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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The old guard sees things differently. After all, the woman is an outsider.
“It’s one of the things that’s scary about Aja Brown,” says retired Compton Police Department Sgt. John “Rick” Baker, a Latino who lived and served in Compton for 50 years and wrote Vice: One Cop’s Story of Patrolling America’s Most Dangerous City. “She’s only been there for four years. She doesn’t know the culture of Compton.”
Longtime community activist Royce Esters cites the fear that Ridley-Thomas, Congresswoman Janice Hahn and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor — “outsiders,” to the black old guard — will have Brown’s ear. “She has good vision,” Esters says, “but she can’t listen to the ‘outside people,’ who have no idea of what’s happening in Compton.”
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
Aja Brown’s inauguration day, July 2, in Compton
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
“No offense,” called out bare-chested Keenan Louis as Aja Brown passed his group at the park, “but don’t be like Omar.” The mayor stopped to confer with residents including Eugene Parker, in black shirt.
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Julius Franklin, 31, who attends Compton’s raucous City Council meetings and understands the city’s cutthroat political culture, says, “She has to have strong opinions, and she has to stand by her word. She needs to be educated. If she comes to a meeting unprepared, they’ll eat her up.”
Brown faces far-reaching problems that go well beyond coping with the city’s racially driven, insider political class.
Stanford University history professor Albert Camarillo, a Compton native, notes, “Their infrastructure has been battered for 30 years. … They aren’t that far from bankruptcy.”
USC urban planning professor Martin Krieger says Compton has “major problems in creating revenue for the services they need to provide.”
Brown could be the start of Compton’s transformation. Or another target for a stifling class of politicians and bureaucrats steeped in nepotism and cronyism who have long refused to share meaningful power with the Latino majority.
Will Brown, and the young Isaac Galvan, be any different from past leaders like Bradley, who positioned themselves as change agents?
“I’m from a totally different generation than the old guard,” Brown says as she stands at the Metro Blue Line station down the block from City Hall. “The things I want to do are new. … The city really needs somebody who can bring people together.”
Aja Brown never met her maternal grandmother, longtime Compton resident Lena Young, the registered nurse who was brutally raped and strangled in her home nearly 10 years before her granddaughter was born. Compton police never found her killer, and Young’s murder is a longtime Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s active unsolved homicide. “Growing up,” Brown says, “there was a big void in my life and my mother’s life.” Running for mayor is “part of rectifying a part of my past tragedy.”
Brown and her twin brother, Jonathan, were born in Los Angeles, and their mother, Brenda, was divorced from their father when the twins were children. He was rarely around. “There’s no animosity there,” Brown says. “People make choices.”
Despite the family situation, Brown excelled as a straight-A student at Pasadena’s John Muir High School, where she played varsity volleyball and was elected senior class president. Facing tuition costs alone of about $30,000 a year at USC in 2000, she won academic scholarships and grants to study urban planning and public policy as an undergraduate and graduate student.
“I didn’t have a traditional college experience,” says Brown, who didn’t join the partying and networking for which USC students are famous. Despite the scholarships, she still had to work. “I didn’t have a social aspect to it. I was always involved in working and going to school.”
Her master’s thesis focused on Walmart’s controversial and ultimately unsuccessful attempt, in 2004, to open a supercenter in Inglewood and the long-term effects the major retailer has on small businesses in nearby cities.
“It was a big deal at the time,” Brown says.
During that period, Compton was mired in turmoil under Mayor Eric Perrodin, a former Compton police officer and L.A. County prosecutor, who was elected in 2001 as a reformer after eight long years of gangster mayor Bradley. Perrodin “meant well,” Stanford’s Camarillo says, “but he was facing enormous challenges.”
In 2004, Brown landed a job as an economic development analyst for Gardena — the same year Bradley, former Compton Councilman Amen Rahh and former City Manager John D. Johnson II were convicted of misappropriating taxpayer money.
Brown saw the inner workings of two other municipal governments before turning her focus to Compton. In 2006, she was a senior economic development planner for Inglewood, and in 2007 she quickly rose in tidy, well-managed Pasadena, a city that could be described as Compton’s polar opposite. There, Pasadena city leaders appointed her to the powerful planning commission.
Brown and her husband, who are devoted members of Compton’s Faith Inspirational Missionary Baptist Church, later moved from Pasadena to Gardena, five miles from the Baptist church.
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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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