Sherrie Cohen: Daughter of a dynasty, leader in her own right

Did you know that, right here in Philadelphia, we have our own Kennedy-esque dynasty? For generations, the Cohen family has been dedicated to public service in our area. The dynasty began with David Cohen, an activist and attorney who served as a city councilman for 29 years (at age 90, Cohen was one of the oldest American elected leaders in office). His wife, Florence Cohen, was head of the New Democratic Coalition of Philadelphia and his chief of staff. His son Mark Cohen is a Pennsylvania state representative who, following in his father’s footsteps, is one of the longest-serving state legislators in Pennsylvania history. David’s other son Denis Cohen serves in the First Judicial District of the Pennsylvania Courts of Common Pleas. Sherrie Cohen, who like her late father is an attorney and activist, was also the first open lesbian to make a run for City Council. We spoke to Sherrie about life, family and the excitement of being a delegate at the Democratic National Convention. PGN: Tell me about growing up in the Cohen family. SC: Well, it was wonderful growing up in a family that was so committed to public service and fighting for justice. We were raised going to demonstrations for civil rights, fighting against school segregation, protesting against the Vietnam War. Those were some of the most memorable moments of my childhood. We were taught that social movements are the way to make things happen, so I’m very happy to continue on that path. I actually followed my mother by getting involved in the women’s movement, then I came out and joined the LGBT movement. It’s very effective when people get together to demand change. PGN: I grew up in an activist family as well and remember being tear-gassed by the police with my mother at some rally in D.C. when I was young. SC: Wow. That reminds me of when my father was a delegate at the 1968 Democratic Convention, which was marked by lots of demonstrations on the street, tear gas and blood everywhere. I was 13, and I remember the intensity of the moment. Being out on the street was so exciting and then you’d come across the police using force to try and stop the protest, but we kept marching anyway. PGN: What lessons did you take away? SC: Regardless of the circumstance, don’t give up. No matter how hard it may be or how long it takes. An example is the fight my parents waged to put a library in our neighborhood. People told them it was a waste of city funds, that people in that neighborhood didn’t need a library, but they persisted. It took 36 years to build that library, but they got it done. Look at the state of LGBT rights in Pennsylvania. I was thrilled to be involved in the fight for gay rights back in the ’70s here in Philadelphia, but it took years before it finally came into being, in ’82. And on the state level, we still don’t have basic civil rights. It can take decades, but it’s well worth the fight. PGN: A memorable protest moment? SC: That would be in 1975 when we were fighting for the “Gay Civil Rights” bill. It had been held up in council committee, where they wanted to kill it. Bill 1275 was supposed to provide LGBT citizens protection against discrimination in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations. Other groups from the community wanted to have a silent vigil to protest another year gone by without it being passed, but I was in this rowdy group of lesbians and we said, “No! We don’t want to be silent.” We wanted them to know we weren’t going to take them totally ignoring our rights by quietly sitting down. So I got up on a chair and started chanting, “Free Bill 1275!” and the sergeant-at-arms and his men swooped in and physically carted us out. Many of them hit and beat the women. We continued chanting outside the chambers and they brought in the police civil-affairs unit, who literally kicked us down four flights of stairs at City Hall. Many of the women were hurt and had to go to the hospital, so we sued the police unit for excessive use of force. PGN: Were you an attorney at that point? SC: No, my father was a lawyer and my older brother was a lawyer, so it was something I’d always thought about, but it wasn’t until my mid-30s that I decided to pursue it. I went to law school and really loved it; it’s nice to have the legal skills to help the causes I’ve been involved with. PGN: What’s a case that’s given you great satisfaction? SC: I worked on the class-action lawsuit against the five major tobacco companies in the country for their fraud in misleading the American public about the dangers of nicotine and tobacco. We were representing half-a-million smokers. The trial went on for two-and-a-half years and we got one of the highest jury verdicts in the nation’s history. It was incredible. We were a trial team of four walking into court every day against the tobacco giants, who had a team of 70 lawyers in the court every day and multiple attorneys across the country working on other aspects of the case. We had to battle the several motions that they filed each day, in addition to preparing our witnesses and trial testimony for the day. Unfortunately, it was overturned by a conservative appellate judge, but it shows what a small, determined group of people can do to win on behalf of the people. I’m now an attorney with the Tenant Union Representative Network, so I try to keep people in their homes when they’ve fallen on hard times or when their landlord fails his or her responsibility to keep up the property, creating an unsafe place to live. PGN: So back to the elections, how does one get to be a delegate? SC: I was elected to the state committee by my district and have been serving there for a number of years, and I’m also vice president of the LGBT caucus of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. So through my involvement with them and the Obama campaign, I applied to be a member of the delegation and was successful. PGN: What are you doing for the campaign? SC: I’m co-chair of Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club, which has been active in the campaign doing phone banking, pub crawls and working to register people and get the vote out. We endorse a slate of candidates every election. I’m also the Democratic committeeperson in my neighborhood, which is an elected position. Elections are coming up in 2014 and we want to encourage people who want to get more politically active to run. PGN: So if someone wanted to become a committeeperson, how would they go about it and what does it entail? SC: Helping to register people in your neighborhood to vote and getting them out to vote on Election Day. Committeepeople can also serve as liaisons to the city government to help get neighborhood problems addressed. You only need 10 signatures from Democratic voters in your area to get started. Liberty City will have meetings to show people how to go about it closer to the time. It’s a great grassroots way of getting involved. PGN: What are some