The political identity of "mother" is not owned by the right. There's also a rich history of mothers working to advance progressive change. Yet the framing of much of this activism—a mother spurred to action when awakened to a threat to her child's safety—remains grounded in an image of motherhood that is riddled with race and class privilege. Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, began her activism journey as a stay-at-home suburban mom of five who felt compelled to fight for common-sense gun violence prevention in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting. But when Shannon met Rep. Lucy McBath, then a mother grieving the loss of her son, Jordan, to gun violence, something shifted. The more Moms Demand Action expanded their focus and passed the microphone to Black women who had been working on the issue for years, the more powerful Moms Demand Action became.
The political identity of "mother" is not owned by the right. There's also a rich history of mothers working to advance progressive change. Yet the framing of much of this activism—a mother spurred to action when awakened to a threat to her child's safety—remains grounded in an image of motherhood that is riddled with race and class privilege. Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, began her activism journey as a stay-at-home suburban mom of five who felt compelled to fight for common-sense gun violence prevention in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting. But when Shannon met Rep. Lucy McBath, then a mother grieving the loss of her son, Jordan, to gun violence, something shifted. The more Moms Demand Action expanded their focus and passed the microphone to Black women who had been working on the issue for years, the more powerful Moms Demand Action became.
This season's cover art features a photograph by Jonathan Wilkins.
White Picket Fence is supported by Planned Parenthood. For more information or to book an in-person or virtual appointment, visit plannedparenthood.org or call 1-800-230-PLAN.
Julie Kohler:
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that we recorded this episode before the recent school shooting in Tennessee. We'll be talking about gun violence prevention in this episode, so please take care when listening.
For a lot of activists, there is often…a moment. That spark that transforms them into a fighter.
For Shannon Watts, her moment came in 2012.
News clip montage:
Now, in this tiny town of Newtown, Connecticut.
They’re reporting multiple fatalities involved in the shooting at the elementary school.
Reports say the number of dead closer to 30 than to 20, and sadly, most of them are children.
Shannon Watts:
My name is Shannon Watts. I'm the founder of Moms Demand Action, an organization. I started on a Facebook page the day after the Sandy Hook School shooting that has grown into the largest grassroots movement in the country with over 10 million supporters.
Julie:
I’m Julie Kohler, and this White Picket Fence.
This season, we’re examining mothers as a political force. So far, we’ve talked about the role that motherhood has played in advancing a conservative agenda—throughout history and today. We’ve talked about how a nostalgic image of white motherhood is used to rollback women’s rights, LGBTQ rights. To oppose racial justice. To uplift authoritarianism.
But the identity of mother – it’s not owned by the right. There’s also a rich history of mothers evoking their identities for progressive change. For a more public role in supporting families. And protecting children. Shannon Watts embodies this strain of activism.
In 2012, Shannon was a stay-at-home mom of five. She lived in Indiana, hundreds of miles away from Connecticut. But when the Sandy Hook school massacre happened, her heart…broke.
Shannon Watts:
My first response the day after was to go online and look for something which I assumed existed, like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but for gun safety.
Julie:
But… she couldn’t find anything. Or at least, not what she was looking for.
Shannon Watts:
I really only found some think tanks in Washington DC, mostly run by men. I found some one-off state and city organizations, again, mostly run by men. I wanted to be part of a badass army of women.
Julie:
Shannon’s inspiration for that “badass army of women” was Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD.
Archival news clip:
They want to close the loopholes in the Texas drunk driving laws. It’s already rolling that direction. Lawmakers have approved tougher drunk driving sentences, but this group won’t stop there.
Julie:
In the early days of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Shannon was a teenager. Part of the target audience for MADD’s activism.
Shannon Watts:
Well, the first thing that I remember about MADD is the car that they put on the grounds of my high school. It was a car that had been in an accident because of drunk driving. It still had dried blood inside it. And it really woke me up and, and made me think about the issue. People were just sort of throwing up their hands when someone would drink and drive and kill a loved one. You know, they would say, you know, this is an accident. Um, there's nothing we can do to stop it.
Archival news clip:
Any attempted to restrict drinking and driving here is viewed as downright undemocratic.
