Erin Aubry Kaplan

When President Bush declared last week that the U.S. would turn back any Haitians who tried to seek refuge here because their problems of insurrection, street violence and complete instability weren’t really all that bad, I felt a shiver of recognition. I knew the callousness was not intended for me......

For the last generation, the 47th State Assembly District has offered a plum seat for African-Americans aspiring to the state Legislature and a springboard for any political ambitions beyond. Though drawn years ago to increase black Democratic representation at the state level, the 47th is one of those rare districts......

Photo by Ted Soqui Since the onset of the supermarket strike/Lockout involving Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons, there has been very little in the way of good news for members of the United Food & Commercial Workers union, and almost nothing in the way of a good time. But at least......

Building photos by Slobodan Dimitrov Every weekday for at least six weeks last fall, between noon and 1 p.m., Lillian Mobley picketed at the main entrance to Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center, the county hospital that sits in the long-impoverished triangle of Compton, Watts/Willowbrook and Southeast Los Angeles. Many......

When county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn died in 1997, after five years of retirement preceded by 40 years in office, it was hard to imagine Los Angeles County carrying on without him. Hahn’s legendary populist touch brought a human dimension to an unwieldy county government presiding over an increasingly unwieldy urban......

Photo by Ted Soqui It was my father who first told me Compton was not a good place to go after dark. That was about 20 years ago, but he was actually talking about the Compton of the 1940s, long before West Coast gangsta rap began flavoring radio playlists, long......

Illustration by Shino Arihara One of the many hard lessons of the recall election starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is the dispiriting confirmation that politics is indeed a game. Not in the sense that its players don’t take it seriously or spend mountains of money in the endeavor — they did —......

Eighteen-year-old Princeton Alexander, outfitted in a hooded sweatshirt and loose jeans, cast his vote on Tuesday for only the second time in his brief career as a member of the California electorate. The first time was uneventful, he said, but today was strikingly opposite. "This is a pretty big election,"......

Photo by Gregory Bojorquez E. Raymond Brown swears he isn’t looking for controversy with his new book, Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up! (Dreamscape Publishing). He just wants to speak his mind about the primal forces that drive American capitalism and that shape, and warp, American society......