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An interview with Cherelle Parker

Who is Cherelle Parker?

Parker is the 100th — and first woman — mayor of Philadelphia. Here's what we know about her

Who is Cherelle Parker?

Parker is the 100th — and first woman — mayor of Philadelphia. Here's what we know about her

Cherelle Parker is the 100th mayor of Philadelphia — and the first woman to hold the post. A Democrat and former two-term member of Philadelphia City Council representing the 9th District, Parker took over the office former Mayor Jim Kenney occupied for eight years at 00:00 hours on January 1, 2024. Her inauguration took place January 2, 2024 as to not interfere with the Mummers Parade.

Cherelle Parker (red flower patterned top), Mayor-elect with mentor Marian Tasco (gold necklace, rainbow sweater), former City Councilmember; Kenyatta Johnson (blue gold check suit, gold tie), City Councilmember District 2Thousands gathered at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 at Columbus Blvd and Washington Ave to celebrate the 100th Mayor of Philadelphia: Cherelle Parker. November 7, 2023 for The Philadelphia Citizen
Left to right: PA Sen. Sharif Street, Mayor-elect Parker, Councilmember Kenyatta Johnosn, former Councilmember (in windowpane suit) and Marian Tasco (in the rainbow sweater) at Parker’s victory party on November 7, 2023. Photo by Albert Yee.

Year one as mayor

Parker came out of the gate in stark contrast to her predecessor, full of vim, vigor and boisterous catchphrases such as “One Philly” and “Clean and Green.” At her inauguration, she instructed the audience at the Met to raise their index fingers, a show of unity she’d continue to request at public appearances.

During her campaign, she made her priorities clear: Recruit more law enforcement; create 30,000 units of affordable housing in her first year; expand workforce development; extend the school year; increase transparency; and clean up trash. Throughout her first year, two issues dominated Parker’s mayoralty: Kensington, known as the crux of opioid and tranq addiction and homelessness crisis, and the 76ers proposal to build a new NBA arena in Market East.

One year in, neither project turned out how Parker wanted it to: Kensington is still suffering, but there’s hope on the horizon. And, after months of public and private fighting for 76 Place, the mayor — surprise! — learned the 76ers’ owners had left her out of closed-door meetings and announced they planned to stay in South Philly. It was still a win for Parker’s beloved Building Trades, if a waste of her time and political capital.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, a Black woman with glasses, thick straight black hair and bangs, wearing a gold jacket and shiny black blouse stands behind a podium giving a speech. Behind her are city leaders and officials. In the auditorium are heads looking toward her.
Parker makes her 100th day speech in Kensington. Photo by Albert Lee.

Year one: a timeline

Her first appointment: Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, a former deputy commissioner who’d gone on to lead safety at the School District of Philadelphia. Next, she appointed Pedro Rosario as Bethel’s deputy. The city’s first Latino in the post took Kensington under his wing, but shouldered some blame for a somewhat botched attempt in May to clear a few blocks of homeless people along a busy corridor. (Police arrived before service providers, which meant people still on the street did not receive social services as promised; many just moved to nearby blocks.)

Parker also made substantial structural changes to the administration, separating the departments of Streets & Sanitation and Licenses & Inspections into two departments each, and appointing Carlton Williams — who’d helmed both Streets and L & I, with dubious results — as the head of “Clean and Green.” While such moves were notable, so was the slowness with which she filled several leadership positions, including a fire commissioner (appointed in June), planning and development (October), and health commissioner (December). Parker also struggled with City Council over her appointment of Joyce Wilkerson to remain on the school board; Council eventually gave in and let Wilkerson’s appointment ride.

Left to right: Kenyatta Johnson, Mayor Parker, Carlton Williams (behind Parker), mostly Black and brown adults, tour an area between a faded building and piles of trash in Southwest Philadelphia. Photo by Chris Mansfield.
Left to right: Kenyatta Johnson, Mayor Parker, Carlton Williams (behind Parker) touring Southwest Philadelphia. Photo by Chris Mansfield.

