Contact: Michelle Loo, [email protected]
Washington, DC - The Census Bureau will cut its door-knocking timeline by 40 percent, leaving millions of people uncounted and excluded from the 2020 Census.
This is yet another blatant attack on the Constitutional mandate to count every person. The Trump administration is using its cronies to slash the 2020 Census operations again, this time by shortening the door-knocking process even while the country is still in the middle of a pandemic. Door-knocking enumeration is the only way for tens of millions of people to be counted: these are predominantly people of color, low-income households, and people experiencing homelessness. The Administration's goal is to tamper with Congressional representation, redistricting, and critical funding for every state in the country.
Every state and every community will be harmed. An incomplete census will leave communities underrepresented in Congress, and will cut down their federal funding for Medicare, schools and hospitals, child care, and many more vital services. The Census Bureau has been widely promoting the extended timeline: stopping door-knocking early will only cause widespread confusion for the purpose of cutting out millions of people.
APALA National Executive Board Member, United Steelworkers Appointee and APALA Pittsburgh Chapter leader Sabrina Liu asserts, “Forcing the Census Bureau to cut its operations short, while the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging through our communities, is nothing short of pure sabotage on the 2020 Census. The Trump administration hopes to create an incomplete and inaccurate census that will undermine trillions of dollars in funding for much-needed services and infrastructure. We are already seeing the effects of poor leadership in a national crisis: this latest attack on the Census will set in stone the same disasters for decades to come.
We will keep fighting to get every person counted, regardless of immigration status. Join us in calling your Senators to vote to extend the statutory deadlines for reporting apportionment and redistricting data from the 2020 Census. Make sure you and everyone you know gets counted at my2020census.gov today.”