Does the name sound familiar? You may not know her, but you’ve probably felt the huge impact she’s made on the west coast for several years now. It’s been almost three terms to be exact serving as the second black woman to be elected to the City Council in Los Angeles’ 220 year history. It didn’t take long during my recent conversation with Councilwoman Perry to realize that she is a person who loves what she does, which is serving the people.
Councilwoman Perry has wrestled with the hard issues such as how to deal with L.A.’s infamous “Skid Row”, which falls dead smack in her district. Her answer, 950 units of permanent supportive housing to provide a clean place to live, while providing the necessary tools needed to rebuild the new occupants lives. It appears that “rebuilding” could have been the theme of her campaign because that is just what Jan Perry has been doing. Consistently redeveloping the communities, changing the landscape, enhancing the current assets and bring in new assets that the City never had.
One of these new assets is the L.A. Live Complex, which is a combination of luxury hotels,
convention space, fine dining and entertainment is an instrumental project that provides a beautiful new hotel as well as the ever so elusive commodity; jobs. “The night the ballroom opened at the JW Marriott was an amazing experience, Councilwoman Perry explained. Being instrumental in the creation of a project has proven to be a rewarding experience. But she was eager to shared that the best part of it all was seeing a young man at the opening who worked on the graffiti removal team and through the workforce development program he now had a permanent job within the hotel guest relations department.
As she is full steam in to her 3rd term as a L.A. City Council member, which will be the last due to California’s three term maximum limits that she despises. “Term limits require us to flip our political leaders like flapjacks instead of just voting out who’s not effective”, Councilwoman Perry shared. This is something Jan would love to change but understands she has many fights ahead as she continues to climb the political rungs. Looking forward, she prepares to find an african american woman successor to continue what she has started.
Councilwoman Perry has made the decision to run for Mayor of Los Angeles in 2013. Her first task will be to bring in new revenue, and she already has exciting strategies an opportunities lined up to do just that. She’s also committed to creating a project that knits social service organizations together and closes the service gap neighborhoods at risk such as South Central, which has received a tremendous boost during her terms along with several additional projects including a new environmentally sound City Hall.
Her role models have been her parents, her father Samuel Perry was a former law partner with Carl Stokes – the first African American Mayor to hold office in a major US City (Cleveland Ohio – 1967) and in 1966 Samuel Perry became the first black Mayor of Woodmere, Ohio which had a broad based, multi-racial coalition. Jan’s mother went back to college after supporting her father through law school, raising three kids and holding down a full time job. She received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in social work and also taught in the American Studies Department at Case Western Reserve University and would later serve as mayor of the same city. Her parents taught her the power of connecting with people and that we are the greatest asset to our own success.
Jan Perry received her Undergraduate degree in Journalism as well as her Master Degree in Public Policy both from The University of Southern California, she worked as a paralegal in City Hall for many years with no plan to run for political office but when the opportunity presented itself she took a leap. The leap has paid off for not only Jan Perry, but also the thousands of constituents she represents in her district.
It was obvious to me that Councilwoman Perry views herself as a highly independent very focused person who keeps her constitutes needs first, and by doing that, everything else will fall in line. She also believes in order to be successful people need to be disciplined, not complacent and work harder than your competitors in order to win.
After seeing the movie “The Garden” how you people in California could reelect this woman is astounding. And now she is a possible candidate for Mayor?? She has got her hands in the pockets of developers and who ever else and her son does not fall from the tree. Did he finally go to jail or did her influence get him off. People like these contribute to the malaise of the population towards politicians. Instead of the mansion she should be in a cell.