Julie:
The narrative around drunk driving then…
Archival news clip:
They’re making laws where you can’t drink when you want to. You have to wear a seatbelt when you’re driving… pretty soon we’re going to be a communist country.
Julie:
Feels a lot like the way we talk about gun violence today.
Modern News Clip:
It’s a horrible horrible situation and we’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals. And my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese. And he told me, he said, buddy, he said if somebody wants to take you out, and they don’t mind losing their life, there’s not a heck of a lot you can do about it.
Julie:
People are dying. Children are dying. And yet we’re told that there’s nothing we can do to stop it. But the mothers who formed MADD refused to accept that.
Shannon Watts:
And they said, that isn't true. If we organize, we can protect our, our families and our communities.
Julie:
In the wake of Sandy Hook, where 20 children and 6 adults were slaughtered in their classrooms, Shannon refused to accept that, either.
Shannon Watts:
And I thought that was such a powerful way to harness the power of motherhood.
Julie:
Sitting in her house, glued to news coverage of the shooting, Shannon remembered that bloody car, and those moms, laser-focused on affecting change. She saw the parallels between them, and herself.
Shannon Watts:
And one of the first things I did was to call the, the MADD Hotline and to, to try to talk to someone who could give me information about how they had organized.
Julie:
Here’s how MADD got started. In 1980, Candace Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver. Four days after Cari’s funeral, Candace founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving. At the time, she was a single mom with a real estate license. She wasn’t even registered to vote.
Candace started organizing locally. She mobilized within schools and community groups, and connected with other families who’d lost children to impaired drivers. She would bring photos of her daughter to lobbying sessions. She encouraged other families to do the same.
And …she harnessed the media. Powerfully and effectively.
Julie:
She capitalized on her identity as a mother – a grieving mother. A good mother.
Candace Lightner news clip:
My first thought was to protect my children, and anyone else from seeing this happen. My second thought was to punish the man who was responsible for the crime. The third thought was to actually change the system that I felt allowed this man to continue to drink and drive.
Julie:
Although MADD’s work was deeply political – these were women advocating for new policies, lobbying state legislatures and eventually Congress– their identities as mothers allowed them to transcend politics. And tap into a sense that mothers were uniquely moral voices, especially when it comes to children’s safety.
It was both incredibly effective – and nothing new. That’s something that Jodi Vandenberg-Daves knows well. She’s a professor of race, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and an expert on the history of motherhood.
Jodi sees common threads that link Shannon’s work on gun violence prevention, to not only the women who founded MADD, but to a set of activists in the Progressive era, in the early 1900s. Where the vision of motherhood…
Jodi Vandenberg-Daves:
It portrays mothers as selfless, sacrificing, any ambivalence about motherhood or negative emotions are, are not part of the motherhood ideal. Um, breadwinning is not part of the motherhood ideal, that motherhood ideal that's portrayed in the popular culture. And the dominant culture is generally white and middle class, and, heterosexual. And in some ways, I feel like the Progressive Era was the heyday of that, because there was a more widely shared idea of ,maternalism that women had something valuable to say.
Julie:
In fact, the entire movement to give women a public voice was grounded in this idea of mothers’ morality. When women’s suffrage finally passed, it was capitalizing on the idea of… purity.
Jodi Vandenberg-Daves:
Give the vote to the mothers, mothers are gonna clean up society if you give them the vote. That idea is that mothers have something special to offer to society on the basis of their sort of elevated morality.
Julie:
Suffrage wasn’t the only issue that was advanced by mothers positioning themselves as a uniquely moral voice. Activist moms are responsible for much of our social safety net. They helped create a program providing cash assistance to the poor – what ultimately became known as welfare. They launched a letter writing campaign that led to the creation of the children’s bureau. They fought for essential rent protections.
Just like these women, the decision for Shannon Watts to use her identity as a mom, her fear for her children’s safety – it wasn’t just tactical. It was the truth. She felt compelled to “get political,’ even if she didn’t exactly know what that meant.
Shannon Watts:
You know, I have to be honest and just say that I knew nothing about organizing. I knew nothing about the legislative process. I knew, uh, really nothing about gun violence. We were starting from scratch. I entered into an agreement with perfect strangers from across the country that we would essentially fly the plane as we built it.
