Connection
YAF Chair’s message:
Architects should stand for something As a child growing up in northeast Ohio, my family spent many Saturdays visiting my grandparents. Many of those hours were spent listening to my dad’s mom, Rita Mary Brown, talk about her work as a city councilwoman in Brooklyn, a blue-collar city on the outskirts of Cleveland with a population of about 11,000. She was an outspoken woman who never hesitated to go to battle with the mayor, spent hours on the phone with her constituents listening to the challenges they were facing, and made lasting change in her community during her 21 years in public office. She voted for one of the county’s first bans on using cellphones while driving. She helped open a senior center. And she taught me that politics, both local and national, affects every one of us, so we better pay attention. Now living in Washington, D.C., I have an up-close and personal view of that reality. I moved to the nation’s capital in December 2012, just in time to attend Barack Obama’s second inauguration. I am ashamed to say that I spent my first four years in D.C. a bit indifferent to the political theater happening just a few miles from my apartment. Because I supported Obama and lived in a city whose local government officials largely reflected my values, I did not feel the need to stay engaged. I was annoyed that I did not have a senator or voting representative in Congress, but not enough to take action. The White House and Capitol were tourist attractions to visit when my parents or friends came to town. That changed abruptly after the 2016 election.
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On Jan. 21, 2017, I channeled my fear and anxiety about the new administration when I attended the first Women’s March. Over the next four years, I attended over a dozen marches and protests. I sent emails and postcards to my elected representatives. I testified at a D.C. Council hearing about the importance of health insurance covering contraception, and I spoke at a rally outside the Capitol ahead of a vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I wrote over 200 letters and sent thousands of text messages to voters in swing states to encourage them to vote in the 2020 election. I became an outspoken proponent of D.C. statehood, which is the only fair way to grant full voting rights to the 700,000-plus residents of the nation’s capital. Perhaps the biggest honor was seeing a good friend take the oath to become a U.S. citizen. It seems like civic engagement is on the rise. The 2020 election drew the highest voter turnout in more than a century1 . We braved COVID-19 and increasing voter suppression to show up and make our voices heard. But I worry that this engagement will wane as we move into a year without an election taking up the front page of the newspaper every day. Architects cannot afford to sit back, return to “business as usual,” and pretend that politics does not affect us. We must speak up, get engaged, and flex our leadership muscles. Would I like to follow in my grandma’s footsteps and run for office myself one day? I would be lying if I said the idea did
