Meet My New Idol: Compton Mayor Aja Brown

via Jezebel

I planned to write a whole post today about how disappointed, disillusioned and confused I am by our government. I was going to explain how infuriating it is to seek out honest answers about what's going in Washington from multiple sources and still have no sense of the truth. I try to keep politics off this blog, but I am so sad and disgusted that I thought I should write something, if only for my own piece of mind.

Then I stumbled on Jezebel's piece on Aja Brown, the 31-year-old major of Compton, CA - a place they tell you not to go the day you move to L.A. The Jezebel piece lead me to the Vogue interview, where I learned that, "Her own mother, Brenda Jackson, fled [Compton] in her twenties. Jackson�s mother, Aja�s maternal grandmother, Lena Young...was brutally murdered in a violent home invasion rape and robbery in Compton in the 1970s. The case is still unsolved." So obviously I had to read on to learn about Brown's vision for the city of Compton - a place she refers to as California's Brooklyn. 

And after all that, I didn't want to write about the out of touch dicks in D.C. anymore. I hope Aja Brown is right about Compton - and not just because it's 20 minutes from my house. But even if she's wrong about the transformation of the gang-infested suburb that brought us gangsta' rap - I don't care. The fact that she exists is good enough for me right now.

But just for good measure - here's the listing of every congressperson's phone number in case you still want to call them and tell them how much they suck at their jobs. I don't think it'll make any difference, so I'm going to spend my energy contributing to Aja's Vision for Compton instead.