You Still Count! The state of the 2020 census

by Suzanne Hanney

Completing the census is radical resistance, spoken word artist Bella Bahhs told 35,000 Chicago youth attending the We Gon’ Be Alright virtual concert that followed a May 23 youth summit hosted by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first-ever youth commission.

“Ain’t I a woman, don’t I count? Ain’t it about time I get what’s mine?...Proactive care means calling on our community to fill out the 2020 census. I never would have thought of it as radical resistance if the Women’s Justice Institute hadn’t had it make sense. The U.S. census determines how many seats your state gets in the House of Representatives. That’s the branch of Congress that actually approved Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Bella Bahhs

Courtesy photo

“The U.S. census determines how billions of dollars in federal funding get distributed and spent,” Bahhs continued. “We need schools, jobs, offices, homes, shelters, community shelters, money to fund our businesses. I am here on behalf of all from whom I am descended. This is a head count. I have been present. They have been counting us out. Look at the resilience. I will not let you discount our experience.”

Illinois was in 8th place nationally in U.S. census response in early June, which Cook County, the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago and Forefront have termed “Census Awareness Month.”

As of June 15, Illinois had a self-response rate of 66.2 percent -- almost at its 70.5 percent finish in 2010. The Illinois returns are also ahead of the nation’s 60.8 percent average.

But officials say we could be doing better. “We want a complete and accurate count,” says Marishonta Wilkerson, director at the Illinois 2020 Census office.

Chicago’s self-response rate, meanwhile, was just 53.5 percent, with some tracts reporting only in the 30s. The lowestreporting neighborhoods include South Lawndale, North Lawndale, New City, Back of the Yards, Hermosa, West Englewood, Englewood, Pilsen, Austin and Belmont-Cragin. Throughout June, messages from the city, county and state will target hard-to-count communities: those who are underserved, those with limited English proficiency, seniors and those under age 5, homeless people, returning residents, LGBTQIA and those with a mistrust of government.

The urgency is that census results determine not only seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, but as much as $675 billion annually in federal money distributed to states for programs ranging from Medicaid to food stamps, TANF and Section 8 (see sidebar on page 11). The U.S. Constitution requires the census every 10 years and reallocates congressional seats as population shifts. Illinois could lose one seat relative to states that have gained population and a second seat if 2020's undercount is as high 2010's.

Given those high stakes, the state of Illinois spent $29 million on U.S. census outreach and education – more per capita than any other state in the U.S. – for a hub-and-spoke system of Regional Intermediaries (RIs), or “trusted messengers.” At Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s request, the Illinois General Assembly allocated an additional $14.5 million to continue this work for the current fiscal year through October 31, when census reporting closes.

The COVID-19 crisis made outreach difficult by eliminating face-to-face contact, so the RIs got creative with social media, from Zoom meetings to platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Car caravans, with autos decorated with the census message and honking their horns, have snaked through undercounted neighborhoods to get attention so community groups can do phone bank or social media follow-up. Awareness Month events include car caravans in immigrant neighborhoods planned for June 17 and for the LGBTQ community on June 29. The Illinois Black Legislative Caucus was charged with events for June 19, or Juneteenth.

StreetWise Vendor Bessie Salter encourages Census participation

Alexandria Maloney

Although a proposed question on citizenship was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, immigrants remain afraid to share personal information. Many other hard-tocount groups lack trust in government, which fuels their avoidance of the census.

Individual returns, however, are completely private, as Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said in public service announcements (PSAs). This year’s census is also the first time same-sex couples will be counted. And it is the only way to be sure communities get the federal funds for programs they need, according to PSAs by Lightfoot, by Center on Halsted CEO Modesto Tico Valle, by Equality Illinois CEO Brian Johnson and by South Asian American Policy & Research Institute (SAAPRI) Executive Director Shobana Johri Verma.

However, “The census does not collect Trans or Gender Non- Conforming people and that’s the problem we are having,” said LaSaia Wade, executive director of Brave Space Alliance, which works to politically empower queer and trans people, particularly those of color.

Brave Space is supporting census efforts by passing out small flyers in its Crisis Pantry delivery bags that encourage folks to fill out the census and be counted. “We know that despite the immense institutional violence trans people experience by being erased from the census, it is still incredibly important for us to be counted as individuals, and there are other ways on the census that we can make our voices heard, and let the government know that trans people deserve to be counted,” said Brave Space Alliance spokesperson Stephanie Skora.

Brave Space Alliance is a subcontractor to the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, which is the Regional Intermediary for LGBTQ and homeless people in the city. “What’s tricky about the population we’re working with is, it’s not strictly geographic,” said Regan Sonnabend, vice president of marketing and communications and census director at the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago.

The YWCA Metropolitan Chicago gives out free lunches at Parks Francis while educating and encouraging census participation.

Susan Stewart

The YWCA has been given the added responsibility of opportunity youth: those in New City, Englewood, West Englewood and Pilsen between 16 and 24 who are out of school and not working. These young people are not homeless, but they could be. The YWCA is also working to ensure a better count of children under age 5.

“It’s a new population but really our sweet spot,” Sonnabend said. “We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with a population that’s a big part of our daily work.”

Just the same, the atmosphere since the COVID-19 pandemic began has been charged even further by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. “The question is how do we pivot our work to focus on these hardestto-count census tracts,” she said. “We need to be up close. How do we do that when there is so much volatility, when everybody is scared of answering the door and the phone. Everyone is on edge and understandably so.” On June 10, the YWCA used food distribution at its Parks Francis Center, 6600 S. Cottage Grove Ave., as an opportunity to include census information.

“It really comes back to the concept of trusted messengers, which is why it is so great to work with StreetWise vendors,” who will spread the word where they sell the magazine but also at any housing or service providers they frequent.

