Wishing her success. She has a lot of work ahead of her. But if she can show quick results in terms of getting people work (and I don't mean that in a ghetto context). Actual jobs and job training will make her stronger among the constituency.
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Can Aja Brown, Compton's Hip, Refreshing Reform Mayor, Turn This Woeful City Around?
Here comes Aja Brown — pronounced “Asia” for those who haven’t heard about the 31-year-old mayor of Compton elected in a landslide vote last month. The young black men sitting at a shady picnic table in Wilson Park on North Rose Avenue know exactly how to say it. They’re stunned to see the cover girl–gorgeous, wonky USC grad, in high heels and a navy blue dress, walking past them with her trademark air of understated confidence.
“Hey! That’s Aja Brown!” one young man shouts, as if he’s spotted a film star.
“Hey! Mayor!” calls out another.
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Compton's Mayor Aja Brown
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Brown oversaw a sleek transit-oriented development at Compton’s Blue Line station.
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Brown smiles and says hello but maintains her purposeful stride past a pickup basketball game and toward the 12,000-square-foot skatepark that iconic skateboarder Tony Hawk helped finance nearly four years ago. There, young guys in long pants and T-shirts zoom up and down concrete embankments in the hard, hot sun.
The existence of the skatepark is a sign to Brown that Compton — L.A.’s culturally famous yet woeful and corruption-marred suburb — can be fixed. Keenan Louis, a bare-chested 22-year-old who has just finished a sweaty basketball game, has that very thing on his mind. “No offense,” he yells to Brown, “but don’t be like Omar!”
That would be Omar Bradley, the self-described “gangster mayor” of Compton, who served two stormy terms between 1993 and 2001 — presiding over the city’s devastating decline. Obnoxious, unpredictable, sometimes charming, Bradley behaved threateningly toward journalists and others. He was convicted of corruption in 2004 and did time, but last year Judge Madeleine Flier overturned Bradley’s conviction, citing a Supreme Court ruling that a politician wasn’t corrupt if he didn’t know the anti-corruption law.
“I won’t!” Brown responds to Louis with her easy smile. Then she murmurs, “Those are words I should put up in my office.”
Louis shouts back at Mayor Brown: “We got to build it back up!”
Don’t be like Omar. Build it back up. That’s exactly what many in Compton are praying Aja Brown will do.
“The Hub” or, in rappers’ parlance, “CPT,” is a 10-square-mile city of 97,000, whose 65 percent Latino and 33 percent black residents espouse a peculiarly hard-core form of pride and loyalty to place.
Sixteen miles southeast of downtown L.A., Compton produced such world-class rappers as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, The Game and Kendrick Lamar, tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams and Hall of Fame baseball player Eddie Murray. And there’s the groundbreaking album Straight Outta Compton by legendary group N.W.A.
Once dubbed the United States’ “murder capital” by Bloomberg News, Compton nurtures a deep, historical distrust of “outsiders” — yet it was the local Bloods (Pirus), Crips, Tortilla Flats and many others who bloodied and terrorized its streets, and its parade of inept, often scandal-ridden, homegrown politicians who helped drive out the middle class and shatter the town’s tax base. The state of California was forced to take over Compton Unified School District’s shoddily run schools in 1993, and in 2000 Omar Bradley controversially disbanded the police department, handing over law enforcement to the Sheriff’s Department.
Last summer the city, with a 25 percent poverty rate, teetered for a time at the edge of bankruptcy. Mayor Eric Perrodin blamed it on “possible fraud, waste and abuse.”
For years, the City Council and school board have been controlled by an ossified and often paranoid black old guard, which rebuffs the Latino majority. But after a long acquiescence to this arrangement, on June 4, the town’s mostly black voters chose reform candidate Brown, 63.7 percent to 36.2 percent over Bradley, who was trying for a comeback, thanks to Judge Flier’s ruling. Voters that day also elected Compton’s first Latino city councilman, Isaac Galvan, 26, like Brown a political newcomer.
Brown, who took office on July 2, is like no mayor Compton has seen before — nor, for that matter, any city in L.A.’s tattered old southeast suburbs.
Her grandmother Lena Young, a nurse Brown never knew, was raped and murdered in 1973 in a brutal home invasion — in Compton. Brown was raised in the 1980s and ’90s in Altadena by a single mom. But in 2009, after parlaying her undergraduate and graduate degrees in urban planning from USC into a successful career in municipal economic development, Brown pointedly chose Compton as her home — and her project. Her husband, Van, an oil industry safety inspector, backed her up.
