Sherrie Cohen

I am a lifelong activist in racial, social and economic justice movements, a lesbian feminist and democratic socialist. A tenant rights attorney, I have been involved in recent years with housing justice, educational justice and criminal justice reform movements. In the area of housing, I have been engaged with the Philadelphia Coalition for Affordable Communities in their fight to increase funding to the Housing Trust Fund for the building of low-income housing in Philadelphia. As an educational justice activist, I have worked with parents to strengthen parent voice in elementary schools regarding the Renaissance charter conversion process. In the area of criminal justice reform, I have participated on POWER’s Live Free Team to fight for an end to cash bail.

In the past dozen years, I have also served as a:

• Block captain
• Elected Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention
• Elected Democratic committeeperson in the 17th Ward
• Elected State Committee member in the 4th State Senatorial District
• Coordinator of the labor/community Coalition For Essential Services which fought for a fair and equitable city budget not balanced on the backs of poor and working people
• Steering Committee member, Coalition to Save the Libraries, a coalition of members of the 11 neighborhood libraries threatened with permanent closure
• Co-chair, International Women’s Day Coalition, a coalition of labor and women’s groups seeking to honor working women locally and internationally
• Co-chair, Liberty City LGBTQ Democratic Club, a political organization supporting pro-LGBT candidates in Philadelphia
• Steering Committee member, Friends of the Cohen Ogontz Branch Library, a group seeking to build community support for the branch
• Steering Committee member, Tax Fairness Coalition, a group which fought to maintain the low-income wage tax rebate
• Co-Chair, Philadelphia Bar Association’s Civil Rights Committee, a committee working on local, state and national civil rights issues Member, Community Grantmaking Committee, Bread and Roses Community Fund, a committee that reviews, interviews and recommends Philadelphia area community organizing groups for funding.

My top three policy goals are:

1. Establishing rent control, to stabilize rents for low-income households
2. Establishing elected community boards to decide land disposition issues in City Council districts, instead of the current system of councilmanic prerogative
3. Establishing a citywide community benefits ordinance, requiring that in all development projects of a certain size, a developer must provide a number of community benefits, in order to more broadly distribute the benefits of new development to distressed communities.

Today, Philadelphia ranks 3rd in income inequality among American cities. We are the poorest large city in America and have had the highest rate of incarceration in the world.This reflects the mis-leadership of our elected officials who are more concerned with corporate interests than providing resources to the most marginalized people.

Due to the impact of racialized capitalism, while 26% of Philadelphians live in poverty, 31% of Black Philadelphians live in poverty. My legislative priorities are to end wage slavery by fighting for at least a $15/hour living wage and a union for all workers, and an end to the state preemption of the minimum wage. I would raise the city minimum wage to $15/hour either directly or by imposing an impact fee on businesses paying less than $15. I will fight to end the two-tiered wage system for tipped workers; end racial and gender wage inequity; support the creation of a public bank; demand PILOTs from anchor institutions; reinstate the David Cohen wage tax credit for the working poor. I will also push to expand local purchasing by the city and by educational and medical institutions in order to increase jobs for Philadelphia workers,as $5.3 billion is spent annually on goods and services by the city’s 34 universities and hospitals, with just $2.7 billion of it from businesses located in Philadelphia. I will fight for free childcare and a federal jobs guarantee, and will fight to end mass incarceration and the affordable housing and eviction crises, all of which drive poverty in Philadelphia.

I will take $200 million of City pension funds now invested in the stock market to invest in neighborhood economic development projects. I will require City-funded or tax-abated projects to employ a high percentage of City resident workers, especially low and moderate income City residents. I will create a program to provide technical assistance and start-up funding for worker-owned coops. I will require the City to withdraw subsidies from corporations that fail to provide jobs or other benefits to City residents.

I will create a fully funded Workers Rights Enforcement office that will monitor the enforcement of pro-worker ordinances like the Fair Work Week, wage theft, and paid sick leave bills. I will fight for a city Domestic Worker Bill of Rights to expand labor protections and raise workplace standards for nannies, house cleaners and care providers. I will support protective ordinances around gig workers including regulating delivery and transportation services and ensuring collective bargaining rights for workers.

