YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – When Jaladah Aslam, president of the Youngstown Warren Black Caucus, was growing up in Youngstown, neighborhoods were filled with playgrounds and working people.
On a recent trip home to Austintown from attending church on Youngstown’s South Side, she noticed the number of vacant lots.
“It just looks different,” Aslam says. “The people aren’t there. The life is not there. I’m not saying that the city is dead … but it is quite a bit different.”
Poverty is a real issue. But the area even looks poor, she says.
“I don’t mean just poor as far as just individuals,” Aslam says. “Where’s the businesses? Where’s the activity? Where’s the joy? You’re not seeing it.”
She believes that more people in the community need to start dealing with what we have instead of what we used to be.
Aslam was hired in 1981 at the Mahoning County Department of Public Welfare, now Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services.
She worked as a caseworker, remaining with the agency for more than 10 years. “We were still feeling the effects of the industrial community just shutting down around here,” Aslam says.
It was a difficult time. Before the loss of the steel mills, many people in the Valley were able to secure good-paying manufacturing jobs right out of high school. They were able to buy homes and raise their families, Aslam says.
Those who lost their steel industry jobs became parents who told their children they needed to go to college and that they would need to relocate to find jobs.
“So, on top of the industrialization of the area going down and the loss of all of those industrial jobs, we lost a lot of people because there was no place for them to work,” Aslam says.
She later worked as a staff representative for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 8 and that led to her involvement in politics.
“One of my favorite campaigns is Judge Carla Baldwin’s,” Aslam says of the Youngstown Municipal Court judge. “That wasn’t just historical but it was straight grassroots from the ground up.”
It was Baldwin’s first run for office and she trusted Aslam, who ran the whole campaign including fundraising.
Despite the changes she’s seen, Aslam remains optimistic about the Valley’s future. There are people who genuinely care about what happens here, she says. There’s a love for community here that you don’t see other places.
“I do think that there are people invested in the area that care about what’s going on, whether they live in the city limits or not,” Aslam says. “I’m one of those people. I think that’s one of Youngstown’s greatest gifts.”