Ko Lyn Cheang photo
Complete Count Committee members Joe Ugly, Valencia Goodridge, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Bianca Bowles and Addie Kimbrough).
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro blasted the Trump Administration Wednesday afternoon for ending Census counting efforts early, a move she described as an issue of civil rights, economic justice, and racial justice.
“The census is too important to rush or to sabotage,” said DeLauro.
DeLauro joined Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, State Rep. Robyn Porter of New Haven and members of the city’s Complete Count Committee at City Hall Wednesday to urge the U.S. Census Bureau to reverse their decision to end all census counting efforts early.
“We’re here today to strongly object to the Trump Administration’s efforts to recklessly rush the 2020 Census, because doing so risks an egregious undercount of our state’s population and our country’s population,” Bysiewicz declared. “No doubt about it, the administration is trying to target communities of color, hard-to-count communities, and undocumented communities.
Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz and Mayor Justice Elicker.
The bureau announced Monday that the deadline for all counting efforts, including door-knocking would be moved forward to Sept 30 — a month earlier than the Oct 31 deadline. The bureau stated it needed to end counting earlier in order to finish all its work on the census by a Dec. 31 deadline. Speakers at Wednesday’s press conference criticized the move as a partisan attempt to exclude historically undercounted Black, Hispanic, and transient populations from the once-in-a-decade count. Twenty-five percent of Connecticut’s population is categorized as hard-to-count.
President Trump has previously made attempts to block the counting of undocumented immigrants, instructing officials not to count individuals who are undocumented and attempting to include a citizenship question on the census, which would deter undocumented immigrants from completing the census. The Supreme Court thwarted his effort to include the citizenship question and the 2020 census does not include one.
“This is nothing new. This is deja vu,” said Robyn Porter, who represents the historically undercounted and challenged 94th state General Assesmbly district. “This is not just about the census. This reminds me of voter suppression, what he is doing with the census count.”
Census information is used to determine the amount of federal aid to states and cities.
Bysiewicz said that to shorten the census count further hurts investment in the areas that need the most attention: federal school lunch and breakfast programs, Medicare, and Medicaid.
For each child who is not counted, the district loses an estimated $2,900 of school funding. If the city has a shortage of federal funds, it will have to tap into municipal funds that could otherwise address other important needs, speakers noted.
Elicker: “They moved the finish line.”
The mayor, the congresswoman and community census workers all agreed that the shortened deadline makes it significantly more challenging to achieve a complete count of all residents of New Haven.
Mayor Elicker, who is a runner, made an analogy to a marathon. “If someone told me I’m running a 5K, I need to conserve my resources so I can get my best time. If during the race someone says it is a 4K, I will not get my best time. And that’s exactly what this is,” Elicker told the Independent. “We were planning on having until the end of October to complete this, and all of a sudden someone moved the finish line.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, 50.5 percent of New Haven residents had completed the census, compared to a 63 percent nationwide response rate. Complete Count Committee members said at City Hall that the goal is to have at least 60 percent of New Haveners counted in the census.
On July 23, Census Bureau enumerators started to do their count in some of the hardest-to-count areas in the state including Hartford. They will shortly be starting their efforts in New Haven, according to Bysiewicz, who has spearheaded census efforts to the state government.
Long before bureau-trained census workers hit the pavement, volunteers and advocates from the 33 New Haven community organizations that make up the New Haven Complete Count Committee started knocking on doors, asking people to complete the census.
The committee got an early start to ensuring every resident gets counted, beginning in February 2019 to visit homes, stand on street corners, and speak to passers-by. The committee has organized more than 200 community events since January 2019.
Volunteer Addie Kimbrough has a disability but still has been hitting the streets in 100-degree heat, with her walker, to encourage people to take the census. She has encountered residents who are distrustful of the census workers but would listen to her because she is “representative of people in our community.”
Her committee colleague, Bianca Bowles, who works at the Community Action Agency, said that every person she has seen Kimbrough speak to has filled out the census.
Bowles emphasized that structural barriers like lack of outreach or technology prevent people from completing the census. “We’re not hard to count. We are just undercounted. Hard-to-count is putting the burden for people who, for no fault of their own, are inaccessible.”
“For them to cut the deadline to Sept. 30, I don’t think is fair because there are a lot of people in the community that have not done their census,” said Kimbrough. “We needed the Oct. 31 deadline.”
Watch the press conference below: