RIP Debby Lee Cohen

Photo courtesy of Cafeteria Culture

Longtime East Village resident Debby Lee Cohen, an artist, activist and teacher, died on Sunday, according to Cafeteria Culture, where she served as the executive director. She was 64.

Here's more about Cohen from a message about her passing from Cafeteria Culture, the nonprofit that she started in 2009: 

Debby Lee founded Cafeteria Culture as a concerned parent of public school students. After her younger daughter announced that she didn't want to eat school food anymore because styrofoam trays were "killing the polar bears," Debby Lee started working to eliminate styrofoam from New York City Public School cafeterias. 

Always a uniter but never afraid to push boundaries, Debby Lee advocated with constant pressure on decision-makers to eliminate foam trays in school cafeterias and didn't stop until her mission was accomplished. This grassroots victory eliminated over half a billion plastic foam trays per year from student meals, landfills, and incinerators in New York City and now 18 other cities across the U.S. 

Debby Lee's public school work to drive change forward has a tremendous and lasting impact on our world far beyond the city. Her dream to achieve equitable zero waste has fueled the continued work of Cafeteria Culture and paved the way for New York City's 2019 and New York State's 2022 foam bans. We owe much to Debby Lee's sheer determination to tackle this problem that at the outset, most people thought was impossible to accomplish. 

Debby Lee centered our students throughout these victories. Whether she was teaching them to build giant foam monster puppets or to create their own stop-motion animation projects, she shared her creative gifts to support students in telling their own stories. These principles continue to guide our teaching today to support Cafeteria Culture students as they continue to advocate for environmental justice and possibility. 

Cohen and her family lived at 310 E. 12th and 305 E. 11th St., two buildings bought by a private equity firm in August 2022. Since then, there have been reports of significant rent increases, evictions and alleged apartment warehousing at the buildings. 

"Debby Lee was a life force for our building and the housing justice we were fighting for. That advocacy and passion came from her broader, impactful life's work which included her Cafeteria Culture foundation, and expanded across all levels of environmental justice causes," her friend and neighbor Artie Athas told EVG. "She was my dear neighbor, our dear friend, and a passionate voice across causes that impacted us all." 

Cohen's family plans to hold a celebration of her life sometime next year. 

In lieu of flowers, friends may make a donation to Cafeteria Culture here.