Harry Tuttle
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Million Mom March 2004: Reflections and New Commitments
5/6/2004
Feature Story
by Dick Dahl
Four years ago, Laurel Redden couldn't have said who her elected representatives were. A middle-class mother of two from Salem, NH, married for 15 years, Redden was outraged by TV reports of senseless gun violence, but felt powerless to do anything about it. She voted, usually Democratic, but never wrote a letter to an office holder or a newspaper.
But then she heard about New Jerseyite Donna Dees-Thomases' ambitious plan to gather one million mothers on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to protest the gun violence that the nation's leaders seemed to tolerate so casually. When she read about the planning efforts in her home state, she decided to check it out.
The effort made sense to her. So she traveled to Washington on Mothers' Day 2000 and joined some 750,000 others for an event that would change many lives, including her own. Redden became the state coordinator for the New Hampshire chapter of the Million Mom March. And in June, the politically inactive woman of 1999 will be filing her candidacy papers for a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
For Redden, the Million Mom March precipitated her entry into political life. A newly minted activist, she began spending a lot of time in the New Hampshire statehouse, lobbying for sensible gun-safety measures. But as time wore on, she began to realize that lobbyists can only do so much.
She was also coming to other conclusions. "The more I got involved, the more I realized that this goes way beyond the gun issue," she says. "What I found is that the same system that keeps common-sense gun laws from being enacted goes beyond that single issue. It is the same system that keeps our public education from being properly funded; it's the same system that places more importance in maintaining a huge military budget than in taking care of our citizens here at home. It's the mentality of 'every man for himself' and not looking at the bigger societal issues that go along with some of these things."
In fact, Redden is not the only person who attended the 2000 March who entered political life as a result. Another New Hampshire Million Mom March member, Susan Nord of Candia, is also seeking election this fall. And in Missouri, Jeanne Kirkton, legislative director for the St. Louis Million Mom March chapter, is running for a state senate seat.
Five Committed People Per Congressional District
This year, the national Million Mom March (now united with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) will hold its Mothers' Day event on the west side of the Capitol. Nobody is saying that it will draw anything approaching the numbers of 2000, when the crowd that day far surpassed organizers' most optimistic hopes.
"What we learned from having almost a million people there on Mothers' Day 2000 is that what you really need is five committed people in every Congressional district," Dees-Thomases told Join Together Online. "That's what we hope to obtain from this event."
The second goal for the event is to kick off a campaign, "Halt the Assault", for continuation of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, which is scheduled to expire in September. President Bush has stated that he favors continuation of the ban, but if Congress takes no action on extending the ban he won't have to face the politically unsavory task of alienating his gun-rights supporters by signing such a law. But as Dees-Thomases points out, in the wake of the 2000 event on the Mall, then-candidate Bush "promised us that if he were elected president, he would make sure that his administration renewed the ban. So here we are, four years later, and we're going to be standing on the steps of the United States Capitol and vow that for the next four months we're going to do everything possible to hold him to that promise."
The messages coming from the stage four years ago were far more grandiose on a day when the emergence of a powerful grassroots movement to end gun violence had seemingly emerged. But much of the promise of that day was never fulfilled, and in her new book, "Looking for a Few Good Moms: How One Mother Rallied a Million Others Against the Gun Lobby" (Rodale), Dees-Thomases provides a critique of what went wrong in the months following the March.
As Dees-Thomases describes the series of events that followed the March, the impact of that event was to bring a new wave of political neophytes -- along with massive media attention and the availability of rather large sums of money -- to an issue that she believed had been weighed down by a lack of consensus among gun violence prevention groups.
In 1999, looking for at least the $1 million she figured was necessary to stage the event she had in mind, Dees-Thomases heard about a new organization called the Bell Campaign, a victim-led organization that had been created with the help of a $4-million grant from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation. The Bell Campaign became an integral part of the March, and four days after the event, its directors voted to formally merge with the Million Mom March. But, as Dees-Thomases writes, the plans for this new national organization were dealt a critical blow when billionaire Andrew McKelvey, who had told Dees-Thomases that he would give the Million Mom March $2 million to fund its post-march efforts, instead gave the money to a new centrist group, Americans for Gun Safety.
Dees-Thomases believes that the gun-control movement squandered a "precious and fleeting moment" when the Licensing and Registration bill was to be introduced in Congress. "Not only did this bill mysteriously disappear," Dees-Thomases writes, "but Congress also failed once again to close the gun-show loophole." Ultimately, "in February 2001, overwhelmed with applications for Million Mom March chapters, but without the resources to respond, the Bell Campaign's national office collapsed."
Still, Dees-Thomases believes that the event was successful in other senses. "It spawned grassroots activism across the country," she says. "That's the most positive thing that happened. It developed a new wave of activists."