I believe that housing is a human right, not a commodity for profit. I will seek to end displacement caused by gentrification, including by creating historical and cultural districts, and I will fight against the encroachment of eds and meds on Black and Brown communities, including the plan to build Temple’s stadium in North Philly I will demand the city sue banks that have, in recent history, engaged in redlining, and use the funding to provide for more affordable and accessible housing. I will demand an end to the 10-year property tax abatement completely and fight for the portion going to the city be earmarked to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for families making less than 30% of the area median income ($26,000 for a family of four). I will fight for a vast increase in affordable, accessible and decent housing and ensure that half of all money in the Housing Trust Fund goes to families making less than 30% of the area median income I will fight for lead-safe homes, community-based land trusts, housing coops, expanded just cause legislation, rent control to stabilize rents for poor and working class families, a right to counsel for all low-income tenants facing eviction, an end to discrimination against voucher holders and an end to tenant blacklisting based on housing court records. I will fight for automatic housing inspections for new tenants instead of the current complaint-based inspection system, and a moratorium on all sheriff sales.

I seek community control of land and housing through support of a dedicated fund to provide technical assistance and start up funding for community land trusts and limited equity housing cooperatives. I will also seek to establish elected Community Boards in every Council district to determine land disposition, and end Councilmanic prerogative, which concentrates too much power in one person. I will require the land bank to prioritize city land and money for permanently affordable developments, cooperatively owned developments, and community green space, in a transparent way.

I support making the Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP) permanent. I will pass legislation that will make newly constructed homes be visitable, by creating one entrance on the first floor with no steps, wider doors and hallways with access to half a bath where someone in a wheelchair is able to close the door. I will expand funding for housing first opportunities for persons experiencing homelessness to reduce the harms associated with housing instability, and expand mental health support programs for homeless individuals at their level of desired support.

I will end the 10-year tax abatement completely and ensure that the 55% coming back to the School District goes towards cleaning up toxic schools and the 45% coming back to the city goes to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and is earmarked for families making less than 30% area median income ($26,000 for family of four). I will enact PILOTS (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) for mega non-profits at a rate of 50% of their estimated forgone taxes. I will restore the Business Income and Revenue Tax (BIRT), particularly the Gross Receipts portion of the BIRT, to pre-2018 cut levels (1.415% on Gross Receipts). I will increase the Use and Occupancy tax to 1.5% and proportionally increase the exemption. I will make nontaxable the first $25,000 of income for the city wage tax.

The crisis facing our public schools today is caused by systemic racism. Our public school students are 86% of color and our school system struggles with chronic underfunding, union busting and the neoliberal education reforms of profiteers–such as school privatization. A recent report documented that school districts that predominantly serve students of color received $23 billion less in funding that mostly white school districts in the U.S. in 2016, despite serving the same number of students.

I will fight for universal pre-k for all 3 and 4 year olds in the City, full funding of our schools, educational equity, a charter moratorium, and charter accountability standards, including transparent budgetary practices, an end to conflicts of interest and the cherry-picking of their student bodies. I will fight to end school suspensions of elementary school students and high-stakes testing. I will ensure city money to the School District be used to immediately clean up toxic lead, asbestos, mold, rodents, faulty electrical and poor ventilation in all schools, by the District hiring hundreds of additional cleaners and maintenance staff necessary for the cleanup and increasing wages to at least $15/hour. I will demand that the city charter be changed to provide an elected school board with taxation power; school and community-based solutions to school transformation; restorative practices and restorative justice; a curriculum that will educate to liberate; recruitment and retention strategies and programs to hire more teachers and support staff of color, particularly Black teachers and multilingual teachers and support staff; more counselors not cops and military recruiters, an alternative safety plan that doesn’t rely on school police and security, small classes; music and arts programs and libraries in our schools, social and emotional supports. I demand the City follow through on its original commitment to cover one third of the budget of the Community College of Philadelphia, so that the financial burden is not placed upon the students.