Julie:
So Shannon used what she had in her arsenal.
Shannon Watts:
Becoming a mother made me feel so fiercely protective of my children's safety, almost that my role in life was to make sure that they were safe. And I had been a communications executive for over a decade, and then I took a five year leave of absence to stay home with my kids. And, you know, I was a white suburban mom living in a bubble. I got off the sidelines because I was scared my kids weren't safe in their schools.
Julie:
Moms Demand Action grew – quickly. Today, there’s a chapter in every state. They’ve partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety, and inspired 10 million supporters. Not just mothers – but dads, teachers, and students. Still, they’ve retained the title of Moms – because it’s a powerful image, and because it means their organization remains women-led.
Shannon Watts:
I get asked a lot, why didn't you call it Parents Demand Action, for example? And my point is, you know, when there's parity, I'll consider changing our name. But you know, I, I see so many other organizations where men lead and women are expected to do the, what I call unglamorous heavy lifting of activism. They're expected to get the venues and make the snacks and set up the chairs. And you always see men sort of setting the strategy and taking the spotlight. And that just galls me. Uh, and so we're soup to nuts with women leading, right? Yes, you're probably gonna have to, to book the venues and make the snacks, but you're also gonna be on the evening news, and you're also going to have a say in what our priorities are where you live. But I don't feel limited. In fact, we're 10 million strong. So given that we're twice the size of the NRA, I think we're doing something right.
Julie:
Shannon’s success was more than she could have ever imagined, for a project that she started on Facebook, and at her kitchen table. It was like thousands of people were just waiting for someone to start something they could really get behind.
But the success of Moms Demand Action reflected something else, too.
More after the break.
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Julie:
I want to go back to the idea of The Moment – the spark that sets the activist’s fire. Shannon had it. So did many of the women who joined her when Moms Demand Action first went viral.
It’s a narrative that culturally, we love to get behind. The mama bear, awakened from her slumber. Transformed by her anger. Seizing her public voice because…she was forced to in order to protect her children. But as much as we love this narrative of moms springing to action for the sake of their kids… we also have to admit that it usually evokes the image of a certain kind of mom. One that, on its surface, isn’t that different from the image weaponized by groups like Moms for Liberty.
When the cause is a good one – gun violence prevention, drunk driving – it can be easier – or simpler – to ignore the final piece of the mother activist puzzle. The power of whiteness. Because the bottom line is that who we decide to lift up in our politics is deeply rooted in ideas about what a good mother looks like.
Dani McClain
Who is a mother? The traditional assumption in this country is, at least, is that a mother is unemployed, she's working primarily in the home.
Julie:
Dani McClain is a writer and a journalist.
Dani McClain:
She is not the wage earner. There's a husband who is the wage earner. And so, she, whatever power she has is being exercised within solely the domestic sphere.
Julie:
The answer to Who a good mother is… is coded. In class, and in race. The mama bear moment – the spark – part of why that carries so much weight is the contrast to that traditional image. The moral, pure woman who is so compelled by her love for her children, that she steps outside of her domestic comfort zone. It’s brave, it’s selfless.
Dani McClain:
For Black women, that has not really been the case. We've always, whether it was as enslaved people, we were certainly working, our labor was not compensated, obviously. But then even after emancipation, it was much more typical for a Black woman to have to be working outside the home, either, you know, as a domestic and, and these, these various types of labor, most of which were, you know, in, in somewhat subservient positions
Julie:
This narrative that we cling to – it affects who we allow to claim that mother activist title. Whose voice we value.
Shannon… wasn’t the only mother trying to stop gun violence. Or the first.
There were already a lot of women, a lot of mothers, involved in fighting gun violence. And they had been for generations, especially in communities who’ve been on the frontline of this issue. Places like Chicago.
Arionne Nettles:
You know, people still might say, oh, where you're from? Oh, Chicago, oh, you're from Chiraq.
Julie:
Arionne Nettles is a journalist from the South Side of Chicago, who often covers gun violence.
