Examples like Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City Mayoral race last year or Brandon Johnson becoming mayor of Chicago a few years earlier, are some of the highest profile examples of progressive movement candidates winning local office. They’ve demonstrated that movements can win as well as how challenges can arise when working to place a single elected official into a local seat amidst a sea of colleagues to their political right. Meanwhile, left leaning electeds often immediately face criticism about their commitments to the movement organizers and the communities who helped put them in office the day their tenure in office begins.

But in Philadelphia, City Councilmember at Large Kendra Brooks, along with the community organizations who serve her constituents and shaped her values, have stayed in the difficult work of governing together. Councilmember Brooks is a member of the Working Families Party who holds an at-large minority seat on the city’s council. She contends that this role requires a diligent tending to the feedback between her office and the communities she serves if she is going to deliver the promises she campaigned on. We had the opportunity to talk with Councilmember Brooks as well as two of the community stakeholders she continues to work with as a sitting Philadelphia city councilmember. They are Pennsylvania Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Nicole Kligerman and Director of Amistad Law Project, Nikki Grant. In the episode we discuss the opportunities and challenges they’ve faced together winning material victories for working people in the city.

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