Arthur Liebersohn

Eulogy, March 4, 2012
Daniel Cantor

Arthur Liebersohn was born in Washington DC on February 9, 1951. He was the youngest of David and Bertha Liebersohn's four children, after the arrivals of Joe, Hope and Yona. He grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and after high school, he left for the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he studied economics. The indifferent high school student was all of a sudden invigorated by the life of the mind and got serious about academic work in college.

Mady recalls how Art seemed to remember everything he ever read. Material from courses he took forty years ago was as fresh as books he read last month, whether the topic was the wars in the Balkans or the history of Prohibition. Art knew a ton about Prohibition, no doubt because it combined three of his favorite topics: counter-productive social and economic policy, corrupt local officials and police, and....beer.

He graduated from Wisconsin in 1973, at the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement. He had a middling draft lottery number, and was concerned, but Harry told him they'd never get to him. Harry was right, luckily. And probably it was lucky for the Army too. It's hard to picture Arthur blindly following orders that he thought were stupid.

In the fall of 1973, he moved to Philadelphia to attend law school at Penn. Both of his parents -- the Liebersohn side and the Roseman side -- had roots here, and after graduating in 1976, he never left. Arthur did not follow the path that most young Ivy League-trained lawyers take, however. He didn't migrate to a big law firm, head to Wall Street, enter government service, or even work for Legal Aid. He was very much a public interest lawyer, but on a path he made for himself. In fact, Arthur never had a boss in his life. Whether it was because he wanted the freedom that that allows, or because he suspected that employers might not find his stubbornness to be overly endearing, Arthur worked on his own for 35 years. On his own, but surely not alone.

As friends gathered at the hospital since last Saturday, it became clear that he shared more than just office space with some wonderful colleagues over the years. He was enmeshed personally and professionally with an enormous number of people over the decades, many of whom became dear friends. He and Rick Freeman had lunch together a thousand times, and Arthur enjoyed each and every one. Josh Rubinsky recalls how he continued to call Arthur for advice on bankruptcy issues long after he was no longer in the Cherry Street office, and Arthur "always knew what to do, who to talk to, where to get various pleadings, who the players were, and above all would tell you who you could trust."

Not long after graduating from law school, Arthur had the great good fortune to meet Lance Haver, Lee Frissell, Susan Marcus and above all, his great mentor, Max Weiner. Lance tells a wonderful story about how they learned that there was a young lawyer who had just finished at this fancy law school, and he was willing to work for free! Good organizers, they made a bee-line for him, and thus began a lifetime of collaboration and friendship.

In CEPA -- the Consumers Education and Protective Association -- and later in the Consumer Party, Arthur found his political and even spiritual home, and of course it started him down the professional path that he never left. The idea of CEPA was simple but profound: Capitalism can be pretty nasty; poorer people especially get screwed; and while you think you might be able to fight back with legal strategies, in fact what you really need to do is organize. And so he, and they, did.

They saved the homes of people facing Sheriff sales, sales that would of course been unnecessary if Arthur's friend Steve Ebner had won his election to Sheriff. But Steve didn't, so CEPA stayed vigilant. They would force unscrupulous car dealers to compensate customers who had been cheated, with a simple but effective strategy. The aggrieved consumer and CEPA leaders, no doubt frustrated with inaction, would arrive en masse, set up a picket line, and enter into negotiations from a position of strength. Arthur liked those actions, but his real brilliance was as a strategist who combined legal and organizational approaches. Working with another lawyer named Henry Sommer, Arthur developed a theory, novel in American history and unlimately accepted by the court, that changed bankruptcy law in a case about -- of all things -- furniture. The details are complicated, but it required both legal and organizational smarts. Arthur had both. Not long after he got involved in CEPA, Max Weiner and his brain trust launched the Consumer Party.

Arthur served as the Campaign Finance Chair of the Party for more than two decades, and was responsible, says Lance, "for keeping us all out of jail." He never took a dime for this, of course. Arthur liked to pretend that he was a cynic, and in a sense he was. He was cynical about the pious and phony myths that keep people down. He was cynical about the stated good intentions of, say, your average credit card company. But he was not at all cynical about the people he wanted to serve. No cynic spends a career doing what Arthur did. As his friend Rick Freeman wrote the other day, he was "a friend to the poor." Not out of noblesse oblige, but out of a very righteous anger. Perhaps it’s better to think of him as a skeptic. Mady called him "a joyous skeptic" the other day. I think that's right. He was unsure, to say the least, that justice and reason would prevail, but he always hoped that it would. If you read yesterday's Inquirer, you know that Arthur ran for elected office several times. In the 1978 race for Philadelphia District Attorney, which included Ed Rendell as the Democratic nominee, Arthur got asked how could he possibly be a DA given his lack of prosecutorial experience. Always quick on his feet, Arthur responded that it was a badge of honor that, quote, "I've never beaten a confession out of anyone."