In the beginning of the year, the mayor instituted a new policy where all City communications had to go through Parker’s office, hindering media coverage and causing concern among organizations like the Free Library, who had to pause social media postings to wait for her approval of announcements for book signings and such. Such moves seemed incongruous with Parker’s frequent declarations of her commitment to transparency.

In February, Parker issued a back-to-work order for all city workers, requiring a five-day-a-week return to the office, in part to help reinvigorate Center City, even though some office space had been reduced post Covid. Despite worker and the municipal worker union pushback, the order took effect in mid-July.

In mid-March, Parker unveiled a $6.3 billion budget that provided for more resources for law enforcement, cleaning and her office’s budget (which doubled), no tax increases, and a reduction in funding to syringe exchange programs. On Parker’s 100th day in office, she rode the Market-Frankford El to Kensington, where she walked on the street and gave her budget address in an elementary school auditorium. Her budget would go on to pass with few changes at $6.37 billion, in June.

Mayor Parker at the second-day-a-week trash collection pilot announcement. Photo by Chris Mansfield.
Mayor Parker at the second-day-a-week trash collection pilot announcement. Photo by Chris Mansfield.

Some of Parker’s promises were kept: The Community College of Philadelphia launched a city workforce development program. Hundreds of city blocks received a one-time cleaning over the summer. In the fall, 20 schools joined a year-round school pilot. A second-day-a-week trash collection pilot launched in Council President Kenyatta Johnson’s and Councilmember Mark Squilla’s districts. The City also opened phase one — 340 beds — in a robust in-patient addiction treatment center in a three-phase construction on State Road in Holmesburg.

Others promises, not so much. Those 30,000 new units of affordable housing became 30,000 new units of any kind of housing — and the administration never shared its promised housing plan.

At a January 2025 press conference unrelated to the Eagles NFC Championship game, she launched into the Eagles chant — spelling Eagles “E-L-G-S-E-S.” CBS3 referred to the blunder as a “cardinal sin.”

Cherelle Parker, the personal

Parker grew up with her grandparents in Mount Airy. Her mother, who had her as a teen, died when Parker was 11. Parker was a cheerleader at Parkway Central High School. She graduated with a B.S. from Lincoln University and a Master of Public Administration from Penn.

In 2011, then-state Rep. Parker was arrested for driving drunk in her state-issued car — the wrong way on one-way street in Germantown. She later testified that she was never on that street and disputed the officers’ account of the arrest. In 2013, she was convicted of the DUI and spent three days in jail.

Parker is the mother of Langston Mullins, whom she named after her favorite poet, Langston Hughes. Her ex, Langston’s father, is Ben Mullins, a leader in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Langston was 10 years old when Parker won the Democratic primary in May 2023, and Parker has jokingly referred to herself as an “OAM,” or old-ass mom, because she became a parent at age 40. The family lives in West Oak Lane.

Cherelle Parker’s pre-mayoral career

At age 17, Parker won a high school oration contest. The prize: A trip to Senegal and Morocco — and an internship with Philadelphia City Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco, whom she’d go on to work for for around 15 years (with a short break to teach high school English teacher in Pleasantville, NJ), from about 1995 to 2002.

In 2005, Parker became the youngest African American woman elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. There, she represented Northwest Philadelphia for 10 years and chaired the Philadelphia House Delegation. In the House, she worked to increase funding to Philadelphia public schools (through a statewide tax on cigarettes), cap increases on property taxes, fight payday lenders, and strengthen the cases of victims of sexual violence.

In 2015, Marian Tasco retired from Council, and Philadelphia’s Democratic City Committee chose Parker as her replacement. Parker took office as the 9th District Councilmember in 2016, representing the Northwest and Northeast neighborhoods of Mount Airy, West Oak Lane, East Oak Lane, Olney, Lawncrest, Lawndale, Burholme and Oxford Circle.

