A year ago today, my father, Philadelphia City Councilman at Large David Cohen died six weeks short of his 91st birthday. He died in the last hours of Jewish year 5755, and several people recalled the old Hasidic folktale that dying on the last day of a year is a sign of righteousness.
David Cohen was obsessed with doing the right thing. He ran for office 11 times (19 times counting primaries separately), and the only public opinion poll he ever authorized was to determine whether to withdraw from a mayoral race in favor of a more moderate candidate. The idea that one should poll to determine what positions to emphasize or favor was repugnant to him.
He wanted a world without victims. A Philadelphia Congressman once called him the greatest labor lawyer in Pennsylvania. He legally represented more people in the Philadelphia traffic court than any elected official ever. He was against rigid deadlines that he knew some people could not meet when it was necessary for government to do anything.
He did not believe in getting along to go along. He broke with his family's tradition of Republicanism and his own initial inclinations to back Franklin D. Roosevelt for President in 1932. Given a high ranking legal staff position in the Rural Electrification Administration in 1938, he quickly immersed himself in solving the problems of his fellow REA workers and was shortly elected to a nonpaid position as a union local President.
Having attended high school with African-Americans, he recoiled at the segregation in Washington, D.C. and joined legal and other organizations--and protest demonstrations--committed to civil rights in the 1930's and 1940's.
Returning to Philadelphia after working for the REA in Washington, D.C. and St. Louis; the CIO in St. Louis; the U.S. Army, where he was a staff seargeant, in the South Pacific; and progressive unions in New York City, he actively engaged in both building up the Democratic Party in a once-Republican stronghold and in protecting the rights of communities and minorities of all kinds.
When the Democrats in 1964 attempted to nominate for the U.S. a brilliant and generally progressive state supreme court justice who just happened to be a notorious red-baiter, he recoiled a this violation of his rule that government should not create victims.
Incredibly, the race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator was so close that his decision was a decisive factor in the opposition candidate's--Genevieve Blatt-- narrow 400 vote statewide primary victory; his recommendation to voters in his election division led her to carry his election division by something like 149 to 17 while she was generally losing the surrounding areas. He added to his help to her by joining her legal defense team to preserve her victory.
Armed with a strong sense of personal efficacy, he tried unsuccessfully to draft a friend to run for District Attorney and ran him self for Democratic Wardleader of the 17th Ward (he was to serve over 39 years in this position) and the Philadelphia City Council (he was to serve 29 out of the last 38 years of his life there).
One of the key tests of lawyers is that they should be good at issue-spotting, and few were better at it than he was. He was against unfair treatment of police personnel and against police brutality, for instance. He was against mandatory retirement and against cutting pensions.
He was against watching too much television and against allowing politics to block the development of Philadelphia cable TV channels. He was against keeping minorities out of neighborhoods and against scaring white people out of neighborhoods. He was against excluding anyone from access to political decision-making.
One of the joys of writing for the Daily Kos is catching up with people scattered around the country who knew him in some capacity at some time. He is widely missed as a caring and deeply responsible man whose devotion to others and to his conception of the common good was extraordinarily intense.