Arionne Nettles:
For years we've been saying, please don't say that, that's not true. But that is what sometimes it feels like when you pick up the national paper, that's what the, that's what national politicians have painted in what they say to the media as well.
Julie:
Even if you don’t accept the way that gun violence in Chicago has been stereotyped, it’s true that many parts of the city have experienced far too many losses. For a variety of complicated reasons.
Chicago, like many cities, remains deeply segregated. And the city’s west and south sides lack adequate investment – in transportation, schools, infrastructure. There aren’t enough well-paying jobs. Too many people struggle. The sense of community is strong….
Arionne Nettles:
But I think the frustration that a lot of people have had in a lot of neighborhoods is that when they pick up the newspaper, they don't see themselves reflected because they don't see the humanity in those gun violence pieces. Instead, it feels as if someone just came in and, you know, throughout some facts, sometimes maybe the facts aren't even correct, maybe the police narratives have errors in them, and it just feels as if they're not being reported on the same way that other neighborhoods would be reported on.
Julie:
Even though young kids are dying from gun violence, their stories are often covered by crime beat reporters. In ways that are different from how we cover mass shootings at suburban schools. And…
Arionne Nettles:
The net effect of really focusing mostly on the results of crime instead of crime prevention has been a lack of movement towards progress.
Julie:
For mothers in Chicago organizing around gun violence, there isn’t, really, a lightbulb moment. At least, not in most of the media narratives. They’re not afforded that. And in fact for many Black mothers, the challenge has been for society to see the violence – and the perpetrators of it. To even acknowledge the basic humanity of their children.
Here’s Dani McClain again.
Dani McClain:
One thing that unfortunately has become commonplace is the Black mother who, Whose child is a victim of police or vigilante violence, who is then, at a press conference asking an audience to understand that their child was in fact a human being. That they were not being aggressors to the police. That this was a human being who had a whole life.
Julie:
In her book, “We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood” Dani describes the way that Black motherhood is inherently political. How the act of raising children in a hostile world forces Black mothers to learn – immediately – how to advocate for themselves and their children.
Dani McClain:
Mamie Till was the original like Black mother who we looked to, to, um, try to understand how such a horrific act could have been committed against her child, Emmett Till.
And I think when we hear those reports, it does something, you know, people say to all mothers maybe, but certainly to me as a Black mother, it just hits me in my heart Yeah. Knowing that that mother couldn't protect that man. And in many ways, my hands are tied in my ability to protect my child from a lot of the forces that she'll come up against in her life.
Julie:
For Dani, for a lot of Black mothers, the spark, the lightbulb moment – it comes with having a child. It’s built-in. And so right from the start, Black mothers are forced to get political – by finding power in the collective.
Dani McClain:
The political is really being conversations about power, um, about our personal power, about the, the power that we express in our, in our families and our communities, in the context of all the institutions with which we engage. And so I think that Black mothers have a lot of experience advocating for our kids at school and in the doctor's office and in neighborhoods where we might be in the minority, um, and really keeping an eye out for our children and, uh, making sure that they're being treated well and, and getting ourselves together and opening our mouths when we think somebody needs to say something.
Julie:
It’s community mothering. Or in the words of feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins, othermothering.
Dani McClain:
Once we're doing that, advocating for our own children, we understand that it needs to be done on behalf of other kids too.
Julie:
This perspective affects the kind of organizing that happens in cities like Chicago. Here’s Arionne Nettles again.
Arionne Nettles:
We literally have groups of moms who patrol the streets, who patrol their own neighborhoods and, you know, kind of stand guard on corners. We have groups of people who do mediation between groups of people who may be rivals. Community groups where they may kind of identify people who are likely to be in a gang or likely to be involved in gun violence. They’re able to get a really good percent of people off the streets in jobs, apprenticeship programs really focused on a different path.
Julie:
But it also impacts how much institutional support these programs receive.
Arionne Nettles:
So many people who work in in those spaces do it for the love. They do it for very little money. And who knows how long they can do it. We have not seen like, great financial investment in things like that.
