Reinventing Compton, CA

For more than a decade, Compton, California was mostly considered hopeless.

It was home to failed schools and gangs engaged in fighting so violent that it was compared to guerrilla warfare.

But quietly, Compton has become a very different kind of community:

The story of Compton is not just what’s changed, but how it’s changed; community policing opened a door, and community activists were well positioned to walk through it. It’s a tale of larger cultural trends, like the death of crack, and distinctly local initiatives, like gun buyback programs in grocery store parking lots. And it involves excesses of violence so dramatic that the gang leaders themselves recoiled, and worked to calm things down.

The story of how the change was realized is well worth reading. (via Yglesias)