Amy Cohen’s life changed irrevocably one evening last fall.

The Brooklyn social worker’s 12-year-old son, Sammy Cohen-Eckstein, was walking back from a soccer game in leafy Prospect Park when he was struck and killed by a passing van directly in front of his apartment building.

Anyone would be grief-stricken, especially since Sammy, a popular eighth-grader, was just a few weeks away from celebrating his bar mitzvah.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

But few could pick up the torch of activism so quickly, naturally and effectively.

In the months since the tragedy, Cohen, 48, along with her husband, Gary Eckstein, has spearheaded a fight for safer streets in New York City, where car crashes killed 286 people last year.

Cohen marshalled support from local elected officials, her synagogue and even Mayor Bill de Blasio, who lived not far from the family. She journeyed to the state capital of Albany to push for new laws allowing lower speed limits on city streets.

A year later, a poignant memorial with photos and remembrances of Sammy still stands at a park entrance.

Perhaps the toughest part of all her campaigning was holding heart-wrenching meetings with other parents who also lost their children to preventable crashes.

“We give a face to the statistics,” Cohen said. “This is what it looks like when a person is killed every 30 hours on New York City’s streets.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount