9/16/2023 0 Comments City of compton history![]() Her partnership with Girls Fly! continues to empower girls and young women by introducing participants to career opportunities in science, technology, arts, math, and engineering. A champion for youth, women’s rights, and socio-economic equality she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy, Urban Planning, and Development as well as a Master’s degree in Urban Planning with a focus on Economic Development. Awarded the John F Kennedy New Frontier Award in 2016, Mayor Aja Brown served on the California State Delta Stewardship Council prior to being elected. Overwhelmingly re-elected to a second four-year term in June, 2017 Aja Brown continues to move forward with plans to elevate and empower her city, launching a $70 million five-year infrastructure program in 2019. These efforts have also reduced Compton’s unemployment rate by half – shrinking the 18% rate when she took office in July 2013, down to 9% by December 2015. Mayor Brown’s community-oriented leadership also extends to growing the economy as evidenced by her First Source Hiring Agreement – mandating 35% local hiring for city funded projects. As a result of Mayor Brown’s holistic gang intervention policy and her community’s hard work, Compton has achieved record low homicides (a 64% reduction) without diverting any additional funding to law enforcement or policing. Now the group has taken on new life as the Compton city council implemented an official City Gang Intervention & Prevention Program, employing 13 ex-gang members that manage neighborhood peace treaties, create new opportunities for employment, and recruit at-risk youth to participate in healthy extracurricular activities. Originally, the group met every other Sunday to coordinate cease-fires, resulting in a decrease in homicides of nearly 50% in the first six months of the programme. This meeting, in tandem with President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper, led to the launch of Compton Empowered a gang reduction intervention composed of numerous ex-gang members and fixtures of the community. Notably, in 2014, Mayor Brown met with 75 local gang leaders and members to discuss how they could work together to create a more peaceful Compton. Through policy reform and strategic partnerships she has championed several initiatives to reduce crime, eliminate human trafficking, and put a stop to gang violence. Though crime ebbed and flowed in Compton throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, when Aja Brown took office in 2013 she inherited a city with an infamous reputation, the violence of which was immortalized in albums, books, articles, and movies as well as a $43 million deficit, an unemployment rate triple the national average, a school district with only a 57% graduation rate, and a spiking murder rate (with 2005 the deadliest year in recorded history).įocused on 12-key principles centered on quality of life, economic development, and infrastructural growth Aja Brown’s 2013 New Vision for Compton, was the jumping off point for her mission to rehabilitate her city. Exacerbated by the memory of the murder of Black ninth-grader Latasha Harlins by Korean shopkeeper Soon Ja Du, the riots disproportionately affected LA’s Koreatown and when they were over 63 people had been killed and over 12,000 had been arrested, while the reputation of Compton was solidified as a place of unrest and violence. In 1992 when four officers in the Los Angeles Police Department were acquitted after a recording of their use of excessive force in the arrest of Rodney King was widely viewed across the country, riots broke out throughout Los Angeles and Compton. The mainstream media leaned into this identity, and the city became known for the turf war between the Bloods and Crips. which made the city famous with their iconic album Straight Outta Compton. Groups such as Compton’s Most Wanted and N.W.A. ![]() In the late 1980s Compton’s violent reputation reached national audiences when the failed ‘War on Drugs’ met the rise of local gangsta rap. She immediately set to work on her ambitious New Vision for Compton revitalization strategy, seeking to paint a new picture of the city that has become notorious for gang violence and crime. In 2013, at the age of 31, Aja Brown (born Aja Lena Clinkscale) made history when she was elected as the youngest mayor in the history of the City of Compton. ![]()
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