money. I mean, censuses in other countries have actually led to civil war. And by Afro in Nigeria, in Indonesia. So the censuses are a very, very important thing. And everyone should really respond. Joan in Brooklyn, as a Brooklyn native in a Brooklyn chauvinist, it bums me out that we have the lowest response rate.

How do you deal with that? You made your average wrestles with this. Well, the Sister-Fil-Aunsel suggested has a census project. And we are doing a number of things. We recently put a billboard, for example, throughout the urge people that was not too late. They could still mail back the form. Because in fact, you can't. We've been going door-to-door and handing out information about the census. Of course, we've been participating in rallies, community meetings, et cetera. So that we are, because the center recognizes how important the center is. How important the census is, rather. And so we're doing as much as we can. We did, oh, so we did phone banking also. So we're doing a variety of things to get people response to census. Ron, who's counted? How the count goes forward is always very political. And there were two Republican senators, one from the immigrant hotbed of Utah, who actually proposed not counting immigrants, even though the census cost for counting whole persons.

And slaves may have been three-first, but I think immigrants actually even in those days counted as whole persons. Why would they do that? I think this is a softball down the middle, I don't know. My sense is that there are still some people who are holding off to keep America a predominantly white country. I mean, there's the good old days, the militias, all this stuff is cropping up as President of Barack Obama's in the White House. So I think people have a sense that America ought to be like the good old days. And the good old days were days of white male power and privilege. But immigrants should be counted. There is some concern in immigrant communities, because there's fear of the government. And maybe sharing information about neighbors who are undocumented, even though the undocumented are supposed to be counted also. And in the city of New York, in particular, in the African community, there's a tremendous influx of Africans. And I know that organizations like the African, Continental African, is right, the Benjamin of Free film with the African Federation groups like that have made a vigorous, vigorous

effort to mobilize and organize the African constituency to be counted, because it does mean power. It does mean a capacity to have resources and to count within the body politic and the political economy of the country. In New York state, where somebody is counted is also very political. I mean, you've been looking at some of the issues concerning prisoners, where upstate counties insist on counting those prisoners in those upstate counties, as opposed to where the prisoners would live, which would be the vast majority of them within the city of New York. Yes, and that's actually a census rule, they count people where they are at that instant on April 1st, so prisoners are counted, where they're imprisoned, and where that comes into play in the city is that, then, every 10 years, those numbers are used to draw political districts and unfair powers given, and actually six districts would not have qualified number-wise without having the prisoners in them.

So this year, even though it's too late, all of the census forms have gone out, Senator Eric Schneiderman and Hickey and Jeffries in the Assembly have proposed to use the numbers differently, and the census is going to release numbers in May, letting people know they're kind of separating out prisoners, and the Senators are calling for New York state to count them here, use corrections data so that their addresses are counted. And why is where somebody counted such a political shoving match? Well, for the very reason I say before, if you count someone upstate, then they get the power of state, and it's very convenient for them, because they have people locked up, can't vote, but they get to credit them, and in fact, if some of the counties upstate, they get the power in the state and for Congress from the prisoners, but when they go to redistrict their own county, they exclude them.

They say, yeah, that happens in St. Lawrence County, so they don't really want them messing up the political structure in their own county, but they're happy to use them to kind of plump up their districts upstate, so it really comes down to power. I mean, it's like a game of interest. Last time around the Republicans basically played a whole bunch of games in the state Senate to continue to control the state Senate. They put an extra seat downstate, because they lost, there was about one and a half seats, or one and two-third seats, should have been moved downstate. So they throw a seat downstate, which caused tremendous troubles, because they had to redraw and affect every district downstate, and then they very carefully crafted all of the districts upstate to be light, all the district downstate to be heavy, and they basically moved to two-thirds of a seat upstate. And so those are the kind of games that go on in the redistricting, and it sounds like games of interest, but holding on to the state Senate, which the Republicans were able to do with that for several years, it gives tremendous power. I think-

You know, and when you talk about the eradication of the Free Fest compromise, then if you really think about it, it's the same kind of formulation, because in effect, those communities downstate, in which most of the prisoners come, are essentially being deprived. There's some form, a half or three-fifths, a record, is two-thirds, because they are being deprived of the kind of power and capacity they would have if the prisoners were kind of there, and it's really institutionally racist, really, because many of those, many of the people from the downstate area are overwhelmingly black and Latino, so these communities, which are some of the poorest communities, are being deprived of representation. What you- in Brooklyn, you have very large Caribbean communities, significant undocumented communities, significant numbers of immigrants who are not yet citizens. Is there this fear of the knock on the door that you have to go up against? Yeah, so of course there's this fear of the knock on the door, a lot of people's have a distress of the government, and right for the slow given out history is Ron has alluded to. There's this fear of the knock of what will happen to the information. People fear, for example, that the information will be disclosed, even though the information

is not or need to say this, is that by law for 72 years, the information cannot be released. And it will- and it has not really been released within that time period. So there's that fear, but then there are a lot of other factors besides just the immigrants and the fear that they are identity, they are their status, will get into the hands of the government, and if they're undocumented, they might be arrested and deported. But there's also people living in situations where they may not- they probably not suppose to live like people- you're living in public housing, for example, and you're not supposed to be there, public housing has a lot of draconian rules included in one of the others that if you're convicted of a felon, you cannot live in the public housing.