Julie:
We don’t always see the kind of work Black women are doing as… activism. At least not in a formal sense. It’s why we have that footnote with so much progressive organizing. That refrain we heard over and over again during the racial justice reckoning a few years ago – that we can’t forget the Black mothers who’ve been organizing for generations. Why can’t we seem to remember?
Arionne Nettles:
I think it was really tough that summer of 2020. Because we saw a lot of white moms in suburban areas get a lot of credit for organizing protests against police violence and gun violence, which I think overall is great, right? Like, we need everybody to hate gun violence. We just need everybody to hate gun violence everywhere. It sort of goes back to ensuring that even if white moms, if their reasoning for joining the fight against guns differs, that they don't forget about the Black moms who have been doing this organizing sometimes without the press.
Julie:
After a few years of organizing, Shannon Watts realized this – she’d gained traction, won power, by using all the tools at her disposal.
She was a mom. But not just any mom. A suburban, stay-at-home mom with a background in communications. The trifecta, when it comes to the kind of maternal activism our culture likes to celebrate.
Especially in the early years, the women on her team … looked like her. She knew how to talk to them, and they had the time and resources to volunteer. Then in the spring of 2013, Shannon met Lucy McBath.
Lucy McBath (speech):
Do we have the courage right here, in this body? To imagine the phone call that confirms our fear. Our singular fear. That my child is dead. That I was unable to protect them. Because I know that phone call. Parents across the country know that phone call. It’s a sucker punch to my stomach every time I learn there’s another phone call.
Shannon Watts:
Lucy's son, Jordan Davis was shot and killed at a gas station in Florida. Uh, he was 17 years old, Black teenager, um, killed by a white man who was upset the music in Jordan's car was too loud.
Julie:
Some of you may know Lucy McBath as a member of Congress from Georgia. But at the time, Lucy was a flight attendant. Her father had been a leader in the NAACP. And Lucy became a gun violence prevention activist herself.
With the trial for her son’s murder on the horizon, Lucy asked Shannon if Moms Demand Action volunteers could show up in support.
The two women grew close.
Shannon Watts:
And she sent me a very important letter, a handwritten letter in 2014, basically saying, I, I am so grateful for the opportunities that Moms Demand Action has given me this platform to talk about this issue and my son. But I noticed that when I'm talking to people, people, these are crowds of mostly white women. And I really think it's important that we diversify in the following ways, and that we, you know, focus on Black and brown communities. I think that letter was a turning point for us in our organization, and to make sure that we weren't just looking at this issue more holistically, but that we were also partnering with groups Black and brown women who had been doing this work for decades in their communities unseen, and who were making a real difference and literally putting their, their bodies on the line to stop bullets by, you know, standing in the streets.
Julie:
When she started the Facebook group, Shannon had felt… alone. A single voice, shouting into the void. What she didn’t realize was that she was actually standing on the shoulders of Black women who’d been organizing around gun violence for years.
In the beginning, Moms Demand Action focused mostly on lobbying for more restrictive gun laws – the kind that could prevent mass shootings like Sandy Hook.
But after Shannon and Lucy connected, Moms Demand Action widened its scope.
The group investigated Stand Your Ground laws – which have been used as a defense for white shooters who kill Black victims — including Trayvon Martin, and Lucy McBath’s son, Jordan. They backed a bill preventing domestic abusers from easily purchasing guns – an issue that especially affects Black women, who are three times more likely to be murdered by an intimate partner. They started speaking openly about how gun violence against women is an epidemic.
The more Shannon looked outward – building partnerships and developing a more intersectional focus – the more powerful Moms Demand Action became – both politically, and culturally. Last year, in 2022, Congress passed the first major gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years.
When mothers actually unite, real change can happen. Moms Demand Action is proof of that. But that takes time. And a lot of hard work.
What if an organization… didn’t have to go through that reckoning. What if, from the beginning, the people most in need were centered? What if we gave Black mothers the time, and attention, and resources, to do the work they’ve been doing – just on a larger platform?
We’ll explore that future… next week.
White Picket Fence is a Wonder Media Network production. Our producers are Maddy Foley and Taylor Williamson with production support from Abbey Delk. Our editor is Lindsey Kratochwill. Executive Producer is Jenny Kaplan. Original music by Sean Petell.
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