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  What Is MOMentum?

  We use the term MOMentum a lot in our planning meetings and everyday conversations with each other, because it reminds us that Moms Demand Action is an organization of moms and helps us remember to be loud and proud about that fact. Because the truth is, no matter what race or socioeconomic class we are, we women—especially those of us who are middle-aged (like I am) or older—are not paid much attention in this country, despite the fact that we do so much of the heavy lifting. Seeking to build MOMentum is about giving ourselves the chance to lead and bring about change on the issues that matter to us. It’s about always remembering that although we are moms, we are also activists—and those two roles are not conflicting. Rather, they each strengthen the other.

  You don’t need to chain yourself to a fence outside the White House or be handcuffed by security guards to be an effective activist. These days, you don’t even need to leave your house. Many of our volunteers have only a few minutes here or there in a typical week to devote to the cause. Still, it matters when they wear their Moms Demand Action T-shirts while running errands, or send emails during lunch breaks, or fire off a tweet before bed. From the very beginning, we’ve advocated something we call naptivism—a term inspired by a volunteer who made a video while her child was taking a nap to show how to call your member of Congress and then posted it to social media. Some activism is always better than none. Every action, no matter how small, is like drips on a rock—over time, they can carve a canyon through even the thickest, most immovable layer of rock.

  Why Moms Make the Best Activists on Earth

  Everyone can get engaged in the world. Even moms. Especially moms.

  You may not realize just how powerful we moms are. After all, it’s an undeniable—and shameful—fact that women hold very few formal positions of power in the United States. At the start of the 2019 legislative session—when we hit our highest numbers ever—we still made up only 28.5 percent of state legislatures1 and 23.4 percent of Congress.2 In the business world, women make up only 1 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs.

  Yet there are other, more empowering numbers that are too often overlooked. Namely, that women comprise the majority of the voting population. On top of that, we make 80 percent of the spending decisions for our families. Politicians and companies care very much about what we have to say. And when we band together, we absolutely have enough influence as a voting bloc and an economic force to create change.

  Another thing that stands in the way of seeing just how strong we are is the stereotype that moms are frazzled and need several glasses of wine just to recuperate from all that cleaning, errand running, homework wrangling, and schedule managing. The NRA has latched on to this perception and often tries to insult Moms Demand Action members by saying that we like to drink boxed wine in our driveways—a stereotype that began when NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch said that I seemed like a “lonely woman who sits in her driveway drinking boxed wine” in a video she made in 2014.3 Don’t get me wrong—some of us might enjoy a sauvignon blanc from time to time, but this does not define us. (And I’m pretty sure many NRA members are boozing in their backyards.) The fact is, we have to own our mom status and not let it be seen as a weakness. If we don’t claim our motherhood as a tool, it will be used against us as a weapon.

  Trust me, I get that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the craziness of raising a family and probably also earning a living—after all, I’ve got five kids and have worked a variety of jobs while raising them. But let’s reframe our ability to manage all the things we do as the perfect qualifications for moving mountains.

  Moms are formidable. Don’t believe me? Think of all the things you’ve done since the moment you became a mom: giving birth, for one (no matter how that baby came out, how much more powerful can you get than creating a new life?); foregoing sleep; catching every virus your kid brought home from daycare or playgroup; advocating for your kids at school, at the pediatrician’s office, or maybe even within your own family; developing the ability to manage multiple people’s seemingly incompatible schedules and needs; continually growing your capacity to love other human beings beyond what you ever thought possible; honing your patience; and building physical, mental, and emotional resilience.

  And those qualifications are just the beginning of what makes you, as a mom, such a force.

  A mother’s love is fierce. It’s in our nature to protect our children, and that instinct is so strong that we would put ourselves in front of a speeding train to save a child. We are true warriors when it comes to our kids. And you don’t even have to try to summon this courage; it’s all instinct. Agatha Christie wrote, “A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” The next time you’re doubting your ability to disrupt the status quo, remember that—especially the “crushing down remorselessly” part.

  For mothers, the thought of losing a child is unbearable. And while suffering such a loss is terrible to contemplate, it’s also liberating. It empowers you to protect your kids as if you have nothing to lose. Because if you lost your kids, you would feel as though you’d lost everything.

  Of course, moms are also forces of love—the ones who kiss the boo-boos, dry the tears, and teach the emotional lessons. That makes us moms an important voice of morality and compassion—not just in our own families, but in society at large. It also makes us the perfect counterbalance to the posturing and intimidation of the NRA leadership and their lobbyists. After all, our current gun laws are a textbook representation of masculinity gone haywire, and for too long, men have dominated the discussion about guns. Moms are the yin to toxic masculinity’s yang.

  And it’s not just your kids that your heart guides you to protect. As Hillary Clinton said, there’s no such thing as other people’s children. Becoming a mother makes you realize that you’re a caretaker not just for your own kids, but for everyone else’s too. You understand that it’s part of your role to make the world a better place for everyone; it’s a moral obligation that you feel not so much as a duty but as a simple fact of life.

