A local redistricting battle in a New York City suburb may lead to a national fight
NASSAU COUNTY, N.Y. — In 2020, Maria Jordan-Awalom marched across an invisible line in one of the most segregated regions of the country.
After the police murder of George Floyd, she and other demonstrators took to the streets for racial justice in this New York City suburb, just east of the borough of Queens on Long Island.
There were no barricades blocking the road into the next community over, but crossing from the predominantly Latino and Black village of Freeport into the predominantly white hamlet of Merrick, their peaceful protest was met with jeers.
"Go back to where you came from!" Jordan-Awalom remembers hearing from onlookers on the sidewalk.
"It hits different when you're an immigrant, obviously," says the president of Freeport's school board, who was born in El Salvador and first moved to this village on Long Island's south shore as a teenager. "But also knowing that [they] were just angry because we were Black and brown people, that's what hurt more. We're neighbors."
Almost four years later, neighbors from the two communities are sharing the same representative in county government. That's because, in early 2023, officials in the Republican-controlled Nassau County Legislature approved a redistricting plan that drew large swaths of Freeport and Merrick into the same voting district.
The new political map has left Jordan-Awalom wondering: "What similarities do we have with the community who is telling us, 'Go back to where you came from'?"
The law firm that created the communities' fire departments providing emergency backup services for each other, plus a shared rail line and an "economic corridor" running along the same road where Jordan-Awalom marched.
