Melissa Robbins, now on the ballot for a Democratic City Council At-Large seat in our upcoming municipal election, says she knew she wanted to run for public office since she was in second grade.
“In the most honest way, the moment for me what when I was six,” she remembers. The Maryland native, the youngest of 11 kids, was sitting on the sofa with her mom watching 60 Minutes on TV. “I heard the presidential music … and I saw this man walking across the stage. He looked so dignified, so noble and regal.”
It was President Jimmy Carter. “At that moment, that was it,” Robbins says. She felt an electric connection to that presence.
Starting at age 19, Robbins served four years as a combat medic in the US Army. She’s an alum of the Community College of Philadelphia and went on to major in broadcast journalism at Temple. Last year, she hosted WURD radio’s The Source, but she’s spent the bulk of her recent career as a political strategist, from Philadelphia City Council campaigns to gubernatorial and presidential ones, and served as a delegate for the 2016 Democratic National Convention. She’s a mom of four, with the youngest in high school, and currently lives in Northeast Philly’s Fox Chase neighborhood.
She’s entered a crowded field for that City Council role: no less than 41 candidates filed their nomination petitions in early March for one of seven At-Large seats—seven Republicans and 34 Democrats (two seats will go to candidates from a minority party, and five will be filled by Democrats).
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Robbins spoke with CityWide in the middle of petition season, during the pavement-pounding work of collecting signatures on nomination petitions, to get on the primary ballot.
“It’s grueling, but it’s necessary,” she said. “My campaign, it’s a grassroots campaign. So we don’t have access to capital … it’s from the muscle.”
Robbins’s campaign takes particular aim at poverty, with attention to related issues like healthcare access and funding and infrastructure for Philly schools.
Robbins’s campaign takes particular aim at poverty, with attention to related issues like healthcare access and funding and infrastructure for Philly schools. As a military veteran with years of hospital experience, she said that healthcare and poverty intersect at education.
“It’s really important that we look at how we educate our children,” she insisted. We’re in a technologically driven society with antiquated classroom curricula. Kids lacking basic health and science knowledge won’t have the tools to manage their wellbeing later in life, and won’t be able to “get themselves into an environment where they actually thrive.”
The problem is urgent, she said, “We have people who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s who are dying young based on their lack of education. And the lack of access to healthcare.”
Robbins is passionate about local politics, as a place where you can see tangible outcomes based on your effort or contributions. As a Philly voter, she said, it’s great to know your division and your ward, know what’s happening there, and also be looking at what’s going on in your neighbors’ divisions. “I hope that drawing attention to what goes on around up close and in person every day will empower you.”
Her sense is that as a whole, Philadelphians are unusually engaged in local politics, “because we’re forced to.” And “there’s something about this city,” she says, where America was born, “that allows us to press the limit.”
Coming from her early military career in a medical setting, she’s seen firsthand the success that’s possible where money is invested, and people get adequate access to care.
And Robbins has a particular definition of “success” on a broad scale.
“Success should not come from a huge fundraiser. No!” she said. “Or a payback. No!” Success means “when you can take the messages, listen to the people, understand their needs, and shape policy based on that,” with good outcomes. “That is when you have success as a public servant.”
“Success should not come from a huge fundraiser. No!” she said. “Or a payback. No!” Success means “when you can take the messages, listen to the people, understand their needs, and shape policy based on that,” with good outcomes. “That is when you have success as a public servant.”
Robbins wears her outspoken personality and her unfiltered identity proudly on the campaign trail, including a hashtag inspired by her hair: #GoWithTheFro.
Especially after the story of a black high-school wrestler forced to cut his dreadlocks or forfeit the match went viral in December, it’s a good reminder to respect diverse identities.
“This is me. This is who I am,” Robbins said of #GoWithTheFro. “I can’t curtail who I am, or shape myself to be someone that I’m not.”
Appreciating others as they naturally are is at the core of a healthy city, she added. “If you say you want to live in a peaceful neighborhood, you say that you want to be able to go to work and earn a livable wage? Well, guess what. You have to be willing to be accepting of people where they are.”
What’s not ok, she said, is someone telling you not just how to look or act, but that “your very existence is an issue for me.”
“You cannot minimize your presence, minimize your contribution, minimize your existence … I am Melissa Robbins. This is me. I’m not going to fit into your box.”
Get ready to vote this year in the municipal primary, coming up on May 21, with the general election on November 5.