So somebody is living there, they're not gonna put that person down, for example. So our challenge has been to get out to people that the information is confidential. It's the census is confidential and that's really, I mean, our major challenge is been there. Eric, there is no question, there are only ten questions on the form I've got at all. The question didn't ask me about immigration status, it didn't ask me about a lot of the kinds of things that Joan has talked about. Yeah, but I think some of the people I've talked to, the census has made an unprecedented outreach this year with groups like yours and all over, and some of the things they say is that people aren't even gonna open this form to get to the questions, you know? It's not addressed, it just is addressed to resident and if you're living somewhere where the mail's just collected downstairs, how are you gonna know, you know what this means? You know what? It's a sort of way, cause I'm gonna have anything about this a great deal because as I said before, I was in a meeting with Secretary Gary Locke and I mean, there was a...

Who is this? Who is the secretary? I mean, it's over on the set on the conference, over she's for the census. And I gotta say that there was, we jousted about some things and how much money's going to the black press and newspapers and so forth and so on. Perhaps more boots on the ground is a more effective means, but the tremendous amount of money being invested for media, a tremendous amount of money being invested. I mean, you can't turn from not seeing the census and in a way, I also think there's the kind of cynicism about government, not just fear of government, but you know, it's almost like people don't believe the hype. I mean, this is really going to improve my streets, is this really going to improve my school? It's almost like a sense that it's like a political campaign, oh, that's right. What we hear you're going to give us, but it's really not going to happen. I mean, because it's almost, it's very difficult to understand why in the face of all of this publicity and all of this effort that people are still responding to just only a slightly higher rate than they did 10 years ago. But it is working because New York City has now exceeded what it had last time in male participation rate.

And by the end of the month, it'll probably be four or five percent above, it's right now it's two percent above, it went just one above yesterday and in the country, it's one percent below and it's going to go up over it. I mean, they expect that they're going to have to go door to door. And I think I personally think that their outreach campaign has been very, very good. And I think also, you know, some of the students in the audience, if your families haven't filled out the census, you should follow, there's a great ad with door at the explorer who takes a family's form and puts it in the mailbox. And so if any of you, if any of you are in households where they have the census hasn't been filled out, I suggest that you take it from your parents, fill it out and take it to the mailbox. It is, it's mailed back free. So I really do think that their outreach has really reached much deeper this time than last time. I think partially because they have these micro campaigns targeting various groups, targeting various segments of the population, you know, another group that doesn't fill it out are college students, particularly those living in dorms, Williamsburg is very low.

And there you have Orthodox Jews and a bunch of hipsters. My guess is that hipsters don't like to fill out the census, you know. So there's all, you know, it's a very complicated thing in New York and then the wealthy black neighborhoods. I think that one of the issues that we face is that there's a lack of education about the census still. You're not standing all those ads. Is that, for example, people don't know that the enforcement of the civil rights laws, for example, it's a tie to census data. And people don't know that. Well, if they know what the civil rights laws are. Right. They know what the civil rights are like. We talked about redistricting, but how much do people understand about what redistricting is and how important it is. People don't really understand all that. So I think that, you know, those of us who are advocates and organizers, and we still have a lot of education to do. Yeah. Do we really have to educate people? It's not only, you know, we talk a lot about immigrants and immigrants not filling it out. But in fact, I mean, I as my understanding Washington Heights, which is a community of

predominantly immigrants, has a pretty big deal. Yes. They're high. They're up there around Staten Island. And last time, you know, New York, the census figures out what's hard to count. And they're basically say, you know, immigrant neighborhoods, but last time it was really the native born black neighborhoods that were low in New York, not in the rest of the country, but in New York. And I thought this was due to Giuliani, frankly, because you see, you know, the census is kind of, you know, it's a city operation, which still may or anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Giuliani was married. I don't think that, you know, he didn't like the blacks of blacks in like him. Whereas Giuliani had said at one point he loved all immigrants, legal or illegal. So he was like very immigrant friendly, not very black friendly. And I think that, but you know, if the black, a responsibility, especially in the areas of high income blacks and high lay educated blacks like Laurelton is low again, you know, I think that really bears looking at you were in meeting with Secretary Locke, you said that the issue of prisoners where prisoners should be counted came up, tell us a little bit about that.

