By (pictured above, left to right):
Amy Cohen
Mother of Sammy Cohen Eckstein (12/8/00-10/8/13)
Member of Kolot Chayeinu
Amy Tam
Mother of Allison Hope Liao (3/27/10 – 10/6/13)
Member of International Buddhist Progressive Society
Lizi Rahman
Mother of Asif Rahman (6/20/06 – 2/28/08)
Member of Jamaica Muslim Center
Sofia Russo
Mother of Ariel Russo (3/10/09-06/4/13)
Member of Church of the Holy Name of Jesus
We are Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist but we all ache in the same way.
We have buried our children. We are all mothers who have lost a child in a traffic crash. We put human flesh that we had birthed from our bodies into the ground. We had expected to see our children graduate from school, discover love, get married, have children of their own, and be at our sides as we grew old.
We thought we had the capacity to create an invisible shield around our children. To protect them forever from harm. Unfortunately, we have all discovered this not to be true.
Sadly, the epidemic of traffic crashes is one that unites us all. People of every faith, neighborhood, race, class, gender, age and ability are hit personally by this issue.
We banded together to fight to prevent these tragedies and are all founding members of Families for Safe Streets (FSS) — an organization that confronts traffic violence and its epidemic of tragic injuries and deaths. We advocate for life-saving changes and provide support to those affected by deadly crashes in our communities.
Our members have lost children, spouses, parents, and siblings as well as suffered life altering injuries. Some of us are now childless, orphans or widows. Others have other children who will go through life scarred by the loss of a sibling or are caregivers now taking care of our family members whose lives will never be the same. Our members represent the full breadth of New York City’s religious, racial, ethnic, socio-economic, and political diversity. We have paid the highest price for society’s failure to recognize that we have a preventable public health crisis.
We ask of you to please join with us. Please use your pulpit, prayers and powerful voices to memorialize those who’ve been killed. Please remind your communities that it is up to each and every one of us to ensure no one else dies in traffic, that we are all responsible for each other and must slow down, pay attention and support solutions to save lives.
Sermons for Safe Streets, a campaign spearheaded by Families for Safe Streets, coincides with this year’s United Nations sponsored World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Crash Victims on November 18th. We have prepared a Sermons for Safe Streets Clergy Kit, including sample sermon snippets, religious references, statistics, collective prayers, resources and more. It is all available online at sermonsforsafestreets.org.
Every day across the globe, approximately 3,400 people are killed in a traffic crash. Forty thousand Americans are killed in traffic crashes every year and the numbers are rising for the first time in a half century. Every 38 hours, someone is killed in NYC. Another 200 are injured each day.
As a public health epidemic which knows no boundaries, having faith leaders of all religions and denominations devote part or all of their sermons or other community programming to this issue on Nov 16-18 weekend, could literally save lives.
Please join the UN and cities around the world in memorializing those who’ve been killed in local neighborhoods – and calling for safer streets.
Imagine if all peoples, all religions come together to pray as one, for a day when there are no more senseless deaths and injuries due to reckless driving!
Sermons for Safe Streets will take place the weekend before Thanksgiving, the deadliest holiday on US roads.
Your pulpits, prayers and programming can be the vehicle that makes the difference – the vehicle that slows us down, prevents the preventable, and saves lives.
