Building Power, One (Political) Pushup at a Time
How I fell for NYC, flipped my community board, and became a political personal trainer
Today we’re turning over the Substack to Abundance member
(aka @nycpolitics101), to tell her story of becoming a movement leader—a roadmap for you! She’s running a Primary Election Bootcamp to help get folks involved in the races coming up on June 24. Want to bank points? Come to our Abundance Day of Action on 5/31!I’m Sachi—an accidental New Yorker, abundance enthusiast, and founder of a political bootcamp that I’d love for you to join.
I moved from San Francisco to New York by accident. My life in the Bay was an urbanist dream: I lived in a group house with a bunch of friends, a block away from the train, down the street from an adorable dog park. But after 6 months of COVID lockdown, I was trying to figure out what to do next. My then-boyfriend-now-husband George and I were getting stir crazy, and the sky had just turned orange due to wildfire smoke. So we put our stuff in storage, bought a car, and drove across the country.
We arrived in NYC in May 2021 for what was supposed to be a 2-month stay. That 2-month stay turned into a lease. Then a lease renewal. Then a couple more leases. I couldn’t get enough of New York’s people, its history, its infrastructure: I went to Broadway shows, took weekly runs along the West Side Highway, rode the ferry to Astoria for fun.
But I wanted to do more than consume—I wanted to contribute. To help make our city even better: more affordable, accessible, and inclusive. So I got involved volunteering with Open New York, a pro-housing advocacy group. Through this work, I learned more about NYC’s process for building and rezoning, including the role that community boards play. I put in an application to Manhattan Community Board 5 (CB5), and was appointed in May 2023 by Borough President Mark Levine to serve a 2-year term.
Community boards are known for blocking change, and I would’ve definitely characterized CB5 that way when I first started. We rejected every legal cannabis store because we were trying to impose stricter guidelines than the state cannabis authority. We rejected changes for small businesses due to concerns about potential noise. We rejected a skybridge because it didn’t look like the buildings around it. It wasn’t everyone on CB5, and it wasn’t every issue, but from my perspective, our general consensus and culture leaned more toward “no” than “yes”.
Some quotes from my community board:
City of Yes? I hate that name. I think we should say “no” more often.
Citibike has spread like a cancer throughout our city. Let’s be the people who finally say no to them.
Without us, the developers will ruin the Manhattan skyline, like they’re already doing with the supertalls.
And then CB5 went through a significant shift. Because the Borough President started appointing more pro-housing Manhattanites to community boards, there were more members with more pro-change perspectives like me (even though 81% of New Yorkers support building more housing in every neighborhood, community boards are just starting to reflect that perspective). Last fall, CB5 voted on the most important housing policy in years: City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, a citywide rezoning to allow more housing in every neighborhood. CB5 recommended approving City of Yes—a huge transformation for a board that used to care more about its own power than about housing outcomes. 🎉
I’ve seen how small actions can add up to having an impact. Over the last couple years, I’ve voted for a citywide rezoning, I’ve gotten to know my elected officials, and I’ve built a small audience on Substack helping people learn about NYC politics. My next move? Starting a bootcamp to make it fun for others to get involved in local politics.
Along the lines of fitness bootcamps, or career bootcamps, the NYC June Primary Bootcamp is meant to get New Yorkers in shape to not just vote in the primary, but take one more step in their community and political engagement. And make it social, so it's more fun!
With fitness, you build confidence when you learn how to do a pushup with good form. Then you get a sense of efficacy from being able to do one more pushup than when you started. You start to see gains slowly but surely. Political influence is the same: you start with small actions like signing up for your community board’s newsletter or making a WhatsApp group with 5 neighbors. Then you build agency and confidence to advocate bigger: to share your voting recommendations with your community, to get on a texting basis with your elected officials. My goal for the Bootcamp is for at least 100 New Yorkers to take an action before the June primary that’s bigger than what they would usually do. 💪
You can get points for different election-related actions, including signing up to volunteer with Abundance New York! Once you reach 70 points, you get a prize and an invitation to the awards ceremony in June. And the top 3 winners will have a tea party at Gracie Mansion together! Here's how to sign up for the Bootcamp today and start logging points.
I’m also hosting events throughout May and June too (see below)!
Long Island City Meetup: Tuesday, May 20, 6pm – 8pm, Finback Long Island City
NYC Civic Fair: Tuesday, June 3, 6pm – 8pm, FABRIK Dumbo
Crown Heights Meetup: Monday, June 9, 6pm – 8pm, Crown Inn
I can’t wait to meet you—and to hear how you’re building your political muscles, so we can all keep fighting for a better New York together.
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