“We continue to embrace that concept,” Sonnabend continued. “We have to find the right new partners. Is it schoolteachers? is it clergy? We have to find the right people to get that message out there that people will listen to and overcome those fears.”

The Women’s Justice Institute (WJI), another YWCA Metropolitan Chicago subcontractor, has been reaching out to treatment and transitional housing programs with care packages for women who are being discharged after time in the corrections system. These packages contain not only hygiene products and CO- VID masks, but information about why the census is important.

Alexis Mansfield, senior advisor, children and family at WJI, said her favorite presentation was when spoken word artist Bahhs went down to the Logan Correctional Center and told people who were being released before April 1, the official census day, that they should fill it out once they get home – not in prison.

“You have the right to be counted in your community so the money goes to your community and not some overwhelmingly white community, which will get additional congressmen and additional money because they counted people in prison who don’t have the right to vote,” Mansfield said. “Even if they get out next month, the prison has the right to count them for the next 10 years.”

Taking a page from Bahhs, she compared prison census counts to the 3/5ths compromise in the pre-Civil War South, where individual slaves had no rights and counted as less than whole people, but collectively racked up numbers for slave state representatives in Congress.

“Bella started out with her spoken word piece regarding the census and woke the crowd up,” said Melissa Hernandez, program organizer for the census project and outreach specialist at WJI. ”Then I came and did a presentation on what the census is, what’s at stake, how it affects federal programs: SNAP, Medicaid, Section 8, grants to local education agencies, national school lunch – without that program some of our children wouldn’t eat. [And also] how it represents us, what stakeholders need to know about counting people in jail, the 3/5ths compromise. Confidentiality, which is huge. People of color – brown, black people – don’t trust government because we’ve been victimized so many times by the same people who are supposed to protect us.

“Everyone was pretty grateful because they had no idea,” Hernandez said of the Logan women.

“People were so energized they said they were going to call home and tell their families it was an act of resistance,” Mansfield said.

Census information can even affect private sector planning, Mansfield said, which is why there are food deserts in parts of Chicago. “They look at population maps and if a population is undercounted, they’re not going to put something there.”

WJI emailed Mother’s Day cards to women in prison as a part of a COVID-safe event and included census info. They also partnered with two immigration organizations that are addressing issues in detention centers and spoke about the census.

“We fit right in,” Mansfield said. “We think of the census as this big dry thing when it is part of advocacy. The government is trying to get our involvement and count us but the reality is it’s something we should all care about.”

“I remember somebody saying, ‘wow, I didn’t know that.’ It was pretty common all across the board,” Hernandez said.

Her own family reacted with the same shock to the importance of the census, Hernandez said. “Our black communities are victimized every day to police brutality, the darker your skin color, the more stuff you go through. "We have to be in survival mode. Sometimes just walking out of the house is survival. When you hear ‘census’, it’s ‘don’t bother me with something so small,’ but education is key. I didn’t know the census data's effect on our community. Neither did my family.”

People who live in public housing could lose their unit if they admit they have someone who has been in the justice system living with them, which is why it is so important to convince people about census confidentiality, Mansfield said. “That’s why it’s so good Illinois has put these resources there,” she said of the regional intermediaries.

The Latino Policy Forum, meanwhile, developed a census version of the popular Mexican Loteria game, with answers matched to pictures about census importance, from representation to funding for education and services for seniors. The Forum’s other creative strategy, with the Illinois Latino COVID-19 Initiative, a.k.a. Illinois Unidos, was 5,000 bookmarks with info about the census on one side and COVID on the other, which were given to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, meanwhile, has made over 10,000 phone calls to people in low-response areas, with the likelihood of a few thousand more.

The Illinois Muslim Civic Coalition has done combined census/COVID phone banking, calling around to their community and connecting them to any resources they might need, while also reminding them of the importance of the census, according to Director Reema Kamran. Kamran was planning to lead a June 17 census caravan in West Ridge, Rogers Park and Albany Park. Neighborhood residents would be able to hear the honking horns, to follow on Facebook Live, to wave – and then to receive a follow-up phone call with assistance in filling out the questionnaire.

Elders in her community lack confidence about filling out the census online, and language is also a barrier, Kamran said. This census is offered in 13 languages, including Arabic, but not other South Asian languages. Privacy is also a huge factor.

“There is a lot of fear in these communities about their data being shared,” Kamran said, based on the proposed citizenship question that did not wind up on the census. Some of their members might be undocumented or not yet full citizens. “We do remind them the census is protected by federal law. It can’t be shared by ICE, immigration or the police, it’s safe.”

The Illinois Muslim Civic Coalition cooperates with groups like IMAN (Inner-City Muslim Action Network) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). IMAN distributes food and census information in Englewood. ICNA has a food pantry on Devon Avenue that also offers census information in Arabic, Urdu and English along with an 800-number.

But mostly, the coalition makes sure its community understands “the importance of being counted so we are represented in the political space,” Kamran said. Their outreach focuses on the $675 billion in federal programs tied to census numbers, especially programs their clients use, from school programming, to roads, to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (see sidebar page 11).

“But even getting language assistance for the election is determined by census numbers,” Kamran said. “We’re showing them the value of being counted long-term.”

Because of the COVID-19 epidemic, the census self-response period has been merged into the follow-up period, which ends October 31. On August 11, census workers will start knocking on doors of people who haven’t yet responded. As a last resort, they will even ask neighbors for information, the Census Bureau’s Wilkerson said. But secondhand info is not as accurate as self-response. The workers might estimate an apartment holds four people – but a new baby or a couch-surfer could make five – an example of an undercount.

Final census information is normally due December 31. Because of the COVID crisis, however, the Census Bureau has asked Congress to extend the deadline until April 30, 2021 for delivering congressional reapportionment counts to the President.