Speaker 1: Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Shannon Watts.
Speaker 2: Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
Speaker 2: women who dared to pivot out of one career and
Speaker 2: into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
Speaker 2: these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. We're speaking
Speaker 2: with someone who's not only an iconic activist and leader,
Speaker 2: but someone who is unapologetically woven the personal and the professional.
Speaker 3: Throughout her career. Shannon Watts, founder of Mom's Demand Action.
Speaker 3: Every First Friday in June, we take time to recognize
Speaker 3: Gun Violence Awareness Day and wear orange to honor survivors
Speaker 3: and build community with those working to end gun violence.
Speaker 3: Shannon's work to reduce gun violence has led to more
Speaker 3: progress than we've ever seen. She's been named a Time
Speaker 3: Magazine one hundred Most Influential People, a Forbes fifty over
Speaker 3: fifty change Maker, and Glamour Woman of the Year. But
Speaker 3: Shannon found this work after pivoting not once.
Speaker 4: But twice.
Speaker 3: She started her career as a young speech writer for
Speaker 3: Governor Carnahan and Missouri, not realizing that one day she'd
Speaker 3: flex or political muscles to fight gun violence. After building
Speaker 3: a successful career in crisis communications, Shannon proudly left to
Speaker 3: be a stay at home mom. It wasn't in until
Speaker 3: December fourteenth, twenty twelve, when Shannon watched alongside all of
Speaker 3: us as twenty children were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary
Speaker 3: that she made her next pivot. She started a Facebook
Speaker 3: group with the message that all Americans can and should
Speaker 3: do more to reduce gun violence. The online conversation turned
Speaker 3: into grassroots movement, which turned into Mom's Demand Action. During
Speaker 3: this time, I also started working on gun violence prevention
Speaker 3: in my pre pivot days, I worked Sandy Hook families,
Speaker 3: particularly bringing young people into the movement, and we immediately
Speaker 3: heard about Shannon's work. Shan I never actually met in
Speaker 3: person at the time, but we both worked on trying
Speaker 3: to get Congress to pass universal background checks, which we'll
Speaker 3: talk about later in the episode. Shannon's inspiring pivots don't
Speaker 3: seem to be stopping, and she also talks about what's
Speaker 3: next for her after stepping down as CEO of Mom's
Speaker 3: Demand last year. Guns are a uniquely American problem that
Speaker 3: sometimes feels hopeless when we see headline after headline, but
Speaker 3: we can make a difference Shannon is a testament to that,
Speaker 3: and I hope this episode inspires you all to get
Speaker 3: involved to protect people from gun violence. You can visit
Speaker 3: our website for organizations to get involved with their contribute
Speaker 3: to enjoy.
Speaker 4: Can you just tell us a little bit about growing public?
Speaker 4: Where did you grow up?
Speaker 1: I was born in Rochester, New York. I was born
Speaker 1: on January first, in nineteen seventy one, and I ended
Speaker 1: up being an only child. Had a fun nineteen seventies upbringing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of the decade of lash Key
Speaker 1: kids and free range children.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I would leave in the morning at seven, and I
Speaker 1: would come home at night at seven, and my parents
Speaker 1: really didn't know where I was or what I was doing.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people I talked to who grew
Speaker 1: up in the seventies have that same experience, and I
Speaker 1: think in part when I look back at what I
Speaker 1: was inspired by, you know, Rochester, New York is the
Speaker 1: home of so many activists, and it's what we are
Speaker 1: taught to revere.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: We would go on field trips. We would go to
Speaker 1: Susan B. Anthony's house, we would go see where Frederick
Speaker 1: Douglas made speeches. We would see where Harriet Tubman passed through.
Speaker 1: And when I think about my childhood, I think about
Speaker 1: those two things. Sort of the freedom I had to
Speaker 1: grow up and make mistakes and learn, but also what
Speaker 1: I was taught about value use and what was important.
Speaker 4: What did you think you wanted to be when you
Speaker 4: grew up.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I was really precocious, So
Speaker 1: I have had ADHD my whole life untreated ADHD. My
Speaker 1: parents had me diagnosed in the nineteen eighties, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty severe if your parents took you in for
Speaker 1: a diagnosis in the nineteen eighties, you know, I began
Speaker 1: failing out of school in middle school. I was getting
Speaker 1: into trouble for a lack of impulse control. It was
Speaker 1: really when I went through puberty that so much in
Speaker 1: my life started to change. And I don't think my
Speaker 1: parents knew what to do with that. But even after
Speaker 1: I was diagnosed, I think because of stigma, you know,
Speaker 1: they did not agree with the treatment plan, so I
Speaker 1: just never was treated and it made it really difficult
Speaker 1: for me to learn. I knew that I was bright,
Speaker 1: but I was also being told at the same time
Speaker 1: that I was sort of a failure. Or a disappointment,
Speaker 1: or that I didn't have the capacity to compete with
Speaker 1: my peers. And I barely made it through high school.
