The trash strike threatened to turn into Mayor Cherelle Parker’s kryptonite

When Cherelle L. Parker was campaigning to be Philadelphia’s 100th mayor, she told a New York Times reporter, “I’m not Superwoman.”

But since taking office in 2024 as the city’s first Black female chief executive, Parker has displayed more than a few superpowers. She’s unstoppable on the mic, unflappable in a debate, and almost always armed with a snappy slogan.

And yet, as trash piled up around our great metropolis during the first major strike of city workers in nearly four decades, I found myself wondering if City Hall’s Woman of Steel had finally met her kryptonite.

The strike finally ended in the early hours of Wednesday morning after eight festering days and four hours. The tentative three-year contract includes 3% raises each year. It’s close to what Parker had pushed for throughout negotiations, but well short of the 5% annual increases workers hoped to get when they walked off the job.

It’s “OVER,” Parker declared in a statement about “the historic deal.”

On paper, this is a win for Parker, but it came at a cost. And the stench of it will linger long after the last putrid bag of trash is picked up.

Getting here with the members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33 — who had been on strike since July 1 — proved to be the most visible test yet for Parker’s political strengths.

One big takeaway from this rank moment in our city’s history: Parker’s poise, presence, and self-control were stretched to their limit against the one opponent she can’t outtalk: reality.

So it’s worth taking a deeper look at how Parker’s four biggest superpowers were tested during the trash strike:

Parker’s voice has always been her most potent weapon, capable of stealing the spotlight on a debate stage, silencing her critics, and electrifying her base. But that power met its limit here. Eloquence doesn’t clean the streets. And no matter how compelling the speech, it couldn’t override the hard numbers: District Council 33 members, most of whom are Black, were earning an average of $46,000 a year. That is below Philadelphia’s living wage. That was just simply unacceptable, and no poetic flourish could make up for it. The city’s blue-collar workforce wasn’t looking to be inspired — they wanted to keep their lights on and food on the table.

Parker doesn’t wing it. She does her homework — or establishes committees full of highly paid experts to do it. But this crisis wasn’t about pie charts, spreadsheets, or her famous binders. It was about survival. Preparation alone couldn’t break a stalemate when the emotions were this raw and the stakes this personal. All her research was rendered moot by the deeply visceral feelings and hard economics here, not to mention a worthy match in her counterpart, Greg Boulware, the union president who was rolling like he had nothing to lose. The moment called for decentering the data to focus on dignity.

Parker has a gift for connection. But it was hard to appreciate her usual powers of empathy when all you could see (and smell) was rotting mounds of trash piling up. Philadelphians didn’t want sympathy. They wanted action. They’re tired of being caught in the public relations crossfire of political games and performative leadership. They just wanted their trash picked up. The mayor’s slogan of “Safer, Cleaner, Greener ” was at risk of turning more into a punch line than a promise.

Parker was right to push back — once — against misleading claims that she gave herself a fat 9% raise when she became mayor. But when you’re earning far more than the people desperate for a living wage, that argument loses its punch on the second or third iteration. It got worse when members of her executive team lined up behind her, nodding like overpaid bobbleheads while workers were on strike over basics. It was giving disconnected and defensive. The mayor didn’t need to win the argument; she needed to win the people.

In a fiery news conference on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art days after the strike started, Parker vowed not to bend to the union’s demands, even if it cost her politically.

“You can threaten me with not supporting me if I decide to run for reelection. You can call me a one-term mayor,” Parker roared. “But I’ll tell you what I will not do. I will not put the fiscal stability of the city of Philadelphia in jeopardy for no one. If that means I’m a one-term mayor, then so be it.”

There was that oratory superpower again. It made for quite a sound bite. The truth is that the chances of her being a one-term mayor in a city where most incumbents are reelected are close to none. More so after this victory.

Still, the irony is hard to miss: The very strengths that carried her into office — her rhetoric, her readiness, her relatability — demonstrated how she must continue to evolve as the leader of one of the nation’s largest cities.

This is what political kryptonite looks like. Not scandal. Not sabotage. Just a very public, very visible moment when a mayor’s strengths seem to sputter.

Parker was right to remind people when she was running for the city’s top job that she wasn’t Superwoman. She’s right to remind people now that she can’t make the city we love better by herself.

I hope she hears this over the applause: We didn’t vote for a superhero. No one is waiting for Superman or Superwoman. But we do expect and deserve a leader who stands up for the people who keep this city running — especially the ones we once called “essential,” right up until they asked for a living wage and a little dignity.

That’s the kind of superhero we all need.