Erin Aubry Kaplan
Erin Aubry Kaplan is an author, journalist and essayist who has been writing about black Los Angeles and wider issues since 1992. She teaches creative nonfiction at Antioch University Los Angeles and current events at the OASIS center in the Crenshaw district.
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A presidential address isn't enough to cure the blues that seem to be setting in for those black folks who need more from him -- and from themselves -- than encouraging words.
Rail construction has finally come to Crenshaw, but not in the way everybody would like. Many fear the boulevard's businesses will suffer unless the construction goes underground, and the solid jobs that are always touted as stimulating the local econo...
When I met Amiri Baraka last year, I didn't realize what an historical moment it was. Not surprising, since black people still have trouble placing the '60s itself in history and the past.
The Forum is getting ready to re-open and take--or re-take--its place in the pantheon of Southern California concert venues. It's definitely an improvement, but what will it mean for us, i.e. the rest of Inglewood?
The effort to get George McKenna appointed to fill an LAUSD school board seat is an encouraging object lesson in how black organizing can actually trump black politics -- maybe.
Black Santa is real all right. And I'm not just talking about the guys playing the part in shopping malls or figures hung up in windows.
The end of the year is a time of celebration, and of remembrance. Last Christmas for me was unforgettable. A year later, that's still true.
Change is coming to Inglewood, and it's long overdue. But will it be enough? And what exactly are we trying to change about the place, anyway?
We've lost two black leaders of very different statures last week. But they had a fight in common.
A tribute to poet/writer Wanda Coleman, who died last week, via a recent tale of urban distress that was her metier. But distress was not the heart of Coleman's work. Possibility was.
The assassination of John Kennedy, like so many key events of the '60s, shaped the lives of those like me born in that decade. But we never quite figured out how--and maybe we aren't meant to.