Well, I think across the country, people feel, as I said before, that this is unfair. And you is, there's no question that one of the most neglected areas in the last 30 years or so has been the urban inner city areas has been virtually no public. There's been no urban policy to speak of. And so if you don't have, if you have an undercount in these areas and in most instances as we see in the state of New York, there's 12 or 13, 14 census tracts that you can do an overlay of minority status and income, poverty index, and these are the people who are going upstate to prison. So it's probably not much different all across the country. So there was sort of a chorus of people saying this has to be changed. In fact, they were trying to see whether it could be done by executive order. Obviously, that was resisted. But I wouldn't be surprised that there, I mean, there's going to be a push on that for the next time around, because it really does mean that that $400 billion a year that's being allocated and the question of political power, which is so urgently needed by underserved communities, find themselves short-change because of the way in which prisoners are asked

to account it or not counted in relationship to where they actually live. I mean, yeah. But the last number is I saw, since I read the economists, that's one of my passions. And they recently had a story in this census pointing out that, I think it was in 2008. It was $447 billion a federal assistance Medicaid, those kinds of programs that were tied to this census and $420 billion in federal grants, but you know, it's the old, every darks in line for those of you who have no idea who ever darks in it. There's some said, a billion here and a billion there pretty soon you're talking about real money. Is that in people's minds? They say $3,000 a person is the amount of federal funding that comes. The cup that is linked to census. Is this elected officials are aware of that? Or people that you talk to them, when you go around it, does anybody ever bring that up? I think there's a few people that will bring it out of that telling my sons to fill it out and we need more playgrounds, but it's tough to see a tie.

I wanted to say one thing about elected officials, I think that elected officials have still have a role to play in educating people about the census. I don't think they've entirely rose to that challenge. For, you know, I understand that there was one Senate, the State Senate, who was named I won't mention, but who did a robo called to everybody in his district, which I thought was a great thing, and that, you know, to the extent that people do, some people do listen to elected officials, a lot of people don't, so you have to wave that. But the elected officials, I think, could be doing more about this. One of the issues, of course, that was a major discussion in the 2000 census. I haven't heard it quite as much here, and I think there haven't been some changes, is the idea of a statistical measure as opposed to a headcount. I mean, the Constitution says, as the Constitution says two things, one, it says actual

enumeration, and it also says, as the Congress shall set by law. So depending on which phrase you want to take, it seems as if, you know, one side or the Republicans who have an inch have a political interest in a lower count is because they are assuming that the kinds of demographics you're going to see in the lower count areas will serve them as opposed to Democrats who are saying we want more people counted because that will translate into votes for us. But what is the status of the allowability of statistical sampling? Well, it's interesting, because a statistical sampling was found to be not required, you know, before Congress can do it, so it's clear that the Supreme Court knocked it out in the 2000 census. And so, unless Congress decided that they were going to demand it at statistical sampling, there's- I'll do that clause in the Constitution. Yeah, well, this is a Supreme Court's interpretation, so there's not going to be statistical sampling.

The interesting thing, though, is that there's another procedure called alic imputation, which means that if someone's not there, they may fill in. And the Utah, this is like, this is how it gets. Utah was the last state that didn't get a congressional seat, so they lost the seat to North Carolina last time. So they immediately went to court. First argument, you didn't count the Mormon missionaries who were overseas. You should have counted the Mormon missionaries. Supreme Court said, you should have asked sooner, you know, so then they went back and they said, you shouldn't allow allocation imputation, which is- which the census was done since 1940. So, Supreme Court, so after they ruled the statistical adjustment was illegal, was not required. They went ahead with an allowed allocation imputation, which is basically an adjustment procedure. And their argument was, well, you've done it for, you know, you've done it since 1940, so obviously it's fine. So it's kind of, you know, so it's really kind of a mixture of custom and statistics. So, and I think the other point I want to make about the census, the 1990 census done

by the Republicans, done bought with, done under Bush 1, done, the Commerce Secretary was the guy went on to run his campaign, his losing campaign in 1992. There was a recommendation for statistical adjustment in 1990, and the entire Census Bureau staff was for it, and it was turned down by the guy who went on to be George Bush's campaign manager. So, because they would have counted more, I mean, New York would have had another quarter of a million. When the 2000 census came out, and I remember this very well, we had a pool, and Clinton, Bill Clinton was in, and they had Ken Pruitt was a director, and they had lost the statistical adjustment argument. And I remember when the census came out, and I know everybody here is too young except for Bob and I to remember this, but there used to be a store, there used to be a TV show in New York called the Naked City, and it had this tagline.

There are 8 million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them, but in fact, it was only in 2000 that New York exceeded 8 million, and we had a pool. I was working with the Times on the census coverage, we had a pool about what it would come in. No one took above 8 million. We all were shocked. When the 2000 census came in, they found 8.2 million more people in the United States than had been estimated by the Bureau, and it was just like shocking, and most of them were in places like New York, Chicago, coastal cities, cities with heavy minority. So the 2000 census was actually very good, and there was a recommendation not to adjust the 2000 census, and I suspect that this census, because the people running it are really excellent, Bob Groves is running it, and they have, and Pruitt's actually been involved, even though he ultimately didn't end up going back, and so I think we're going to have a very good census.