I believe that mass incarceration is “the new Jim Crow,” in the words of Michelle Alexander, and that the root causes of violence and crime are poverty, trauma, addiction and unmet mental health needs. These need to be addressed through expanded social services and restorative justice processes, not by the barbaric process of locking people in cages. I believe in restorative justice – where the focus is on repairing the harm that has been caused, healing justice – where generational trauma and violence is met with a holistic response, and transformative justice – a liberatory approach to violence that seeks safety and accountability without relying on state punishment.

I am fighting to decarcerate our city and end the prison industrial complex. I am fighting to end disproportionate police stops in Black and Brown communities, and to reduce our jail population by a further 50% from the 2019 levels, cut the adult parole and probation population from 40,000 to 20,000 within two years to end surveillance in our communities. I seek to transform the Police Advisory Commission into an entity that requires police accountability and provides community oversight, with the power to subpoena, investigate and censure in all cases, including in those involving police brutality and over-policing.

I seek to end racial bias in policing, including unconstitutional stop and frisk, as well as racialized prosecution and incarceration; end the school to prison pipeline; end the city’s expansive parole and probation supervision regimes; end the trying of youth as adults; wealth-based detention and automatic detainers. I want to treat drug addiction as a health issue, conduct needs assessments not risk assessments, and replace our current system with one guided by principles of restorative justice. We must fully decriminalize marijuana, provide automatic and retroactive expungements of criminal records based on marijuana possession or sales, decriminalize sex work, and demolish the House of Corrections.

With the savings from our decreasing jail population and the closing of facilities like the House of Corrections, I will demand that this funding be invested in: alternative sentencing programs, skill and trade building programs paired with job programs, community-centered pre-trial and re-entry services, and the retraining formerly incarcerated people with living wage union jobs.

I oppose the privatization of city public spaces and institutions and the existence of billboards. I will protect public spaces by increasing awareness and enforcement of the city’s Open Lands Protection Ordinance. I would like to expand public access to certain existing streets, parking spaces, parking lots, vacant lots and sidewalks, and reimagine them as areas to play and as green areas. Roofs can be increasingly tapped as public space resources and can be used for playgrounds, rooftop parks and horticulture. Public buildings can take the lead in this effort. I would also urge the creation of a program in Philadelphia, similar to New York’s Schoolyards to Playgrounds, which has renovated hundreds of schoolyards as playgrounds and opened up access to them outside of school hours.

ICE must be abolished, I oppose any city cooperation with ICE, including getting ICE out of Philadelphia’s courts, the Department of Human Services and hospitals, and want the city to reject any federal funds if they are tied to cooperation with ICE. I will also fight for a city fund dedicated to ensuring immigrants facing detention and removal have access to legal representation. These programs have been shown to improve case outcomes by as much as 1,000 percent.

I oppose the criminalization of immigrant communities including family detention, child detention and family separation. I demand the closure of the Berks Family Detention Center and oppose the Vision Quest plan to lock up immigrant youth. I demand a fair immigration process that keeps families together and includes a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. I demand a clean DREAM Act, that the ban on refugees be lifted and that refugee quotas be raised, and a freeze on funding for the border wall. I seek an expansion of rights for non-citizens including fair labor practices.

In addition, I will seek to expand language access supports in all city agencies, including proper staff training and emphasis on hiring bilingual staff across all city agencies.

The City must invest in apprenticeship programs to train people for work in the field of residential and commercial energy efficiency. Our city’s Basic Service Repair Program must expand to support energy efficiency projects. We must prioritize building retrofits that will abolish fuel poverty and toxic housing, and prepare buildings for electrification. I will fight to transition the SEPTA bus fleet to all electric vehicles, with the rollout in the order of the most polluted communities. SEPTA fares should be capped, with free rides for children and no transfer penalty. Increase street trees and green stormwater infrastructure with the goals of eliminating the environmental injustice of the heat island effect, creating sustainable maintenance jobs and increasing municipal resilience.

City funds must be used immediately to clean up toxic lead in all schools. As to rental households, I participated in redrafting the city’s Lead Law to eliminate loopholes landlords use to avoid their responsibility to conduct lead-safe inspections prior to the move-in date of a tenant with children six years of age and younger.