Richmond City Council candidate Jamelia Brown knows the struggle that most residents face in District 1 — an area that encompasses the Iron Triangle and neighboring Belding Woods.
District 1 residents aren’t often engaged politically and say they are just focusing on their day-to-day survival in an area in which 35% of people make $50,000 a year or less, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2022 figures.
Though most election consultants and experts encourage candidates to only focus on registered, “high-propensity” voters (voters most likely to cast ballots) Brown said she can’t ignore those in her community who aren’t politically engaged because she was once one of them.
District 1 Richmond City Council candidates
WHO: Jamelia Brown
PLATFORM HIGHLIGHTS: Voter education, public safety, economic revitalization.
WHAT SHE SAID: “I know what it is like to feel hopeless and not believe in a system. That’s why I’m running really because I want to restore the hope in this broken system we call local government.”
OTHER D1 CANDIDATES: Read about Brown’s opponents, Mark Wassberg and incumbent Melvin Willis.
This is among a series of profiles of the seven candidates running for seats in three Richmond City Council districts. Visit our local elections hub for more stories.
“As a new candidate on the ballot, they tell you to focus on these people here. These are the only people you should be contacting now,” she said, holding up a paper with registered voters. “Meanwhile, growing up in Richmond and the Barretts (Barrett Terrace Plaza Apartments), I can’t forget about those people, those low-propensity voters, because I was a low-propensity voter at one time.”
She has spent a good portion of her campaign on voter education and registration — getting folks familiarized with the city’s political process.
“Most people don’t even know we are in a district that is up for re-election,” she said during a recent interview at her campaign office on Harbour Way.
It is her first time running for public office, and the experience has been one that she appreciates — regardless of whether she wins or loses.
“It has been refreshing. It has been to the point where no matter what the outcome of this election, I gained so much from this process,” she said.
A 4th-generation child of the Iron Triangle
To those who saw her grow up in the Iron Triangle, she isn’t Dr. Brown but “‘Mia,” “Jamelia” (pronounced “Jameela”) or “Tasha’s daughter.”
“Those are the titles that I value most,” she said.
Brown is proud to be from the Iron Triangle. She is a fourth-generation Richmond resident with a family history tied to when her grandparents came to Richmond to work at the shipyard during World War II.
Life had its challenges as the only child of a single mother, she said. Drugs, crime and negative police interactions were commonplace.
“All those things were not out of the ordinary. It seemed regular,” she said. “That’s where a lot of the crime and shootings would take place, either in the Barretts or near the Barretts.”
In the midst of that environment, Brown said education became an outlet and her means of being able to navigate her family to services that they might not have known existed.
“I grew up with a teen mom so I knew I had to strive because, even in my early years, I felt in debt to her,” she said. “Although my mom did go to nursing school later, at that early age I felt like I had to do more to secure certain certifications to help my family get the knowledge surrounding stuff they were unfamiliar with.”
With help from the Sims family — who at one time operated a charter school in the area to educate underserved youths in the Iron Triangle — Brown was motivated to get her high school diploma at Barbara Alexander Academy while also earning college credits, something she didn’t know at the time was possible and knowledge that she eventually passed down to other young women in her neighborhood — including her daughter who is now an 18-year-old junior at Virginia State University.
Brown got married at 18 years old and had her first child at 19. As she was getting a divorce, she decided to continue her education.
Packing up her bags and her then-infant daughter, she drove from Richmond to Oklahoma’s Langston University and attended classes for a year while living in dorms for student parents. After returning to Richmond to help her mother with health issues, Brown eventually graduated with a degree in sociology from Cal State East Bay in 2013.
Once she earned that degree, she said, she was inspired to keep going. She went right into graduate school, getting her master’s degree in human development and educational leadership at Pacific Oaks College in 2018 and then eventually a doctorate in social work from the University of Southern California in 2022 — while raising her children and working as a counselor and social case manager for various local youth organizations and with formerly incarcerated people reentering the community.
Her education, she said, has given her the tools to show her community how they can overcome the same obstacles.
“These achievements, for me personally, were for them and to show them that they can really do this. ‘You’re in the Barretts? That’s fine.’ ‘You’re in Crescent Park? That’s fine.’ ‘You’re in the (Pullman) Townhouses? That’s fine. We can still make it out,’ ” she said.
Public safety and economic development working together
Though Richmond’s homicide rate has dropped dramatically in the last two decades, with 2023 having the lowest homicide rate ever, Brown doesn’t believe that highlighting that sole statistic tells the whole story about the need to improve public safety in District 1.
“We have all these people saying that Richmond is the safest it has ever been, but the question still is, for who?” she said, referencing a summer spike in gun violence which claimed the lives of three people in less than 24 hours in the Iron Triangle and Shields Reid. “Because our daughters and sons still can’t go to the market and come home. Who is it safe for?”
District 1, which is patrolled by the Richmond Police Department’s Central District, has seen an increase in certain types of incident calls in recent years.
For example, aggravated assaults reports have more than doubled since before the pandemic in the Central District, according to Richmond Police Department statistics. So far in 2024, there have been 218 aggravated assault incidents in the Central District compared to 100 incidents during the same time period in 2019.
Part of the solution, Brown says, is for the city to address hiring in the department and in other city departments with vacancies by using the incoming financial boost from Chevron’s $550 million settlement with the city.
“I would really look at: Should District 1 be allotted some of that money being that it is the most impacted (by the refinery) and the most underserved,” she said. “However, I would really think that we need some oversight and not just the council. We should have a committee — maybe representatives from each district — but definitely a coalition of community members.”
The Macdonald Avenue corridor used to be the city’s thriving center of commerce before Hilltop Mall was built. Brown’s campaign office is at the corner of Macdonald and Harbour Way at the 100-year-old Market Square Mall.
“I’m a champion for revitalization especially if you’ve been here before and know the history of Richmond and know this was once a thriving area,” she said, adding that tax incentives in the district could support existing businesses and attract new ones.
She also said that any economic revitalization in District 1 hinges on public safety.
“Businesses want to know that they can come here and that it is safe for their businesses and for them to be here,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to go to El Cerrito or to Pinole to do the core of our shopping.”
`… Not just campaigning but maintaining that relationship.’
Brown said that her background prepared her to meet the needs of District 1 residents. But as a newcomer to Richmond’s political scene she has had to endure some “hazing” as she seeks the seat held by the Richmond Political Alliance-backed incumbent Melvin Willis.
“Folks that are a part of different groups and — you know them and they talk to you when they’re not with their group — then when they’re with their group they can’t say anything to you,” she said, adding that certain political affiliations also can limit what you can do as an individual council member. “I don’t want to be trapped like that. I can stand as an individual in my credentials and my experience.”
She hopes to dispel the popular perception she grew up hearing about in her neighborhood — one in which she said residents felt that candidates for local office would only come during election season.
“It just gives me a unique opportunity to not just door knock during the election season or show up to events during election season,” she said. “It’s not just about campaigning but maintaining that relationship, presence and visibility to where the resident’s first thought is you when something is going wrong.”
If elected, Brown said she hopes to keep her office at the Market Square Mall for residents to visit her and express their needs.
“It’s meeting folks where they are,” Brown said, adding that she recently went canvassing at the Hacienda Heights senior housing community and was swarmed by residents who listed off concerns about conditions at the newly developed building from roaches to a lack of parking and lack of programs for the seniors.
“It doesn’t take much, I learned all of that in 30 minutes,” she said. “I know what it is like to feel hopeless and not believe in a system. That’s why I’m running really because I want to restore the hope in this broken system we call local government.”