I mean, I actually do. I think we're going to exceed last time a participation rate, it looks like New York's doing better. I mean, New York's already ahead. The country is 1% below, but the country is still ahead of the country, me, me, people are going to be ahead of that, because it's hard to count New York. It's easy to count places where you have mom and pop and two kids. That's really easy to count, where you have minorities, people who live in the hipsters living in their houses, where there's five of them are sharing room, roommate, apartment, all of the illegal twos and threes, and I think the other thing I should say is that there's a person in New York who has been absolutely one of the most important in terms of getting New York. I would say roughly an extra 400,000 people, so if you're saying it's $3,000 a person, we should send him a chat for whatever that would be. I mean, it's like hundreds of millions of dollars.

It's Joe Sabo who's running the population division at the point of the department, because he did a number of things, looking at census addresses, making sure that all the addresses were kind of, that had never been done before, and I think it was, New York had an 8% growth, only half of that was real, but the other half of it was Joe, into a 9,000, 2,000. We counted something like what was it, 8,000,000, 0.03, we would just over 8 million. Yeah. How many people did they miss? I think around 100,000, this is a high awareness of the undercount, I mean, and we'll see. Of course, it's hard to measure and undercount, because how do you measure what you haven't counted? How important is that in the mayor's consciousness in the governor's consciousness? Well, the mayor's been on every, speaking to every newspaper from the ethnic press, I think every single, I was getting a schedule.

It's like every day he was talking somewhere else. And, you know, they've just been saying all they can about it, but whether or not that message gets out there, I think it's... You know, I wanted to say a word that this is not New York, but this is an example. We started about what's at stake, because a lot of us focus on Katrina, you know, and what happened at Katrina. And there's a lot of focus on New Orleans now, and because what's at stake there is, you know, how many particularly African Americans left who are never coming back, who can't get back. And what are the implications for that in terms of the mayor's race, when you now have had a flip in the ratio of, well, you know, the white mayor for the first time, not that blacks would not vote for white mayor, in fact the majority of them did. But even if someone in like Mary Landru, I think it's Mary Landru, it matters in terms of a reliable democratic base, whether that's been chipped away, chipped away at, because you now have, you know, 100,000 blacks who are living at land, another 100,000 who may be living in Houston or 50 or so, you know, so it doesn't matter, it really does matter

in lots of different ways, because if you look at red states, blue states, what's going on in the Senate, you know, these census numbers and whose counts and whose gets counted and who doesn't get counted, you know, can have really, really a serious impact. I mentioned the senator from Utah as one of the senators proposing not the cat, not the cat immigrants, the other one was Vitter, who was the senator from the region. Well, he wanted to hang on to one congressional seat, because if it turns out, I actually got really heavily mixed up in that, because if it turns out that, they did not count immigrants or they would have, it would have actually got preserved Louisiana seat. And in fact that the idea of not counting immigrants is back, there's a not counting them for redistricting is back, there's a case coming out of Texas and where they don't want to count immigrants and if they did it, it would have to have the stating effect, both on New York, because we can lose an extra couple of congressional seats, but it would also have amazing effect since, it's turnily, I mean, in New York City is about 38% immigrant.

So they don't count the immigrants or they don't count the immigrants or they're undocumented. I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. It's not a bitter, we're talking about that citizens. Yeah, not a citizen, but if they did that, I mean, it would all go up, you know, the power shifting up state into the suburbs would be unbelievable. Yeah. I had upstate states. that, while if prisoners are counted up statewide on document immigrants counted, you know, they're making the argument that they are inflating on mercy. No, that is there, but that's there. I mean, it's just like right there, I want to redistrict a conference in Texas, and it's like, it just bubbles blow the surface. The other issue is for redistricting purposes, whether in that, and the construction of districts, as should be citizens or voting age population. Well, it's usually, I think the law is pretty clear that it's citizens of voting age population. Well, no, but the districts are drawn by raising the district. Yeah, the size is that they're drawn by the proof, if you have an effective majority, it's citizens of voting age population. But in terms of, they don't, you know, when they count people, they just count people and how they do it.

No, they count people. But if you're calling about like, what's the minority district, you have to have 51% citizens of voting age. And otherwise, it's not really minority district, and like there's a district in Jackson Heights, it's like that, it's 65%, it's basically 65% Latino. But if you throw in citizens of voting age population, Latino, it's like 44%. When you talk about redistricting, of course, you do also have, you know, it's very telling that we had what, 18 and a half million people in New York state counted in the 2000 census. And you were able to break those people up in such a way that you had a 65-seat Democratic majority in the state assembly at a two-seat Republican majority in the state Senate, which tells you something about the power, skill, and talent of partisan, a partisan map makers. So the census is really not an issue in terms of, in terms

of gerrymandering and how you draw those districts. That's really an internal state. Well, you're used to something like that, and I'm using the census data. Well, they use the census data. But yeah, when you talk about 72 years also that people's information will not go out, I've always wanted to try to figure out how I could track down. I've never done it, but I was wanted to track down my grandfather's census. Oh, OK. But I'm going to make a correction to that. The person I could get my census forms, for example. I'm 72 years ago. No, no, I'm 12 years ago. Well, from 2000 by paid $65. And we also want to get the message out to immigrants that in the event of immigration reform and immigration reform is usually tied to residents in the country. And one way you can prove your residence in the country is if you feel that the census form. Very interesting now. And so if you feel that the census form got an official certified copy of your census form,

