GALLERY
The Gerrymander
Whoever draws the map chooses the voters — packing, cracking, reapportionment, the cases; draw the districts yourself on the wall.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
The Gerry-Mander, 1812
A winged, clawed creature with a lizard's tail, drawn over the map of Essex County, Massachusetts: the state senate district Governor Elbridge Gerry's party had just carved to hold its seats. The Gazette named it; the name outlived everyone in the story.
Elbridge Gerry
A signer of the Declaration, a refuser of the Constitution (he would not sign without a bill of rights), governor of Massachusetts, vice-president of the United States - and remembered for one map he did not draw.
The Earmuffs: Illinois's 4th
Two Latino neighbourhoods of Chicago, miles apart, joined by a strip of highway median so that one district could hold them both: a majority-Latino seat drawn under the Voting Rights Act, and one of the strangest shapes on any map.
The Praying Mantis: Maryland's 3rd
A district that a federal judge called 'a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state': pieces of Baltimore, Annapolis and the suburbs stitched together so that Maryland's Democrats could hold seven of eight seats with about 60% of the vote.
From the gallery's own wall — "The Gerry-Mander, 1812".
🎧 A moment to consider
What will you carry out of this room?