To keep making history, Cherelle Parker needs to make unity a Philly thing

If there is something Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, knows how to do, it’s make history.

This is where our Founding Fathers formed a new country, where the U.S. Constitution was drafted and signed, and where the Liberty Bell, the iconic symbol of American independence, resides.

And, this week, it’s where we elected Cherelle Parker, the first woman — the first Black woman — to serve as our city’s 100th mayor. Voters also welcomed the first openly LGBTQ Council member in Rue Landau, and the first South Asian, Nina Ahmad, to ever serve on Council.

Herstory in all three cases.

But even before Democrat Parker defeated Republican David Oh on Tuesday, she was noting the significance of the day in her typically rousing way.

I may have chafed at some of Madam Mayor-elect’s past missteps, and I’m straight up bewildered by her persistent practice of illeism — yep, there’s a word for it — when she refers to herself in the third person. But Parker understood the moment, and I was all in with the energy she brought to Election Day.

I loved how Parker spoke about standing on the shoulders of a village “that looks like the United Nations” and helped her realize her purpose from her humble beginnings. She specifically called out the women in her life who helped bring her to this moment, from the grandmother who raised her to those who blazed a trail before her, including her mentor, Councilmember Marian Tasco.

“I don’t arrive here by myself. I didn’t pull myself up by my bootstraps,” Parker said Tuesday morning before voting at the Masjidullah mosque in her native West Oak Lane.

“There was a community and a village of people who lifted me.”

Love it, especially the part where she said she owes “a debt of service to people in this great city” — given how many public officials seem to forget who they actually serve after they get elected.

What I don’t love — what worries me — is that even on such a historic day, more than two-thirds of Philly’s registered voters didn’t bother to cast ballots for Parker or anyone else.

Without more civic engagement, I fear her historic win won’t add up to much more than Parker talking to herself — or, in Parker’s case, talking to herself in the third person.

When I checked in with Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the good-government watchdog group Committee of Seventy, she called Philadelphia’s turnout “low” and “awful.” But, she also noted, turnout under 30% was in line with recent municipal elections.

And for that disengagement, Cristella doesn’t so much blame voters as she does the lack of community outreach between elections. Forty-five percent of respondents were unsure which City Council member represents their district, according to a recent survey by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism (which owns The Inquirer). (No shame if that’s you, but do me a favor: Before you go back to scrolling through your socials, click on this handy Committee of Seventy tool and find out who reps you. We owe it to ourselves and each other to at least know who’s supposed to be working for us.)

When I shared my concerns with Cristella, she said that when only a fraction of residents have affirmed a candidate’s agenda by voting, getting elected is just the beginning.

“You still have to do that work to share your policies and your plan in every neighborhood across the city to get that buy-in,” Cristella said. “There’s an extra step.”

That’s a step Parker should be particularly qualified for, given her reputation as a veteran lawmaker who leans into bipartisan relationships — and the unifying notes she hit in her victory speech that has all but disappeared in our current toxic political environment.

“It’s now time for us to unite as one Philly,” Parker told supporters before leading them in a cheer that I vote becomes our city’s newest slogan.

“Let me hear you,” Parker told the crowd at her election night party at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19.

“One Philly!”

“A city united!”

I may have some concerns about her policy ideas, especially some of her tough-on-crime proposals, but I’m rooting for us to get the kind of care and guidance that leads to Philadelphia making even more history — for starters, as a struggling city that makes the most profound turnaround in recent memory.

But for that to happen, and for Parker’s historic moment to endure, she will have to get a lot more Philadelphians — including the disgruntled, the disillusioned, and the detached — on board.

In unity, I wish her luck.