you could use that to show the USCIS that you were in fact in the country. So we try to get that message out. Because that's the one time, the privacy, it applies to the schools of your information to others. You can get your information back if you want. But the test, then you have had to fill it out. You have to have to fill it out truthfully. There was one, I should say, you know, give a fictitious name. I couldn't count my cat. No, no, no. I think they'll go take the edit check your cat and they'll get rid of their cat. The thing is, the 72 year rule, they actually released the whole schedule. And there was one time it was delayed, which is actually quite interesting. It was delayed by Strom Thurman. And the reason he delayed it is he, it was showed that he had black blood in his family and he didn't want this coming out. So he got all of the census is delayed for like two or three years. So that's everybody he shared from the Senate. Yeah, well, they get real nervous about them.

They're going to go to questions of you and tell us your name and your campus. Adam Hawkezer from Queens College. I don't know if you mentioned exactly how much the government spends on the advertisement campaign plus sending people out to get it. Wouldn't it be cheaper and more efficient just to say everyone who returns the census gets like $100 or $500 or some type of thing? Wouldn't that money be better used and much more efficient? Well, that's interesting. I would, I just have mine in, I think. But of course you realize if you do $100 at 300 million people, you're talking about what, $30 billion. I'm, you know, I think they're spread 30, but I think it's well like 10 or 12 on the, on the, on the, on the census. There were, you know, I mean, especially in New York City, you're talking about, you know, the programs that pay kids to stay in school and there's a certain, you know, in the, the certain, you know, you pay kids to take tests and stuff like that. So was that, I mean, what's results? I mean, are there incentives?

You know, I mean, you know, unlike voting, the census is mandatory. Response on the census is mandatory. It's not an option. You can't not do it. So, is there any, yeah, I mean, is there any? But it actually becomes really there, there are, in some ways you might argue there are group incentives in the sense that, you know, blacks, Latinos, categories of people. And that in some way may be the, the, the difficulty because as I said earlier, some people don't see how it, you know, what's the individual consensus? Is it actually going to help me? I mean, because the appeal is, you know, to your community and so the appeal is made, but again, a lot of people for fear of the government and or I think some apathy about how does it particularly affect me, don't do what they ought to do. The census for the first time and I'm not sure I understand this is making much more aggressive and actually incorporating church groups and groups outside, you know, NGOs, non governmental groups and non-profit, but there's, there's an official role

for them this year. Yes, yeah. And they partnered with the gay and lesbian community all sorts of different places. At how is that, I mean, I think they're appealing to people's identity, I don't know if I've done it, sense of identity that we count, here's our numbers and many people I talk to have trouble with the race question on the census form and felt like if there was something I could count to know that I'm being counted as a member of the community I identify with, I'd be more likely to fill out the form actually. That's another big issue, actually. That's another one that sort of bubbled up, you know, particularly in the African American community, I can give the caties our African American, Negro and Black and then some people who want to be able and then across the board, people want to be able to at least write in or have an expansion of the ways in which you can self-identify, somebody because America's becoming increasingly diverse. There are many, many more people who are coming, but that is an issue that some people feel very agitated about.

Well, they do have, I mean, they dealt with the issue of mixed race in the 2000 census and I guess that's kind of become somewhat institutionalized, isn't it? Yeah, you can check as many boxes as you want. I do think there is a session though because you take Asian, you know, it says Chinese, Japanese, that's nothing. That's really an origin question, it's not a really race question, you know. And well, Hispanic is not a race question. Yes, no, no, no, but I mean, but they're race, but Asian is part of the race question and they have a whole list. Then they have, you know, Indian grouping and then they have a whole list. So the real, the problem with this I think is that there is a kind of a mixture of race with origin, with Hispanic. I have an Mexican student in my class and she brought up her form and she wanted to know what race is she? And I said, well, most Mexicans say they're white, which is true, but 95% say they're white. But it is interesting because, you know, there's this notion in the United States, black, brown, and white. You know, it's like a factor's, fact, the benediction at the Obama,

the Obama inauguration, the guy went and did a sort of a gloss on the very famous big built bronzy tune, black, brown, and white, which, you know, used to go if you're, if you're white, it's all right. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, get back, get back. And he said, when the yellow could be mellow and this and that, and the white will do the right. I think I got a lot of people angry. But basically, I think that there is a real problem with that because people want to put down the real origin. There's people in my class, like people from Greece, do not have a term for race. You know, I have them in my class. So, you know, they don't know what I mean. But also, one of the things I think the census tells us is, you know, I remember covering the 1990 census and I actually covered it when I was still a reporter, when I was still a news day and the 2000 census. And you realize that in the 1990 census for the first time Puerto Ricans were, I guess maybe the 1980 where Puerto Ricans