On Council, Parker served as chair of the Labor and Civil Service Committee and vice chair of the Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. She became known for championing pathways to home improvements, fighting homeowner-impacting gentrification, opposing Mayor Kenney’s soda tax, and increasing community policing. In 2020, she became Council’s Majority Leader.

She was also the first woman to chair the board of the Delaware River Port Authority.

Democratic candidate for mayor

Before the general election in November 2023, Parker defeated a crowded field of Democratic candidates in the May 2023 primary. This field included fellow former City Councilmembers Alan Domb, Derek Green, Helen Gym and Maria Quiñones Sánchez, along with former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and supermarket owner Jeff Brown.

During her campaign, Parker described her mission in government as “closing the gap between the haves and the have nots” and cited safety, jobs, and city services as her top priorities.

She also promised to hire 300 more police officers, including community officers, and restore “constitutional” stop-and-frisk. She also put forth the idea of making school year-round, and, like the other candidates, vowed to support small businesses along neighborhood corridors and increase affordable housing.

Parker received notable and powerful endorsements from the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, led by Ryan Boyer, along with the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, Inc., District Council 33 Locals 427 and 403, Eastern Atlantic States Council of Carpenters, IBEW Local 98, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ.

City Council President Darrell Clarke, former City Councilmembers Derek Green and Maria Quiñones Sánchez, State Senators Vincent Hughes, Sharif Street and Tina Tartaglione also endorsed Parker. Find a complete list of her endorsements here.

On the November 7, 2023 general election, Parker won the mayor’s race by defeating Republican mayoral candidate and former City Councilmember David Oh. Parker won 75 percent of the vote; just 31 percent of registered Philadelphia voters cast ballots.

Cherelle Parker on City Council

Cherelle Parker is a Philadelphia City Councilmember and now a candidate for mayor of Philadelphia
Photo by Jared Piper / Philadelphia City Council
  1. PARTNERED WITH COMMUNITY COLLEGE OF PHILADELPHIA to establish the small business training program, Power Up Your Business.
  2. A FORMER EDUCATOR WHO SUPPORTS public school workforce development programs, the addition of nontraditional teachers and year-long school. She believes solid education will reduce crime.
  3. CHAMPIONED HOME FIXES TO HELP STABILIZE NEIGHBORHOODS. She and Council President Darrell Clarke developed Restore, Repair, Renew to help homeowners access low-interest home improvement loans. She is also credited with increasing the Realty Transfer Tax by .1 percent in order to borrow $100 in bonds to eliminate backlog within income-based home repair programs.
  4. SOUGHT TO PROTECT NEIGHBORHOODS FROM EFFECTS OF DEVELOPMENT by creating a bill that requires them to complete a Project Information Form to let neighbors know about the environmental and other impacts of their proposed projects in communities.
  5. CHAMPIONED THE NEIGHBORHOOD SAFTEY AND COMMUNITY POLICING PLAN, which calls for adding 300 beat and bike police officers to the force, tackling quality of life issues, and increasing community engagement. She also backed up Council President Clarke’s call to reinstate stop-and-frisk, legally.
  6. CALLED OUT KENNEY DIRECTLY AFTER HIS JULY 4 COMMENTS about being tired of gun violence. Later, she publicly recounted telling him that, “If you can feel this way, imagine how Philadelphians who don’t have the ability to check out feel on a daily basis.” She also referred to Kenney’s statement as “asinine.”
  7. VOCAL ABOUT THE SODA TAX‘S disproportionate impact on communities of color.

Videos featuring Cherelle Parker

More ways to learn about Cherelle Parker

Follow Mayor Cherelle Parker on social media: Facebook, Instagram, X / Twitter.

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Inaugural Address, Mayor Cherelle Parker, January 2, 2024. Photo by Albert Yee. January 2, 2024 for The Philadelphia Citizen

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