Speaker 1: Thank god for the economics teacher who passed me, because
Speaker 1: otherwise I would not have I didn't even get a
Speaker 1: cap and gown because I didn't think I was going
Speaker 1: to graduate. How did I get into college? I ended
Speaker 1: up going to community college for a year, and I
Speaker 1: think my brain started to solidify at that point. You know,
Speaker 1: I started to understand the workarounds that I needed to
Speaker 1: do in order to succeed in this system that was
Speaker 1: not set up for me. And I can remember when
Speaker 1: I was basically failing out of high school. You know,
Speaker 1: my dad came to me and said, why why don't
Speaker 1: you become an airline attendant? And that's certainly nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, that sounds like a very glamorous life. Honestly
Speaker 1: to me, I might have I might wish I had
Speaker 1: become an airline attendant in retrospect, but I just felt
Speaker 1: like they were saying to me that I couldn't go
Speaker 1: to college, that I couldn't do it. And my personality
Speaker 1: is such that no matter how hard it was to
Speaker 1: get through school, I was going to figure that out.
Speaker 1: My parents had such low expectations for me, and I
Speaker 1: was so stubborn and determined that I wanted to go
Speaker 1: to college. No one went to college on my mother's
Speaker 1: side of the family, that was a woman. I come
Speaker 1: from a very very impoverished family on my maternal side,
Speaker 1: coal miners in western Kentucky, who many of them didn't
Speaker 1: even go to high school, and my mom did not
Speaker 1: go to college. And so I got all a's that
Speaker 1: first year in community college, much to my parents' surprise,
Speaker 1: and about a year later, I transferred to the University
Speaker 1: of Missouri.
Speaker 3: Despite her parents' low expectations and her struggles with ADHD.
Speaker 3: Shannon grew up an avid reader.
Speaker 1: As an only child. That was sort of my lifeline
Speaker 1: was to Anna the Green Gables or you know, Nancy
Speaker 1: Drew or eventually, as I got into high school Watergate.
Speaker 1: I became obsessed with Watergate. I have no idea why
Speaker 1: there is not a Watergate book that has been written
Speaker 1: that I have not read, and that really inspired inside
Speaker 1: of me a love for journalism. And so when I
Speaker 1: decided to transfer from community to college to college college,
Speaker 1: I decided to go to the best state journalism school
Speaker 1: in the country.
Speaker 4: So it ended up working as a public affairs officer
Speaker 4: for the Missouri state government. How did that come about.
Speaker 1: Well, it is not a surprise that I did struggle
Speaker 1: to get through college as well, again because of this
Speaker 1: untreated ADHD, and I wasn't even able to major in journalism.
Speaker 1: I had to major in sociology because I couldn't get
Speaker 1: into the j school ultimately, but I still loved journalism
Speaker 1: and I still loved everything that was a part of
Speaker 1: that world. And so when I graduated, I was writing
Speaker 1: for a local newspaper. I was selling ads for a
Speaker 1: local newspaper in Columbia, Missouri, and there was a you know,
Speaker 1: back then, we looked in the newspaper for job ads,
Speaker 1: and there was an ad that said that Governor Carnahan's administration,
Speaker 1: a democratic administration, was hiring for a speech writer. That
Speaker 1: sounded very glamorous to me and like something I could do.
Speaker 1: And so I applied, and I was one of over
Speaker 1: one hundred applicants, and I made it through the process
Speaker 1: and I was offered the job. I made a whopping
Speaker 1: nineteen thousand, eight hundred dollars a year, but it was
Speaker 1: a very sought after position. And you know, the lessons
Speaker 1: I learned in that job have served me throughout my
Speaker 1: entire life.
Speaker 3: But this was politics in the nineteen nineties, and those
Speaker 3: lessons she learned in the halls of the Jefferson City
Speaker 3: Capital went beyond policies and press conferences.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a young woman in the state House,
Speaker 1: you were constantly being hit on, regardless of political party.
Speaker 1: I called it spring break for middle aged men, Like
Speaker 1: these men were coming in from all over the state
Speaker 1: of Missouri to gather just for this few months, right
Speaker 1: to make laws allegedly, But what they were really doing
Speaker 1: was partying. I mean, drinking in their offices and in
Speaker 1: the hallways and being feted by lobbyists and making the
Speaker 1: moves on interns like it was debauchery. So that kind
Speaker 1: of also made me think, you know, if these guys
Speaker 1: can do it, anybody can do it.
Speaker 4: But did that make you lose your faith in government?
Speaker 4: I mean it feels like it would really make me
Speaker 4: lose my faith.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like seeing the sausage being made, but
Speaker 1: you know, you still enjoy the sausage, Like I thought,
Speaker 1: the lawmaking that was happening in the state House, and
Speaker 1: particularly Governor Carnahan. I mean, it was really heroic the
Speaker 1: things that he was championing in a state like Missouri,
Speaker 1: women's rights, improving education.