for the first time were less than 50% of Latinos as partly because of the huge Dominican influx. That number is continued to go down where Puerto Ricans now comprise maybe 35% of Latinos. And this is an example of how demography drives politics. Puerto Ricans are citizens. Right. It's not an, you know, all of a sudden when you have a majority of Latinos being Dominicans, Mexican, Salvadorans, Ecuadorans, all of a sudden immigration moves up on the, or it moves up on the issue barometer. Because so demography drives, you know, drives a lot of these issues. And I think that, you know, I mean, I lived in Brooklyn, how, you know, the idea of, you know, white people, Bulgarians in the Irish are white. What does that tell me if you have, you know, African Americans, you have Caribbean, you have English-speaking Caribbean, you have Haitians, there's, you know, there were divisions. You had, and now you have the huge African, you know, huge African immigration, just as you have

in Latinos, Asians, you know, I mean, you know, people, you know, people, you know, pallet, you know, pallet, Palestinians, people from Saudi Arabia, people from Iraq are in the same categories, people from China and Japan. So there is a limitation to what this kind of, you know, these, these broad categories. Yes ma'am, I'm rambling, I'm sorry. That's okay. My name is Jennifer Cipe that I go to John Jay College. You were speaking before about the effectiveness of the forms and the knocking on door to door. Would you agree that maybe a proposed collaboration between city agencies and the federal government regarding what help people apply for? Could that help in making sure that the census is effective not only through letters, but by double checking databases that are available? You want to, who wants to tell me? Well, they, well, they draw cross-check the addresses, but I think cross-checking the person against a database would be the kind of thing that would drive people nuts. I mean, you know, it's kind of like that. Yeah, really, you know, like, oh, I've noticed that you, you know, I've noticed you haven't filled out your census form.

Do you really want to stay in this public housing unless you fill out your census form? The only group that I know that has ever done anything like that are the hissinem who, I heard this story about it one time in a acidic area. They had a turnout of 100%. Two people didn't vote. They went and knocked on the door and said, why didn't you vote? And they all voted for the same candidate too. I mean, you know, so voting is different. You're, you know, you can go and look at the poll. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's that, yeah. But I don't think we've seen that all the same. I think we want an privacy that you don't ask. I think one of the most, and again, this meeting with Secretary Locke, one of the things that we're talking about, because you can hire census workers. And they, they then come representing themselves as census workers that's also seen as government. The most effective way to do it is to hire census workers, but to hire them from the, the underserved tracks themselves. So actually, your neighbor is coming to you as opposed to somebody coming from outside. Well, they don't usually want the neighbor. They want someone like the neighbor, because, you know, you don't really want like your neighbor's snoopin' on you, you know?

So they actually are careful about that. Like they don't know, they don't hire your next or neighbor to come snoop on you. So the person from the next block. Yeah. Well, I'm the same with another community. And they're still a neighbor is what people kind of generally know each other and so forth and so on. And maybe more effective at encouraging people to do it. How persistent are they? Well, they, I think they can come six times, right? Yeah, yeah. And I did talk to people who are applying for the job. And they, some were a little nervous about it. About going into the paint houses and stuff, right? Because you have to go into, and literally knock on doors. Yeah. Yeah. I'm from the government that I'm here to help you. Yes. Good evening. My name is Carlime. I'm from Begga, I was college. Given the history of race and politics as nation, how and why should people of color believe the height about the benefits of participated assistance? Well, I'll start with that. Why should we believe the height? Because in fact, it's not height. It's true.

And I would, we could talk all night. And I could talk all night that I grew up in the south in the days of when Jim Crow was still a lot of lands. I know full well the history of this country and how we've been treated. But the fact of the matter is that the census is totally confidential. We need those resources in our community. And we need the representation. And it has been shown that that representation has, I mean, it has help with respect to enforcement of the voting rights act. We've gotten more so-called minority districts. And those districts, the construction of this has been based on census data. And it's not, and also I would like to say, because I understand how people fill it out with government. But you know, there are the 10 questions. If you look at the 10 questions, the information you give in the government as first of all, they know the information. So you have a self-scary number. Yes.

Where did you get that self-scary number from? Right. So you give more information on internet. And you're in a public university. Right. You people give more information on the internet Twitter, Facebook, than the census is asking. So at a certain point, you got to say, hey, hold up. You know, let's be real about what's happening here. It's really counterproductive, because we can't under one hand, talk about being underserved underrepresented, not having enough resources and sort of knocking on the door. And yet have this opportunity to get counted and therefore get resources. I mean, it's really very counterproductive not to do the census. Well, it's very obvious who doesn't want to once you count it. And they're not your fellow African-Americans. They're the Senator, Senator Bennett, people upstate who would just assume you'd not be counted. I mean, you know, so you have to think about that. I mean, they don't want you to count. Yes, ma'am.

