Alyssa Goodson Interview with Director of the Office of Boards and Commission Chida Warren-Darby
Chida was born in Washington D.C. and raised in San Diego. She is a second-generation black newspaper publisher, she currently serves under Todd Gloria’s administration as the director of boards…
Biography:
Chida was born in Washington D.C. and raised in San Diego. She is a second-generation black newspaper publisher, she currently serves under Todd Gloria’s administration as the director of boards and commissions. For almost a decade in this capacity, out of the country’s nearly 200 Black newspapers, she was the youngest African American newspaper publisher concurrently functioning as the Black Press Association’s West Coast Region 5 President, which governed the African American newspaper publishers tied to the association on the west coast.
While running the newspaper, Chida founded a non-profit organization that instructed school-aged girls on their image, communication skills, etiquette, educational development, and life lessons. During its summer and after-school program offerings, she and her team were able to reach girls locally by bringing awareness to the issue of sex trafficking in the Black community, drawing crowds of approximately 200 to 400 at sessions. Early in her career, Chida served as the Executive Director of San Diego’s first Black Chamber of Commerce. In that capacity, she created outlets and forums where economic issues affecting San Diego’s Black business community could be addressed.
Alyssa: You are the direct descendant of what many would call San Diego royalty, especially as it relates to black media in the city, what was your early life like?
Chida: Good question, I spent a lot of time at the office. So, we moved to San Diego when I was about 3, and I just remember being in an entrepreneurial household that was also very faith-based. My mom actually got saved at St. Stephens before I was born, and before she married my dad. Faith played a big role in how we functioned, but I spent a lot of days after school at the newspaper, playing office and writing for fun. Back then we were still developing film in a dark room, and laying out our newspaper was very interesting. I think my parents were the 3rd owner, I think the first owner was murdered. Years before that my mom was a receptionist at the newspaper, and my Mom thought it would be a good idea to buy it. My dad was like “Mmm okay, I guess” so they did and it was like a whirlwind, no one knew they both had careers that gave them the experience to know what they were doing. They both had careers in politics, and my Dad taught for a while, so it was very interesting. What I thought was normal wasn’t really normal, my parents worked in the office together, and their offices were right across from each other. I met a lot of cool people growing up working in the office, I just remember seeing a lot of heads of companies and politicians coming in and out.
Alyssa: And you were born in D.C., so which parent is from there? Are either one of your parents from there?
Chida: Yeah, so my dad was born in North Carolina, but he was raised in D.C. He decided to stay there and get into politics. My mom is from Florida, so, when they met and got married, my mom and my sisters moved to D.C and then I was born there, and my mom was like “I don’t like it here, I want to move back to San Diego.” That’s how we ended up coming back here.
Alyssa: What experiences in the field of journalism and media overall helped shape you into the woman you are today?
Chida: Well, that didn’t happen until after my mom died. I always loved writing, I was like 10 or 11 when I wrote a novel. I remember being on a flight with my parents, we were going somewhere and my mom accidentally left it on a plane. It was like this big (she spread her fingers far apart to show the size.) The day I started taking it seriously was the day after my Mom died. I was married at the time, and I was living in Baltimore, my “Wusband” as I call him was teaching at Morgan State University, and when she passed we just knew we had to come back and help my dad with the business because it was usually all hands on deck. It wasn’t until, oddly enough, one of my first days back in the business I had to google my job description, because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do because, for a long time, I despised the business. I felt like it was taking away from my family, it consumed everything we did. My parents were pastors, so we never had family time, but when she died, I knew I had an obligation to get this done. It wasn’t until I saw someone come in to purchase a copy, it was a man or a woman and she saw a photo, she was way in the back, super tiny, but it made her whole day. The more I started noticing the reactions of people the more I understood how impactful it was.
