North Carolina residents protest skewed electoral boundaries with 'Gerrymander 5K' race

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There's going to be a race this weekend in Asheville, N.C. But a warning to would-be runners: you might want to pick up a map.

That's because the Gerrymander 5K follows the same strange path as the community's electoral boundaries.

J.P. Kennedy is a local artist and distance runner who organized the race with his wife.

As It Happens host Carol Off spoke with Kennedy about the race and why he thinks strategic gerrymandering has split the Democratic vote in his city. Here is part of their conversation.

Just how much does the route of this race meander?

If you look at it kind of on a statewide level and see the route you can kind of see it juts between these two congressional districts, 10 and 11, out of one, and then through the centre of Asheville.

I think "juts" is an understatement — it's quite bizarre when you see it.

I think it's the quintessential example, not of gerrymandering by race, but gerrymandering by politics. Whoever drew the maps, whatever they used, is done specifically to split progressive Asheville votes in two.

We used to have a Democratic Congressman as our representative, Heath Shuler, and then in 2010 they split our votes directly down the middle — down the middle of West Asheville, which is kind of the progressive centre of Asheville, down the middle of University of North Carolina Asheville to split the college votes. It's very deliberate splitting of progressive votes. 

These are districts. These are voting congressional districts for voting purposes and this line is the demarcation line. What are the consequences of having that bizarre border line?

So HB2 was the transgender bathroom law, which made transgender people unable to go to the bathroom of where they were aligned. It was very kind of nasty and petty. Then when I fought that I was like, "Who can I speak to? Who is my representative?"

And when we had the Muslim ban at the start of the Trump presidency. I was like,"I'm going to walk into my congressional office and say this doesn't represent me," which I did. But then, because these are safe districts for conservative congressmen, you can't change the needle. Your voice, or your ability to walk into an office, or send an email, or make a phone call, is not going to change any political views, or votes or influence.

And like I said, we're in Asheville, Black Mountain. This is the heart of the progressive in western North Carolina. This is where the progressive votes are. It's an extremely liberal community. The Muslim ban doesn't represent me and to have a letter back from the congressman two weeks later saying some vanilla language that this is how we're keeping America safe just didn't feel as if it was representing, not only me, but representing the opinions of my neighbours, or of my coworkers, of the parents I meet at school with my kids. This wasn't representing our vision of what we think America is. 

So let's get back to this 5K run. It's called the Gerrymander 5K and it will actually take the course of that boundary, of that border. What do you think people will notice as they make that run?

To actually walk the line you also get the feeling that there's been some kind of implementation, some algorithm, some computer programming, which has been very specific — this house, but not this house, this house but not this house, this block but not this house — which also is a very kind of visceral feeling of disempowerment. There's larger powers in play than the voter. 

Have you had a trial run yet of the Gerrymander 5K?

So last year, I had been looking at this after HB2 and looking at the gerrymandered line. Me and my wife were talking about how to draw attention to it. I had the idea of just chalking the line to visually show it. My wife had the smarter idea of why don't you have a 5K so people can experience it too.

It was just me and her and so we tried to get this last year before the election and couldn't organize and couldn't fund it. We had like two dozen of our friends show up at a bar in West Asheville, which is on the line. We had kid chalk and we went out and we chalked the line and stopped at another bar and had another drink and chalked some more of the line and stopped at another bar and came back and had another beer. We had a low key, low influence, art activism afternoon of drinking beer and walking the line a year ago.

How many people do you expect to turn out this weekend?

I wouldn't be surprised if we had 250 people maybe even more involved on Saturday, marking this line and walking this line.

I hope you don't lose people because it looks like you could.

Hopefully we don't lose people — either to the weird shaped line or the bars along the line — but we'll see what happens.

This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity. For more on this story, listen to our full interview with J.P. Kennedy.