Good evening. My name is Karen Wind. I'm from maybe ever college. My question is, how are men that are still living in Ami's counted, and how difficult would it be to count prisoners that way? Very good question, the military. Well, there's two ways they count the military. If you're living in the United States, they count you like anybody else on the base, where you're residing, and that seems reasonable, because I mean, the thing about the prisoners is they can't leave. So they're called involuntary soldiers and not really residents. But if you're on a base or you're in a college, you can leave the dorm. They don't lock you up. But if you're overseas, they count you. And you can pick the state you're in. And this is actually only done for reapportionment. So there's an actual group added to all of the states of military abroad that's used to allocate the congressional seats. And that is a little fishy, but they do do that. So each state has a small number of overseas military.

And that's actually why Utah is so angry. Because they didn't have enough overseas military, whereas North Carolina had more overseas military. But they said, well, we're going to give you our missionaries. You know. Yes, sir. Hi, my name is Samine from Brooklyn College. It's really interesting to hear the debate around people not being counted. And I'm just wondering why there are no initiatives in schools to teach kids about the importance of census. We're taught to value our ten amendments. The right to free speech, the right to this, the right to bear arms, the right to double. You know, we can't be trying to get in court. We're taught all this in school. But we're never taught the importance of being counted, the importance of participating. We're taught the constitutional amendments and stuff. You know, 13th, 14th, 15th. But we're not taught about. I can't, I can't, no, I have two kids in public school. I don't remember if anything came home. They did have a census in school. Yeah, they do.

They did have a, they did have a law of great. I don't know about the college. So they have it up through high school. But I don't remember, you know, we get so much stuff that comes home. God knows we haven't, you know, and you try to get through it. I don't remember. I mean, do you know what they sent us? And I just don't tell the, you know, don't tell my principal. Well, it may be that they didn't do it in your school, but they definitely have a program to target. Because this time around, they're trying to target everybody. I mean, they really truly are. I mean, it's like, like this might this be different if it was a Republican president? Absolutely. I mean, what, I mean, what do they? Sure. No, it was. Last time we had a Republican president running a census, which was in 1990, they did count the cities very well. I mean, you know, there were still, they were still in court in 1980. They didn't do very well either. I mean, you know, though that really was coming out of Carter. So I mean, I do think that there's a big effect, you know, what you're making partnerships left and right. And I know one of the other big changes is they decided to count

same-sex couples and will publicly release the data where before the government had said to him, that's not something we're going to talk about. There's no puzzle cue question. Puzzle cue was a person of options that's sharing living quarters. Yes, there is. We're going to take a person at asks you what the release is. But it asked you about unmarried, right? Didn't they say, well, no, no, no, that's like, if you put down your, the, you know, so who's ever person one, is it called person of column one for that it was called head of household, but that, but if you've been on person one, then it says person two, what's your relationship to person one? That's right. So if you're married to person one and you're the same sex of person one, presumably that's the same sex couple, they did put out unmarried partner same sex last time. But they, I think it was that you could, you could request that out about it wasn't part of what the, the sense is publicly released. No, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, like there's certain parts of New York where there's a high proportion of, you know,

unmarried partner female, which is actually part slope. There's part of New York where there's a high proportion of unmarried partners, male, which is of course, Greenwich Village and there's a demographer at on California, Gary Gates, who actually use that to estimate the gay population, using it back estimate it very. No, no, that was the first time it was done, or I was in two days, yes ma'am. Hi, good evening, my name is Coral Singleton and I'm from Mega Evers College. And my question will be, when centers employees are selected, do you think that it will be better if individuals share a common ancestral relationship with the population that are receiving sensors information? Do they try to do, I mean, you talked about the importance of ethnic slash racial matching for one of a, for one of a better, for comfort of the person who's going to get that knock on the door? Do they, I mean, do they do that? Is that a, is that a conscious? I think they've been just recruiting in certain neighborhoods.

I don't know if they have a, No, they have a conscious, there's a, there wasn't a conscious policy to send people more to it. To the house that are similar, they'd absolutely do that. And as I mentioned before, I mean, when they tried to come up the Upper West Side, they had a very hard time finding rich matrons that could go door to door and count the rich matrons of the Upper West Side, Upper East Side. And by the way, the worst sense is tracked right now in New York, Trump Tower. And Donald Trump's source of a done, he didn't get a form. I don't care if they don't count that. I don't know if Donald doesn't really care either. Yeah, I mean, counts anyway, yes sir. My name is Arsalan, I attend John Jay College, and my question is, the census is somewhat very political. How do you make it a less political and more community-based and do have the political, elected representatives, do a better campaign of targeting their constituency and telling them, oh, you need to fill us out for this and for this, you can make it more community-based.