Alyssa: Yeah, because you all were before the blog age, you guys were before Instagram, Facebook, and all that. I read an article about a list of Black-owned and operated and still functioning newspapers in the country, and you were the only one in the city. I don’t think people from other regions understand what it’s like to be in such a small pool where the percentage of Black people is under 10% we crave that representation. You guys meant a lot to a lot of us, you were the representation we had when we didn’t have it anywhere else.
Chida: That means a lot. It is a thankless job, and the expectation is that we put out the news, people feel like we signed up for this. This is all we know, doing this job. Publications in those majority black cities, like you mentioned get a lot of national attention. I think the most challenging aspect is being in a city where we get big waves of new black people because it is a military town. People say things like “print is dead” and I say “Print will never be dead, it’s a legal and historical document. When you need to get a divorce or announce a probate, you have to post it in the newspaper.
Alyssa: As both a San Diego native and a black woman, you are familiar with how easy it is to fall into the traps of sex trafficking, what was the moment that made you realize that it was important for you to begin outreach efforts?
Chida: One day when I was doing newspaper read, there was this statistic that I read, I can’t remember if it was in 2011 or 2012 and it mentioned that 66% of girls being sex trafficked were black, and I was like “Wow, that’s over half, that’s interesting.” I wanted to know who was talking about it because when people think of sex trafficking, they think of Thailand or Colombia they weren’t thinking of the U.S. I started doing this deep dive into sex trafficking statistics in our black and brown communities and no one was talking about it. I was talking to the D.A.’s office and they didn’t really have any stats, and a lot of victims are black. There’s a documentary that came out titled “Very Young Girls” and Rachel Lloyd is the woman that put together this documentary, after digging around I found her, and I found her organization, it’s called “G.E.M.S” and it is based out of New York.” When I found that and saw all of the girls were being trafficked, they weren’t girls that were into trouble, one girl walked out her door after having a fight with her parents, typical teenage stuff and a dude came and whisked her away into sex trafficking.
The more research I did I was like “Hey, I have the ability to start talking about this, I have a whole newspaper.” I started to think about the socio-economic backgrounds of the girls being affected, a lot of the girls being trafficked came from disadvantaged backgrounds, they needed to get money, and things like that. Poverty in a lot of cases, hits communities of color hard and when you’re a black or brown girl and you’re struggling financially and having hardships at home, this is a natural nexus for some girls, so it was always my desire to share this information, that’s always been in me, I want everyone to know everything. We had a town hall where we had over 400 people come, we had a reformed pimp on the stage, and we were able to help influence laws that helped stop making the victims the perpetrators.
Alyssa: Another important aspect of your non-profit is the teaching of etiquette and communication skills, what made you realize those were important skills for young women in the inner city?
Chida: I had the opportunity to be a debutante in high school, and we got to learn really cool stuff. I learned how to use chopsticks, how to dress, and what types of undergarments to wear under certain clothes. I’ve always been into skincare, and I did some modeling when I was in high school, my mom was a professional model at one time, so we always liked that stuff. We didn’t want to teach the fancy type of etiquette, we wanted to focus more on the type that you need for survival. I’ve always been that person who thinks that if I have an interest in a specific thing, other people will too.
Alyssa: You ran for office to serve District 4, a community that encompasses the greater Southeast area, what is something that you feel makes District 4 special? How do you relate to the people of the community?
Chida: Well D4 raised me! I went to Oak Park, I went to SCPA, I spent a lot of time at the YMCA and I have friends that went to Lincoln, it’s home. I wasn’t initially going to do it, people have been asking me to run for office for years, and I would laugh. I felt led because I felt like it was something God wanted me to do, he didn’t say if I would win or I would lose but I believe there are things in our life that God asks us to do to see if we would do it, so I gave him a yes. No, I didn’t win the election per se, but I remember telling a news anchor “Either I win or I win, I’m good either way.” Now that I am working with the mayor, I realize that there is a lot that we are not communicating with constituents, and that was a major inspiration for me when I was running my platform.
Full Interview Below:
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