Aja Brown Wants to Turn Compton Into the "New Brooklyn"

“It’s a very difficult place,” says Eric Bauman, chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, which endorsed Brown for mayor. “The people have struggled to break out of a mold that has trapped them in a very negative feeling. Aja Brown comes in, and she is new blood, she’s positive and she has new ideas. People saw her as someone who can bring freshness and possibility and hope to their community.” Brown’s family has its own tragic history in Compton: In the ’70s, her grandmother was raped and murdered in her home there.”

“Brown’s interest in cities reflects the two worlds that she knew. She never met her grandmother, but Jackson took Aja to Compton as a child and told her stories about the way the city used to be before its downfall. As Compton was being devastated by poverty and violence, Pasadena was undergoing extensive redevelopment in the ’80s that would turn it into the tourist attraction it is today, and Brown took a precocious interest in its progress, studying real estate listings and memorizing housing prices as they climbed. Why one city deteriorated while another prospered fascinated her. David Sloane, a professor at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy and her mentor, says he isn’t surprised that she became a mayor. “I have a number of students who are very cynical about government. She never had that,” Sloane says. “She really imagined government as something that could change people’s lives for the better.”

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http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a26180/the-unsinkable-aja-brown/