“There’s a new optimism in Compton that I sense,” says Kerry Allison, pastor at Church of the Redeemer, “that Compton can become something. And by electing [Brown], Compton was saying that.”
L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose sprawling district covers Compton and who backed Brown for mayor, offers, “She’s a breath of fresh air, and Compton needed that. And the people wanted it.”
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19 comments
One of the best things that happened to Compton, was the lynwood skatepark. Skateboarding is here to stay and it's cheap to get into, so helps give the kids something to do. I've been by that skatepark a dozen times and there is always kids there using it! And skateboarding has a bunch of the top ranked Hispanic pros too. It's a good influence for the kids and the community. I will be taking my kids to x games (8/1-4) to see some of these guys compete. Paul rodriguez among others. I hope Aja sees the opportunity in continuing to build skateboarding around the neighborhood.
Omar bradly would have done a better job he had the city on a upswing Aja junt don't know what she's getting herself into perridon put the city 20 years back and why are people looking for Latinos to run the they are only going to look out for themselves and make it worse than what it is it's to many illegal imigrints in Compton and it looks like the worst of Mexico Omar tried to make the city a lot better he got local people jobs he gave rebates on city tax and he cared about the city it was a lot cleaner now it's just dirty all it has is a big dirty court house that needs to be torn down Aja can't do anything but be the first female mayor of compton
Love that you're featuring Ms. Brown.
But I notice you mention her looks in the first paragraph. Did you know that when media mentions female politicians' appearance, even in a positive way, it makes voters think less of her?
We don't see descriptions of male politicians' suits and admiration of their ruddy complexions in articles about them. It's frivolous and irrelevant. Please stop doing it in articles about women.
No one ever talks about the experiences the Hispanic people of Compton have at the polling places. The Hispanic community has continuously experienced discrimination and mistreatment and those issues get no attention. The problem in Compton is that it is a city focused on KEEPING people of a certain color in power, no matter what! The people in power are the ones creating the hostility in Compton. They go around saying that Latinos want to "take over". Latinos want EQUALITY and RESPECT. The youth in Compton is being deprived from the benefits they can enjoy from a city that should embrace diversity and be more culturally aware.
Mayor Brown has the support of her colleagues and has worked for organizations that allowed her the training necessary to have a better start than some of the mayors of neighboring cities.
I want to see how Mayor Brown will address the potential loss of another large employer in the city should AB 820 passes. The city already lost Belkin and to lose the casino would really hurt the city financially.
The City that Shows No Pity Compton Ca. is still part of the Wild Wild West ! The Sheriff with it's massive resources of tools to suppress Criminal Activity, & the fact that the city is now 67% Latino, has inherited a Quagmire of Crime Infestation ! I think we can realize the Tantamount job the 125 force of the Compton P.D. accomplish from the worst crime-wave to hit America, based on it's population from 1970 to 2000 was able to accomplish in keeping the lid on the City ! John R. Baker Author of "VICE" Memoir on the Compton P.D. !
Aja Brown is the real deal and the Supervisor was smart in supporting her. I hope our leaders and citizens get behind her to bring a new day to Compton. Go Mayor Brown!
Thank you for the interesting article about what is happening in Compton and how the political class there is changing. The challenges of merging the needs of all members of the city family seem enormous.
The services Compton residents are asking for aren't hard to give, but the problem lies in where's the money to provide them?
Why wasn't Yvonne Arceneaux voted out with Dobson and Perrodin? Diana Sanchez was expected to do much better in D3 than she did.
@lnjon36 she is the 2nd, Doris Davis was the first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Compton,_California
@comptonlulac I have witnessed it at a recent candidates forum leading up to the election. With the significant amount of Lations in the city, I was surprised Diana Sanchez wasn't successful in her bid for D3. She is a board member of the Metropolitan Water District which serves Compton. She is more visible than Isaac Galvan and lost?
@bhenning32 no real vested interest? those before her with a "vested" interest have the city in a $40 million dollar deficit. Supervisor Ridley-Thomas was wise to support this young black woman who will represent the city well. Even her former colleagues who I have spoken with speak very highly of Mayor Brown.
@UrbanGirl Yvonne, is still part of the Ole Black Guard that will not surrender power easy ! The Latin Community must muster a massive voter-drive to rid itself of the Corruption of the past !
@rosecransrick the Latin community was successful in electing Galvan and not Sanchez who represents Compton on the water board?
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