She says that these new activists are operating under the media radar, quietly bringing change through such tasks as distributing "Ask" brochures, which encourage parents to ask whether there are guns in the homes where their children are visiting. She says that the Million Mom March has distributed close to one million brochures.
"When we started marching in 2000 the number of kids dying was 12 a day," she says. "By last December, it had dropped to eight a day, according to the CDC" (Centers for Disease Control). "I like to think it's because of all these moms out there who very quietly but persistently hand out this material. They're trying to create a cultural shift in our country. They're trying to put the genie back in the bottle."
Plugging Away in Detroit
Like Laurel Redden in New Hampshire, Shikha Hamilton of Detroit wasn't very politically active prior to the 2000 March in Washington. At the time, her infant daughter, Avani, was critically ill in an intensive-care unit, with whooping cough. Hamilton prayed for her daughter's recovery, but was struck by the almost daily news of young people being shot in Detroit and how other threats lay in store. Avani did recover, but her mother had grown fixated on the danger that gun violence now posed.
She heard about the Million Mom March and quickly became involved. She was the first mom from Detroit to join the Michigan group. Then, about two weeks later she heard the news about Kayla Rowland, the first-grader who was shot and killed by a fellow first grader in nearby Mount Morris. "I was devastated by that because I had a baby and I was thinking, 'My God, if the kids aren't safe in school in the first grade, then I need to do more.' That's when I kicked it up a notch."
The state Million Mom March coordinator in Michigan asked Hamilton if she would coordinate Detroit. She agreed, and went to work. "I would just meet strangers and ask them to get involved, and 99 percent of the people said yes. We just showed up at every community meeting, police precinct meetings. We targeted politicians."
At the same time, Hamilton and her Detroit chapter moms were forging a strong relationship with the two Million Mom chapters in suburban Detroit. "It's a beautiful experience when you live in Detroit and you see the suburban moms and the urban moms work together," she says. "We were strangers to each other four years ago. But now we communicate with each other almost every single day."
Hamilton is the national spokesperson for this year's event, and will be in Washington for it. Like Dees-Thomases, she is sometimes dismayed by the internal lack of consensus that happens in the world of gun-violence prevention. She says that she doesn't let it bother her.
"It doesn't interest me one bit because I live in the city. I know the devastation, and for me it's a daily reminder that all the in-fighting doesn't matter in the end. I see victims every day and I can't tell them we can't do this or we can't do that because somebody believes this or that. It doesn't matter to them. All they want is to get the guns off the streets. And I can't let them down."
This article is online at http://www.jointogether.org/z/0,2522,570823,00.html
5/6/2004
Feature Story
by Dick Dahl
Four years ago, Laurel Redden couldn't have said who her elected representatives were. A middle-class mother of two from Salem, NH, married for 15 years, Redden was outraged by TV reports of senseless gun violence, but felt powerless to do anything about it. She voted, usually Democratic, but never wrote a letter to an office holder or a newspaper.
But then she heard about New Jerseyite Donna Dees-Thomases' ambitious plan to gather one million mothers on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to protest the gun violence that the nation's leaders seemed to tolerate so casually. When she read about the planning efforts in her home state, she decided to check it out.
The effort made sense to her. So she traveled to Washington on Mothers' Day 2000 and joined some 750,000 others for an event that would change many lives, including her own. Redden became the state coordinator for the New Hampshire chapter of the Million Mom March. And in June, the politically inactive woman of 1999 will be filing her candidacy papers for a seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
For Redden, the Million Mom March precipitated her entry into political life. A newly minted activist, she began spending a lot of time in the New Hampshire statehouse, lobbying for sensible gun-safety measures. But as time wore on, she began to realize that lobbyists can only do so much.
She was also coming to other conclusions. "The more I got involved, the more I realized that this goes way beyond the gun issue," she says. "What I found is that the same system that keeps common-sense gun laws from being enacted goes beyond that single issue. It is the same system that keeps our public education from being properly funded; it's the same system that places more importance in maintaining a huge military budget than in taking care of our citizens here at home. It's the mentality of 'every man for himself' and not looking at the bigger societal issues that go along with some of these things."
In fact, Redden is not the only person who attended the 2000 March who entered political life as a result. Another New Hampshire Million Mom March member, Susan Nord of Candia, is also seeking election this fall. And in Missouri, Jeanne Kirkton, legislative director for the St. Louis Million Mom March chapter, is running for a state senate seat.
Five Committed People Per Congressional District
This year, the national Million Mom March (now united with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) will hold its Mothers' Day event on the west side of the Capitol. Nobody is saying that it will draw anything approaching the numbers of 2000, when the crowd that day far surpassed organizers' most optimistic hopes.
"What we learned from having almost a million people there on Mothers' Day 2000 is that what you really need is five committed people in every Congressional district," Dees-Thomases told Join Together Online. "That's what we hope to obtain from this event."