  I’ve seen this natural tendency to support others every day, when our volunteers come together to support those whose loved ones have been taken by gun violence. In 2018 in Austin, Texas, one of our moms, Diana Earl, was facing the emotional gauntlet of attending the trial of the man who had shot and killed her only child, Dedrick. The defense attorneys were trying to paint her son as a thug who had brought his own death upon himself. Members of her Moms Demand Action chapter, many of whom had never met her, organized themselves so that at least a half-dozen of them were at the trial every day, so that she would know that someone was always with her and visibly supporting her in the courtroom.

  We’ve supported each other through illness. Another Texas mom, Catherine Nance, joined Moms Demand Action during the campaign to fight a bill that would allow guns on college campuses in that state. She was an adjunct professor and mom to three little kids and came to every hearing despite having some health issues that she thought were related to her last C-section. When she was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer, our volunteers cooked her family food, sat with her during her hospital visits, and ripped out soggy drywall in her home after Hurricane Harvey. Catherine remained devoted to the cause to the end, even going out wearing a wig to canvass for a Moms Demand Action volunteer who was running for local office. These women who never knew each other before became as close as family.

  After the 2016 mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, protestors showed up at an Orlando vigil to harass attendees, including one of our volunteers, Wayne McNeil, a gun violence survivor and member of the LGBTQ community. Moms Demand Action volunteers simply walked over to where all the haters were gathered and hid them from vigil attendees with a huge Disarm Hate sign. Wayne later said, “That we could support each other in a moment of unspeakable grief speaks volumes to what Moms
Demand Action really stands for in America. People finding the strength to lift each other up with love in the midst of so much violence and hate is what makes us special. It is what we do every day.”

  This drive to protect other people—even complete strangers—is what makes moms relentless. My husband told me after I started Moms Demand Action that even if he found out he had a terminal illness, he wouldn’t spend as much time trying to cure it as I was spending trying to eradicate gun violence. When women are passionate about an issue, they do not take “no” for an answer. That passion is our power; we care so much that we become unstoppable.

  So it’s not that we can be effective activists despite being mothers; we wield power and have access to unfathomable strength because we are mothers. It’s time for us to wear our motherhood with pride, and beyond that, to use it to our advantage.

  Don’t Hide the Fact That You’re a Mom: Own It. Use It.

  When I first started working in corporate America more than twenty-five years ago, motherhood still had a big stigma attached to it. In 1999, when I was the first pregnant vice president at the PR firm FleishmanHillard in Kansas City, I got pushback just for wearing maternity clothes. One day I was in an elevator with another woman (a woman!) who ran the office. I was wearing a suit with a swing-style blouse underneath my jacket, because I couldn’t button a normal shirt over my belly. She gave me the side-eye and said, “That’s an interesting top you’re wearing.” Pregnancy was seen as an affliction rather than as a part of life. And motherhood was something I tried to hide as much as possible, saying I was sick instead of admitting that I needed to stay home with a sick kid, and never, ever allowing any telltale kid noises to be heard in the background of conference calls I did from home.

  It wasn’t until I started Moms Demand Action that I fully understood just how much political clout and power motherhood gives us. Clearly, with a name like Moms Demand Action, we fly the mom flag proudly, but that’s not the only way we put the fact that we are mothers to good use.

  From the very beginning, we’ve made it plain that we understand that the majority of our volunteers have kids, and we know that kids come first. You can’t get on a Moms Demand Action conference call without hearing at least one child in the background, and kids are always welcome—to chapter meetings, to advocacy days at statehouses, to marches.

  We’ve also co-opted the mainstays of motherhood to remind politicians and influencers that we’re watching them, and we expect them to be on their best behavior. After all, they have mothers, too—and they’re probably really scared of them. We’ve brought homemade cookies to meetings with lawmakers, we’ve communicated with them through crafts we create with our kids, and we’ve even sent them valentines.

  The valentines started the first Valentine’s Day of our existence, just two months after Sandy Hook. In a tactic I didn’t fully think through, Moms Demand Action asked Americans to mail valentines to their lawmakers. We had people send the cards to a P.O. box in Washington, DC—where I then had to fly in order to sort them and deliver them. And because you can’t just take mail through security at the Capitol, I and other volunteers had to smuggle them into Congress under our coats and in our purses (did I mention that moms are also ingenious?).

  But all those logistical hurdles were worth it, as delivering those valentines is how I got to meet Joe Donnelly, my home-state senator from Indiana. He told me that an assault weapons ban was a “nonstarter” but that he supported background checks. That was information I was glad to have. That was also when I first met Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut. He is a staunch gun-sense supporter, particularly because Sandy Hook is in his home state. As if I needed another reason to like him, he had his staff make valentines for Moms Demand Action volunteers. Some may have seen our valentines stunt as juvenile or naive, but would the traditional method of writing letters have made as much of an impact? I don’t think so.

