Brooklyn Counts On 2020 Census

PROSPECT HEIGHTS — Make Brooklyn count. That's the message local officials and community activists repeated during a 2020 Census Fair on Tuesday at Prospect Park.

A bustling crowd packed into a room at the park's LeFrak Center, where outside ice skaters spun under a blood-red sunset. Papers and iPads twirled inside as job seekers filled out applications for U. S. Census jobs and activists pressed Brooklyn residents to spread the message.

"Make Brooklyn 100 percent," Lisa Moore, a regional census director, told the crowd.

Many attendees knew full well the importance of being counted in once-a-decade census. A full count means a share of federal money — more than $650 billion every year — flowing into Brooklyn's neighborhoods in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, housing funds and a galaxy of local programs.

Moore said her "elevator pitch" for the census boils down to two things: money and power. Federal funds count as the money. The power comes through political representation.

But Brooklyn lagged behind in the last census. Attendees learned an estimated 33 percent of Brooklyn residents didn't send in their mailers — the lowest amount of any region its size.

It means Brooklyn is woefully undercounted, underfunded and underrepresented.

Representatives of local community groups from Brooklyn Public Library to Met Council to assembly members Diana Richardson and Zellnor Myrie manned tables to spread the word that everyone counts. They told people that as long as someone resides in Brooklyn they should respond.

Joan Bakiriddin, a volunteer with the NAACP, said she hoped to allay fears about filling out the census form.

"Our target is Brooklyn. Full stop," she said. "Then the marginalized communities."

More information on how to volunteer for the U. S. Census can be found at the city's website.