In 1979, in a very interesting and important moment in Philly politics, Arthur did the work to get on the ballot in the Mayoral race, all the time knowing that he would end up standing down in favor of a more prominent candidate, Lucien Blackwell, who was a great labor and civil rights leader. Arthur did not require the spotlight, and was willing to do the background work that makes democracy and civic life possible. Lance told me that Arthur saw his electoral campaigns as a chance to teach people about the true cost of poverty, about the reality of economic crime. Arthur may have represented a "minor" party, but his confidence and eloquence made it impossible for his rivals to marginalize him. Indeed, a few years later, when he was the Consumer Party's statewide candidate for Attorney General, he received the endorsement of the Philadelphia Daily News. This was almost certainly the only time in the 20th Century that a major newspaper in Pennsylvania endorsed a third-party candidate for Statewide office.

In 1990, he became a Trustee in the US Bankruptcy Courts which, as he pointed out at many family gatherings, were enshrined in the Constitution. He joined the board of CBAP -- the Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project -- to help low-income citizens who could not afford to file for bankruptcy. In both roles, he tried to be fair and use law in the service of decency and social fairness. Judge Frank of the Eastern District Bankruptcy Court was quoted in yesterday's paper: "There aren't many lawyers in town with a deep understanding of the bankruptcy laws. There are even fewer who can match the commitment Arthur demonstrated to poor people and ensuring that the legal system treats people who pass through it in a fair and respectful manner."

He was intellectually curious, and fascinated by debt. Debt is what makes civilization possible, he said. He was the first (and only) person who ever explained to me what a collateralized debt obligation was, and no doubt he could have made a lot of money working the other side of the street. But that would not have fed his soul. What did, was to provide pro bono tax preparation assistance, year after year, at the VITA sites run by 1199C for their members and other working class people in Philadelphia. He liked to say – “Some people have ski season. I have tax season.” Saturday after Saturday during tax season over the last 9 years, Arthur would go to the VITA site and help people prepare their tax returns, and lately he would check the work of the other volunteers to make sure everyone was getting what they were due. He even got Tess to help him, and she served as a "greeter" during her high school years. Cheryl Feldman says he simply loved the work. You can close your eyes and see him talking, interacting, hearing about their lives, making a material difference, getting someone enough of a refund for a security deposit on a better apartment. You can see him altogether enjoying himself.

So. While Arthur relished his role as the designated curmudgeon, the truth is, he was immensely dedicated to helping others and making structural change in our society. He liked structural alternatives. And he joined them all. He was a member of every co-op he could find: Project Learn, where Max and Tess went to school. A fuel oil co-op. Beachcombers. Weaver's Way Food Co-op. And perhaps the most complex of all, the Wissahickon Babysitting Co-op. Arthur was the intellectual author of the Cheesecake Rule, and it deserves some explication. This was the rule that the parents leaving the house needed to leave some cheesecake behind for the sitter. But of course the crucial question was, how much? If the parents left a full cheesecake, the sitter would be unwilling to eat any, as the nibbling would not go unnoticed. And if the parent left too little, then the sitter's guilt at finishing off the cheesecake would likewise prevent any indulging. Arthur's fix was to have parents leave two-thirds of a cheesecake n the fridge, so that the sitter could eat a lot if the situation required it, and the parents would never quite remember if they had left one-third or two-thirds behind, and so would not be dismayed upon returning. This is pure Arthur. Mindful of human nature, and determined to make things work out fairly. Plus, he must have been delighted to create a rule with such a great name.

Arthur was one of those people that everyone liked. He was the glue of the far-flung Liebersohn clan. And he was a wonderful addition to the Cantor family. Mady's parents -- my mother and father -- just adored Arthur. We spent decades of Thanksgivings and Passovers together, and because he knew a good line was worth re-using, they always ended the same way: "Danny," he'd say as one or the other of us left, "I just want you to know that you've been like a brother-in-law to me." More vintage Arthur.

Of course, throughout all these many years, towering above all else in his life was his immense love for and devotion to Mady, and then to Max and Tess. He was a good husband, and attended more dance concerts than, well, anyone. He was a wonderful father, and took great delight and pride in his children. He adored them both. Max said something yesterday that stuck: “We didn’t get enough of my dad. But of course, you never could.” Max is right. We didn’t get enough of Art, but what we got was pretty darn great. He was smart, he was funny, and he gave back to his community and his family in ways large and small. It was a life well-lived, and he will be missed.