I spent the afternoon in the ‘hood. The projects to be exact. Seemingly endless rows of iron-bar covered doors, most rusting to a pale brown. Laundry flapping on clotheslines strung from house to house. Curious, yet cautious stares from behind drawn shades. Jordan Downs Housing Projects. This is the kind of place they write rap songs about. Where a sudden noise can send people scrambling for cover. I spend a lot of time in places like this, usually peering my camera over crime scene tape to get a better shot of a tarp-covered body laying in the road, or listening to another hysterical mother devastated at the loss of a son. I think I may have even become immune to the sound of gunfire.
103rd and Compton, the heart of Watts. Body counts here rival those of wars. Few people ever escape the clutches of the gangs that rule the streets of South Central. Bullet wounds are worn as a badge of honor. For some, the badge is a tombstone, the dates chiseled often not spanning two whole decades.
Society tends to write off the people that live here. Many write themselves off, damned to a life trapped in a cycle of violence and poverty, each day a struggle of survival.
A precious few get out.
Ronald Brown was just another “ghetto kid from the projects” growing up in the late 50s and early 60s. One of six kids, his parents divorced when he was five. Clothes cost money, and his family didn’t have any. Food was harder to come by. Ronald Brown got his first job at eight years old.
And somehow, as the inner city around him continued to take lives, either by the bullet, or by the bandanna, somehow, Ronald Brown’s life flourished. The library became his sanctuary. Yet once through the doors to the streets outside, no place was immune. Robbed. Beaten. Dead bodies, sometimes those of friends, passed on the way to school. This was Watts after all.
But Ronald Brown never gave in to the mean streets surrounding him. His mother wouldn’t stand for it. The fear of disappointing mom was far greater than the fear any gang member could ever hold over him.
Honors in high school. Then to USC, a mere Metro bus ride from home. The echoes of the broken streets of Watts, still close enough to hear. He worked the whole time. A scholarship brought him to graduate school at UCLA. And the “ghetto kid from the projects”, walked across the stage at graduation, Law Degree in hand.
And then, Ronald Brown did something that most people would never do.
He came back.
He came back to the inner city. He came back, to give back. To the people that helped him avoid the temptations of gang life. To the county that gave his family food stamps to buy bags of rice and beans when the till ran low. To serve the community that served him. Instead the lucrative life of private practice, Ronald Brown joined the public defender’s office.
“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”
His hand on placed on a bible. A nervous smile masking a slight quiver in his body. Today, Ronald J. Brown, after 29 years defending those who could not turn elsewhere, became the first African-American to be appointed the head of the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s office.
Grown men fought back tears. I had goosebumps. The cheer from the crowd was far greater than the number assembled.
Then we headed to the 'hood.
I sat in our van, waiting to go live, staring at the peach colored stucco of Jordan Downs. Never would we be here after dark. Even in broad daylight, the assignment desk knew exactly where we were, just in case.
"Who got shot?" we were asked by nearly everyone who walked by.
For once, there wasn’t a body under a tarp. The power of a statuesque man, humble as he is proud, gives me some hope that what we do, when we tell a story like did today, does matter. Today, I was happy to be in Watts.
But I still wouldn't be there after dark.