The second goal for the event is to kick off a campaign, "Halt the Assault", for continuation of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, which is scheduled to expire in September. President Bush has stated that he favors continuation of the ban, but if Congress takes no action on extending the ban he won't have to face the politically unsavory task of alienating his gun-rights supporters by signing such a law. But as Dees-Thomases points out, in the wake of the 2000 event on the Mall, then-candidate Bush "promised us that if he were elected president, he would make sure that his administration renewed the ban. So here we are, four years later, and we're going to be standing on the steps of the United States Capitol and vow that for the next four months we're going to do everything possible to hold him to that promise."
The messages coming from the stage four years ago were far more grandiose on a day when the emergence of a powerful grassroots movement to end gun violence had seemingly emerged. But much of the promise of that day was never fulfilled, and in her new book, "Looking for a Few Good Moms: How One Mother Rallied a Million Others Against the Gun Lobby" (Rodale), Dees-Thomases provides a critique of what went wrong in the months following the March.
As Dees-Thomases describes the series of events that followed the March, the impact of that event was to bring a new wave of political neophytes -- along with massive media attention and the availability of rather large sums of money -- to an issue that she believed had been weighed down by a lack of consensus among gun violence prevention groups.
In 1999, looking for at least the $1 million she figured was necessary to stage the event she had in mind, Dees-Thomases heard about a new organization called the Bell Campaign, a victim-led organization that had been created with the help of a $4-million grant from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation. The Bell Campaign became an integral part of the March, and four days after the event, its directors voted to formally merge with the Million Mom March. But, as Dees-Thomases writes, the plans for this new national organization were dealt a critical blow when billionaire Andrew McKelvey, who had told Dees-Thomases that he would give the Million Mom March $2 million to fund its post-march efforts, instead gave the money to a new centrist group, Americans for Gun Safety.
Dees-Thomases believes that the gun-control movement squandered a "precious and fleeting moment" when the Licensing and Registration bill was to be introduced in Congress. "Not only did this bill mysteriously disappear," Dees-Thomases writes, "but Congress also failed once again to close the gun-show loophole." Ultimately, "in February 2001, overwhelmed with applications for Million Mom March chapters, but without the resources to respond, the Bell Campaign's national office collapsed."
Still, Dees-Thomases believes that the event was successful in other senses. "It spawned grassroots activism across the country," she says. "That's the most positive thing that happened. It developed a new wave of activists."
She says that these new activists are operating under the media radar, quietly bringing change through such tasks as distributing "Ask" brochures, which encourage parents to ask whether there are guns in the homes where their children are visiting. She says that the Million Mom March has distributed close to one million brochures.
"When we started marching in 2000 the number of kids dying was 12 a day," she says. "By last December, it had dropped to eight a day, according to the CDC" (Centers for Disease Control). "I like to think it's because of all these moms out there who very quietly but persistently hand out this material. They're trying to create a cultural shift in our country. They're trying to put the genie back in the bottle."
Plugging Away in Detroit
Like Laurel Redden in New Hampshire, Shikha Hamilton of Detroit wasn't very politically active prior to the 2000 March in Washington. At the time, her infant daughter, Avani, was critically ill in an intensive-care unit, with whooping cough. Hamilton prayed for her daughter's recovery, but was struck by the almost daily news of young people being shot in Detroit and how other threats lay in store. Avani did recover, but her mother had grown fixated on the danger that gun violence now posed.
She heard about the Million Mom March and quickly became involved. She was the first mom from Detroit to join the Michigan group. Then, about two weeks later she heard the news about Kayla Rowland, the first-grader who was shot and killed by a fellow first grader in nearby Mount Morris. "I was devastated by that because I had a baby and I was thinking, 'My God, if the kids aren't safe in school in the first grade, then I need to do more.' That's when I kicked it up a notch."
The state Million Mom March coordinator in Michigan asked Hamilton if she would coordinate Detroit. She agreed, and went to work. "I would just meet strangers and ask them to get involved, and 99 percent of the people said yes. We just showed up at every community meeting, police precinct meetings. We targeted politicians."
At the same time, Hamilton and her Detroit chapter moms were forging a strong relationship with the two Million Mom chapters in suburban Detroit. "It's a beautiful experience when you live in Detroit and you see the suburban moms and the urban moms work together," she says. "We were strangers to each other four years ago. But now we communicate with each other almost every single day."
Hamilton is the national spokesperson for this year's event, and will be in Washington for it. Like Dees-Thomases, she is sometimes dismayed by the internal lack of consensus that happens in the world of gun-violence prevention. She says that she doesn't let it bother her.
"It doesn't interest me one bit because I live in the city. I know the devastation, and for me it's a daily reminder that all the in-fighting doesn't matter in the end. I see victims every day and I can't tell them we can't do this or we can't do that because somebody believes this or that. It doesn't matter to them. All they want is to get the guns off the streets. And I can't let them down."
This article is online at http://www.jointogether.org/z/0,2522,570823,00.html