of the reasons Liberty City endorsed President Obama? SC: Oh gosh, so many. He signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded the federal hate-crimes law to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation or gender identity. He lifted the ban on using HIV status to prevent people from entering the U.S. He ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to give LGBT couples hospital-visitation rights and the ability to make medical decisions for each other. He expanded the Family Medical Leave Act to include LGBT parents and partners. He endorsed the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009 to provide full partnership benefits to federal employees. He added gender identity and expression to the Fair Housing Act and banned job discrimination on gender identity throughout the federal government. The list goes on. He’s hired and appointed a record number of LGBT people and he’s the first president to hire/appoint transgender appointees. PGN: He also held the first LGBT Pride Month celebration at the White House, and he and Joe Biden recorded an “It Gets Better” video. I don’t see Romney or Ryan doing that. SC: No, the Republican Party actually included an antigay-marriage plank to their official platform. PGN: So let’s jump back a bit. What were you like as a kid? SC: I was quiet. I enjoyed reading. Once a week we’d get to go to the local library and pick up a stack of books. I was a tomboy so I liked climbing trees and playing with the boys. And though I was quiet, I was still involved in a lot of social-justice activities. PGN: What was a favorite thing to do with your siblings? SC: There was a hill just a couple blocks away and in the winter we’d go sledding and then come home, where my parents had a fireplace and we’d cook burgers and roast marshmallows. PGN: You attended Girls High. What was your favorite class and activities? SC: I loved social studies, I was on the debate team and I co-edited the school newspaper. I was very active in the anti-war and civil-rights movements in high school. We had a citywide student-mobilization committee, where we met monthly to plan anti-war actions, and I was also the chair and then president of my synagogue youth group’s social-action group. We did car washes and other fundraisers to support Dr. King’s “Poor People’s Campaign.’’ PGN: Anne Coulter was just on “The View” talking about how liberal white people never actually cared about black people. And my first thought was how many people, in the Jewish community especially, were part of the civil-rights and Dr. King’s poor people’s movement. Refuting her theory, I understand you are currently a part of Elements, which is an LGBT women-of-color organization. SC: Yes, it’s so important to support one another. There’s a Jewish expression from the Torah: “Justice. Justice shalt thou pursue.” It’s something that I consider a watch word of my faith. I am happy to be on the ally caucus of Elements. Too often in our community, LGBTQ women of color find themselves marginalized, so I’m happy to rally support of LGBTQ women of color. PGN: And I know your father marched with Dr. King in Selma and was that at the “I Have a Dream” speech. SC: Yes, one of the golden moments in my early life was when my dad had signed up to go down South to help with voter registration for African-Americans and to combat the discriminatory practices that were being used to stop people from registering and voting. Before he left, he wrote out his will. I felt it was moving that he was willing to sacrifice his life to help protect the fundamental rights of all people to vote. PGN: Wow. That just gets me even madder at the voter apathy in today’s culture. What would you say to encourage people to do their civic duty and vote? SC: We can clearly see the impact of the people we pick to represent us. Are they pro-LGBT rights or are they against us? Are they going to move the country forward on behalf of our community, women and other minorities, or do they want to take us back to before the LGBT-rights movement or the civil-rights and women’s movements or even the New Deal? The choice is pretty clear. We have a president who has declared his support for marriage equality and has been an advocate for us, or a candidate who has aligned himself with antigay extremist positions and platforms. Talk to everyone you know who supports you as an LGBT person and tell them how important it is to support a president who supports you and your rights. PGN: One thing I wish we would also focus on is that he’s also a good candidate for many other reasons. I’m on the listserves of several environmental groups and, since they are nonprofits, they can’t come out and endorse him, but they’ve all been touting how much he and Lisa Jackson, president of the Environmental Protection Agency, have done for park lands and the environment in the face of opposition and how screwed we’ll be if the “Drill, baby, drill” party gets in. SC: Yes, it’s really important. My father was the sponsor of one of the first air-pollution measures in the country and had to battle big businesses to get it passed. His chemical right-to-know bill was one of the nation’s first, and he started one of the first municipal-recycling programs. He would approve of what the president’s trying to do, especially the new fuel-efficiency standards, which will make a big difference to the environment and the economy.

PGN: You came very close in your run for City Council. What were some of the positive things that came out of that? SC: Well, I think that just having an out lesbian in the race was an important statement. I was the first out Democratic candidate for City Council, which is astonishing. I was able to talk about LGBT issues in areas where perhaps no one has spoken about them before. I was a candidate of inclusion and coalition-building because that’s what my whole life has been about, and my campaign was a representation of that. I had people from all walks of life working with me, different neighborhoods, different ages, different backgrounds, because people knew that I would be an advocate for them. And hopefully I will be. I’m planning to run again in 2015. PGN: It’s so close to the election. What are things people can do to get involved? SC: There’s still a lot to do. People can go to BarackObama.com, put in your zip code and get connected to your neighborhood office. We’re also asking people to help with Tammy Baldwin’s campaign. She’s running to be the first out lesbian United States senator. At her website, Tammybaldwin.com, under the Take Action tab, you can volunteer to phone bank for her. It doesn’t matter where you live. Locally, Chris Dietz is out of Millersburg, and it’s just a short trip to help with the door-to-door canvassing for him or for Daylin Leach in King of Prussia, who introduced the bill for marriage equality. We can use every hand on deck.

To suggest a community member for “Family Portrait,” write to [email protected].

Newsletter Sign-up