A crisp, invigorating political season

I grew up on Kingsbridge Avenue and Broadway — simultaneously. I’d spend evenings bathing in the warmth of home-cooked meals at grandma’s on 238th Street and Broadway, and once my mom got off from work at Loehmann’s, we’d walk home together past the 50th Precinct to our apartment on 234th and Broadway. 

Now that I’m living in Washington, D.C., I miss the fullness of having two homes in Kingsbridge. Sometimes the nostalgia conjured by memories of climbing the city steps at 233rd Street, laughing to myself as I remember sledding down Ewen Hill, and exploring the woods by Seton Park has to keep me going as I remember what I want to come back home to in a few years. 

Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year in Kingsbridge. Droves of kids in colorful fall sweaters come roaring out of school, chasing their breath in the clear afternoon sun. You hear the familiar crunch of leaves beneath your feet. And this fall, let’s not forget the excitement of election season. 

Local politics is one of those familiar bastions of promise and democracy, compelling in its immediacy and enthusiasm. When I think of local politics, I remember huge grey voting booths, old school levers and pulleys, and my grandma’s familiar loopy signature in the big black book of voter “John Hancocks.” 

I also imagine a glorious world that deserves equal parts celebration and protection. A tradition of participation that, for some of us, is a recent addition to our civil rights. 

Tearing past the bristling brush of politics, you find the grandmas, like my own, who genuinely believe in the accessibility of local politicians. 

Just the other day, I was showing my grandma my new Media Matters business card, and she said to me, “Well, give me a few more so I can give it to the local guys in power.” 

I giggled a bit at first, then realized the joke was on me. Here was my tiny Dominican grandmother, a brave woman who escaped a horrifying dictatorship in the 60s reminding me of her conviction that these people should care about who we are — that we, in fact, mattered.