Black, Brown, and White: Differing Views on Redistricting Involve More than Red and Blue

This blog post continues the focus of the Law School’s Lubar Center on redistricting

More than two colors matter in redrawing district maps.

In Wisconsin, public and media attention has focused largely on how much red and blue show up in each proposed legislative or congressional map, reflecting the partisan balance of power between Republicans and Democrats.

But redistricting is also a portrait in black, brown, and white, with district lines under scrutiny for how they affect the rights of Black and Hispanic voters to choose their preferred representatives. And as state and local redistricting debates show, federal court decisions have left a lot of gray areas in interpreting those legal rights.

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Welcome to Our January Guest Blogger!

Our Student Contributor for January is 2L Daniel Kafka. Daniel is a Milwaukee native who grew up in the Story Hill neighborhood, near what some of us still call Miller Park. He is eager to practice litigation, particularly business litigation, but may also harbor an interest in transactional law. His non-legal interests include fantasy novels, disc golf in Estabrook Park, and storyboarding a video game he hopes to create with some friends. He lives with his partner Abigail and his dog Nero (an English Bull Terrier) in the Murray Hill neighborhood. Welcome Daniel!

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Pro Bono Work Brings Law Students to Fort McCoy to Help Afghans Seek Asylum

An edited version of this piece appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on December 30, 2021.

Fort McCoy — Write down every detail of what happened to you in Afghanistan that makes you want to never go back. Write down everything you remember.

Law students Ciara Hudson and Allison Childs meet with an Afghan woman at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, to help with her immigration work.

“I don’t want to remember,” the young woman said matter-of-factly in English.

For this, you have to remember, said Malin Ehrsam, one of two Marquette University Law School students on the other side of a table. Then, when you are done, you can forget.

For the Afghan “guests,” as they are officially called, remembering is crucial – remembering the threats, the fear, the deaths or torture of relatives, the ominous daily events, the abrupt and chaotic flight about four months ago from Afghanistan, where the government had collapsed and the Taliban had taken over. After various stops, the journey brought about 13,000 of them to Fort McCoy, a military base near Tomah in central Wisconsin.

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