  We’ve even used a hallmark of childhood—the lemonade stand—to sway lawmakers. After Congress failed in 2013 to pass the Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks on gun sales, moms were shocked and disappointed at the Senate’s failure to act, but we were not deterred. In response we launched a lemonade stand offensive that August, when Congress was on recess. Proclaiming “When Congress gives moms lemons, we make lemonade!,” we recruited our kids to help us host lemonade stands in front of legislators’ offices with three main goals: show lawmakers that we hadn’t forgotten about the issue; build awareness about the issue and our organization; and raise small amounts of money that could be used locally.

  We even had a lemonade stand on Capitol Hill after Congress was back in session. Notable lawmakers like Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia (and later vice presidential candidate), Senator Chuck Schumer from New York, and the entire Connecticut congressional contingent bought lemonade from us—and of course we took pictures and posted them on social media.

  Along the way, we’ve taken our kids with us when it makes sense—sometimes out of necessity, sometimes as a strategy, and sometimes as both. One of our first and most effective tactics to encourage resistant lawmakers to meet with us is to hold “stroller jams.” Stroller jams originated in Maryland, where then-governor Martin O’Malley introduced background check legislation after Congress failed to pass Manchin-Toomey. During the run-up to the vote, our volunteers met with lawmakers and took their kids along. With all the strollers and car seats, the halls of the Maryland statehouse were packed. As a result, lawmakers didn’t have any room to maneuver past us; they had to stop and talk to us.

  It was a crystallizing moment. After the Maryland bill passed, Governor O’Malley thanked our organization publicly, which gave us a lot of credibility and put us on the map as moms and as a political force. Now we use stroller jams in the halls of Congress, at state legislatures, and at the in-district offices of congressional representatives—even on public transportation.

  Through these tactics and more, we’ve seen that all the stereotypes of moms add up to a powerful brand (something I talk more about in Chapter 7). This is a tool you can use to great effect, and it’s certainly not something to hide.

  If You Can’t Walk Through the Door, Go Through the Window

  Moms may not have a lot of direct access to power in government or from within corporations, but our purchasing power is an incredible tool. How you vote with your dollars sends an important message about what you believe in, and about what the companies who want to sell things to you ought to believe in too, if they want your money.

  Moms Demand Action has had a lot of success in targeting companies to change their gun policies. The first company we set our sights on was Starbucks. In June 2013, just six months after starting Moms Demand Action, I saw on the news that Starbucks was going to prohibit smoking and e-cigarettes within twenty-five feet of its stores—no matter what the state laws said about regulating smoking in public places.

  But at the time, Starbucks allowed open carry inside its stores. “Open carry” means that someone can carry a handgun or even a long gun in plain view, unlike “concealed carry,” which means that a gun cannot be seen by a bystander. In many states, open carry is unregulated, and unbelievably, forty-five states allow it.

  Even more shocking, earlier that year, on February 2 (get it? the second day of the second month—to honor the Second Amendment), gun extremists organized a day where they encouraged people in open carry states to take their handguns and long guns to Starbucks. It was sickening to watch. And it was disturbing to think that this company’s stores, where moms spend so much time and money—often with their kids—were becoming hangouts for gun extremists.

  So when I saw the news about Starbucks banning cigarettes regardless of state law, I thought, “Wait a minute, they’re going to continue to allow guns in their stores, but they won’t allow cigarettes within twenty-five feet?” It was outrageous to me that Starbucks didn’t understand that secondhand bullets are more dangerous than secondhand smoke.

&
nbsp; So I called the Starbucks corporate office and asked whether company leaders were still going to allow open carry. They told me they were. Not only were moms and their kids going to continue to be exposed to gun extremism in a business that was such a big part of their lives, but open carry supporters were being sent the signal that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz fully supported them. Starbucks was starting to feel like enemy territory to a huge segment of its patrons.

  I considered calling on our volunteers to boycott Starbucks, but remember, Moms Demand Action was only six months old. We didn’t yet have the numbers to pull off a full-scale rejection of such a beloved and powerful brand. But we clearly needed to change the narrative so that Starbucks and the rest of the country could see that someone carrying an AR-15 openly while they ordered a latte was being considered safer than cigarette smoke.

  We settled on a “momcott” that we called Skip Starbucks Saturday. Withholding our patronage was just one objective; just as important, we wanted to raise awareness of how pervasive open carry had become by making the images of open carry inside Starbucks go viral on social media. We put out a series of press releases and social media posts encouraging moms to post pictures of themselves drinking coffee at home or a Starbucks competitor and use the hashtag #SkipStarbucksSaturday.

  The more we pushed against open carry inside Starbucks, the more gun extremists pushed back. They showed up at Starbucks from Cincinnati to San Antonio—even near Sandy Hook Elementary School, where the horrific mass shooting had happened less than a year earlier. Many of the images from these visits went viral, including one of a man and a woman holding Frappuccinos inside the store with AR-15s strapped to their bodies. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, more than a dozen gun extremists went to Starbucks armed to the teeth. The patrons and staff were terrified, but management said there was nothing they could do because company policy allowed it.