I mean, it's political both in the way it's carried out and in the way it's used. I mean, how much of politics, you know, this is almost an obvious question. I mean, how much of politics drives this? Wow. It's politics, I mean, it is politics. I mean, the actual count, I mean, you know. Well, it's politics in this sense. I mean, there's some people, unfortunately, who believe in a more expansive democracy and want to include a lot more people and there's other historical who wanted to restrict it. And so unfortunately, that is through that prism that people do their policies. And so if you have an administration and want some more restrictive democracy, then it's not going to be too interested in getting immigrants registered or perhaps people of color or certain categories of people. And that may have been reflected in some of the previous attempts. I can't say this time, and I know certain African Americans have been very disgruntled along those lines, but in the meeting we had again with Secretary Locke, I mean, again, we had our little points

and grievances and so forth and so on. But overall, we left, I mean, even before that, we went into the meeting with them a sense that there had been a shift. This was an administration that really wanted to get as many people counted as possible. We weren't arguing over the strategic objective. We were arguing over the tactics. You know, I mean, how many people are young from the ground, this, that, and the other. But there's a sense that this administration really wants to get it done. One of the political, even people who work in the sense, a sense are quite aware of the politics of the situation. And a number of them have, both Republicans' Democrats have called for kind of taking the census out of the commerce department, setting it up as an independent bureau, presumably, this is almost mirrors the redistricting argument beyond the reach of politics. Is that, is that gonna go anywhere? Is that reasonable? What people are people who are in power now are gonna be reluctant to give up that power? I think it's very reasonable. And then the 2000 census, which was done by Pruitt and then they fired him, you know, when Bush came in.

So he didn't get to stick around for the release. And I just thought that, you know, and you could play a lot of games with that part of the census as well. So I do think that they should probably try to move it to an independent entity, you know, with fixed terms and all that kind of stuff. Because having a sit under the commerce department, it doesn't really make a heck of a lot of sense when you think about it. But would that make any difference would that make it less political? I think it would make it, well, see, the problem is it's always gonna be political because the Republicans, I mean, you know, you set it and I think it's correct. And it's a horrible thing to say, but it's true. Republicans really don't want to count everybody because it's not in their political interest. Democrats, it's tremendously in the Democrat's interest as overall, like sometimes Democrats don't like to have new groups. I mean, that's also true. But overall, it's very much the Democrats' interest to count everybody. And so it's in the Democrats' interest. They actually have the best census possible with the best methods possible. It's in the Republican interest to not.

And that really played out, I think, in 90 because they really, you know, it was so clear. The Census Bureau staff was saying, you should adjust and it was squashed by the guy going to run Bush's campaign. I mean, how much more do you need? I think one way to maybe take it down and not from the politicizing would be to maintain some of these relationships with the community groups that they started and so then it becomes something that they're used to doing every 10 years as opposed to. Partly the problem is that it's every 10 years people forget by year one. Right, exactly, yeah. Well, there is the long form which used to be part of the census, so every six person would get my long form a couple of times. Well, it would not get 10 questions when we get 52. They have moved the long form into a different system. It's called the American Community Service. So they're now basically asking people to answer a subset of people to answer the long form all the time. And they bundle the data.

Yes, ma'am. My name is Millie Gonzalez and I'm from Burrow, Manhattan Community College. And I've actually been hired by the census as an emirator. And so my question to you is when I go door to door, how do I convince the person on the other side that doesn't want to open the door for me to give me the information? Let me turn the tables on you. What are they telling you about that? About that situation. Well, actually, one of the things that I've heard is exactly what to the panel has been saying is, what is it going to do for me? That's exactly the questions that I get from a lot of the people that we've been asking. Because I've actually been working at a lot of the shelters. And a lot of the people at the shelters are, what is it going to do for me? You've talked about a homeless shelter. The homeless shelters are pantry. Because 20 years ago, I covered the first attempt. I think it was under the Dinkins administration to actually count homeless people. I remember roaming around the still well air in your station when they were going into corners of the station to try to get a count.

So it's a very good question. I mean, it's a good reflection of some of the training and some of the questions. Does that make, does anyone want to tackle the question? Or what do you take from what you just said? Well, I guess if you're not a bill collector, that would be my first. Yeah. I don't know if you know that's say you're not from ICE. You're not from ICE, you're not from ICE. You're not from ICE. You're not from ICE. And I bet you'll get good at it as, you know, by your fifth door. But it is. I mean, but it is a question. I mean, you're basically imposing on somebody's privacy in a city which is a bit protective about its space. And, yeah. So you're probably, it's just like getting slave pictures, you know? You get away. You got to be smile. You got to be cheerful. You can't. But you get sent pictures a lot at a table on a street. No, not the best ones are door to door. Yeah, you know, and I guess after a while, you discover you'll find the line that seems to resonate and opens the door as most. And so you just have to, by trial and error,

you'll find a set of questions or an approach that most people are going to respond to. So they'll do it to you. And I think that if you get that, that's a skill that you can then use to run for city council. So there are a fair reporter or anything like that. It's a good skill that I have. We have about 30 seconds left. How many people are going to count it in New York City? And we have about 8.03 million. I say 8.3. You think it'll be up to 8.3 million? And how many people will they miss? You know, they'll probably miss 80,000. And then there'll be a number of largely quite rich people that will be counted twice once in New York and once at their other house. Yes. I want to thank you all. And I'm going to give Andrew the last, the last word. Thank you all. We'll see you next time on the Q&A forum. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.