Erin Aubry Kaplan

Washed Away

Erin Aubry Kaplan
People are dying because there is no water — no water in America!—Rep. Elijah Cummings I can't imagine New Orleans without Shirley. Shirley Washington and her family lived in New Orleans East in the 9th Ward in a handsome two-story house made of brick with plenty of room for company......

Pimping the Ride

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photo by AndrewHetherington/ReduxI’ve long believed that when it comes to judging black movies, the most accomplished film critics — most of them white, it must be said — lose their minds. Whether it’s due to a sense of political correctness, low expectations, fear of racial confrontation or just plain ignorance,......
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All of Me

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photo by Kevin ScanlonWriter-performer Heather Raffo, whose one-woman show about the lives of Iraqi women has drawn rapturous reviews since it opened last year off-Broadway, is something of a surprise up close. Slim, blond and animated, the New York resident comes off more Californian, with her surfer-girl first name, her......

Public Enemies

Erin Aubry Kaplan
It's become an awfully familiar sight: a group of somewhat nervous-looking bureaucrats and assorted suits facing a roomful of angry South-Central citizens, chiefly black and Latino, who pepper them with questions about why an essential community institution is being dismantled without the community’s awareness or approval, to say nothing of......
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Wild Child

Erin Aubry Kaplan
In the darkened Casa 0101 Theater at the western edge of Boyle Heights, the tableau onstage looks homey, a fair approximation of the community just outside the theater walls. A small, sparely furnished house is occupied by a family of color: The father is black and overworked, gruff and caring......

The Dirt We Stand On

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photo by Kevin Scanlon Tim Watkins is president and CEO of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. He grew up steeped in the legacy of the Watts Riots; his father was Ted Watkins, the respected union organizer and community activist who founded the WLCAC in 1965 a few months before......
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Compton City Limits

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photo by Ted SoquiFour years ago, Compton was in a fight for its life. Omar Bradley, the self-styled gangsta mayor of the ’90s whose public antics and penchant for hiring friends and relatives made the city a staple of local news and political theater, was running for re-election for the......

Cloud Over the Promised Land

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Dr. Johnetta Cole is not from Los Angeles. She never migrated here, doesn’t have a gig here, doesn’t visit once a week or commute from 50 miles away. Her deliberate way of talking, impeccable ensemble — really, not a hair out of place — and passionate but patrician air suggest......

Welcome to Inglewood — Leave Your Aspirations Behind

Erin Aubry Kaplan
Photos by Robert HaleEvery day, if the weather cooperates and my exercise conscientiousness holds, I go for a walk. I get in my car and drive about a mile north of my house, park on a sleepy side street off Manchester Boulevard and begin an elliptical, four-mile-plus loop around the......

Bamboozled in South L.A.

Erin Aubry Kaplan
A long-awaited project going up on Vermont Avenue that should be cause for celebration in the community is increasingly cause for concern, especially as it becomes clear that those supporting the project are putting their own interests — political, financial — above the objections of residents who say South-Central deserves......