Community Redistricting is a series about how Michigan communities are working together to end gerrymandering so that all residents have a voice at the local, state, and federal level. This series is made possible with funding from the Michigan Nonprofit Association.
Kzoo Station: A Community Kitchen + Eatery will soon infuse new economic opportunities into Grand Rapids’ Boston Square neighborhood. SpringGR and Amplify GR, partners in the Boston Square Together project at 1445 Kalamazoo St. SE, are renovating the 1,416 square-foot shuttered Good Shepherd Auto Repair building into a commercial kitchen and multi-tenant, retail, food-business space.
The Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission will listen to public comments in Lansing and Detroit this December as they prepare to vote on the maps representing Michigan’s new political districts on Thursday, Dec. 30. Here’s how area nonprofits are approaching what could be the final month of discourse.
“Even though this was about redistricting, it was even more of a way for us to say: Number one, you’re on our lands, and you should include us in everything. And number two, we're everywhere. We're in every voting neighborhood. We're in every voting bloc. We are all over the place,” says Meredith Kennedy, executive director of the Miigwech, Inc. nonprofit organization.
We voted for this process so now we need to participate in this process,” says Norman Clement, founder of the Detroit Change Initiative, a member of the MNA coalition of nonprofits. As the public hearings near, read how Michigan nonprofits are helping their communities do just that.
“We are concerned with populations that have been historically underrepresented and have, traditionally, not been brought into these kinds of processes,” says Joan Gustafson, external affairs officer for MNA. Read about how the MNA is changing the ways in which we draw our political maps, one community of interest at a time.
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