Speaker 7: I'm very pleased to report to you that under the
Speaker 7: budget that I am introducing today, the state is right
Speaker 7: on target and fully funding the Outstanding Schools Act, providing
Speaker 7: schools the resources they need to give our children a
Speaker 7: quality education. And whatever decisions we make, they will live
Speaker 7: with the consequences for years to come. Let us resolve
Speaker 7: to work together to put the small on the unimportant
Speaker 7: things aside, focus on the common goal to leave Missouri
Speaker 7: an even better place for our children to live than
Speaker 7: it was for ourselves. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Even sensible gun reform and so I didn't dissuade me
Speaker 1: from being interested in politics, but it made me think
Speaker 1: that the people who were politicians could be of a
Speaker 1: higher caliber.
Speaker 3: Still, young Shannon soaked it all in, but was still
Speaker 3: unaware that politics was it for her, completely unaware that
Speaker 3: her time in the governor's office would later give her
Speaker 3: the skills that would help or lead the nation's fight
Speaker 3: against gun violence.
Speaker 1: I was twenty three years old. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: I had a lot of strong opinions or even fully
Speaker 1: formed political notions. At that point, I was more watching
Speaker 1: and learning from the sidelines, and not just learning how
Speaker 1: to tell story, but understanding how the process worked.
Speaker 3: Still not sold on politics, Shannon made her first pivot
Speaker 3: from public service to corporate America.
Speaker 4: Just walk us through a little bit more. When you
Speaker 4: left the public sector and you went into the private sector,
Speaker 4: I mean you rose quickly, like you were a star.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was interesting how my ADHD quickly became a superpower
Speaker 1: of concentration. And not long after I left the State House,
Speaker 1: I did a couple of other quasi governmental jobs, but
Speaker 1: I ended up at Fleischmann Hillard, the public relations agency,
Speaker 1: and they had a really strong arm of that public
Speaker 1: relations firm in Kansas City, mostly focused on agriculture, but
Speaker 1: Hallmark was a client some of the local headquarters in
Speaker 1: Kansas City. And it's really where I cut my teeth
Speaker 1: on crisis management. So there would be a chemical spill
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and I would get
Speaker 1: woken up and I would have to get on a
Speaker 1: plane and go out and understand what happened. And how
Speaker 1: do you message this to community members? How do you
Speaker 1: explain to them, we understand this is a crisis, we care,
Speaker 1: we're working to fix it, and that became my job.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't even thirty years old yet, but I
Speaker 1: did have a gift, I think in part because of
Speaker 1: my work at the state House. But I knew how
Speaker 1: to tell a story effectively. I knew how to message,
Speaker 1: and I knew how to help clients in part because
Speaker 1: of holding the hands of state lawmakers through any kind
Speaker 1: of journey. You know that they were on because of
Speaker 1: their brand or their business or whatever was unfolding, and
Speaker 1: that experience certainly is something that is valuable I think
Speaker 1: in the corporate world.
Speaker 4: I also feel like for people that work in crisis
Speaker 4: are like a special breed, like you're either built to
Speaker 4: run towards the crisis and have a very clear brain,
Speaker 4: or it's just overwhelming.
Speaker 1: I agree, And I don't know that you would think
Speaker 1: that someone who almost failed out of high school and
Speaker 1: college would have that kind of brain. But yet, what
Speaker 1: I found is that my ADHD helps me to focus
Speaker 1: so specifically when one thing unfolds, which I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about when it pertains to gun violence. But
Speaker 1: I saw this play out over and over again, and
Speaker 1: this was just as you know, the Internet was coming
Speaker 1: into play where I was able to track an issue,
Speaker 1: find the information about it, look at the news coverage,
Speaker 1: synthesize all of it, and spit back out a strategic
Speaker 1: plan and cohesive messaging. And it's just something that my
Speaker 1: brain is wired to do.
Speaker 3: When we come back, we dive into how Shannon's personal
Speaker 3: life played a role in her early career and beyond.
Speaker 3: Shannon's career was continuing to grow and grow, but so
Speaker 3: was her family. She married her high school sweetheart fresh
Speaker 3: out of college.
Speaker 1: I was very young. My parents were going through divorce.
Speaker 1: As I said, I was an only child, and I
Speaker 1: kind of felt like my family was falling apart, and
Speaker 1: I think I was looking for another family, to create
Speaker 1: another family. And so I married and found out I
Speaker 1: was pregnant three months later, had a baby again. I
Speaker 1: got pregnant three months after that. So by the time
Speaker 1: I was twenty nine years old, I had three children,
Speaker 1: which is not something that really happens even with women
Speaker 1: in my generation. And and my main focus really in
Speaker 1: my twenties and thirties was being able to support my family.
Speaker 1: And it was really sort of a blur the fact
Speaker 1: that I was having children, that I was working full
Speaker 1: time that I was married. I think all the fun
Speaker 1: most people have in their twenty thirties in thirties, I'm
Speaker 1: having now in my fifties. But my focus in those
Speaker 1: days was really just how do I keep succeeding so
Speaker 1: that I can't support my family?
Speaker 4: And you weren't a job that I'm imagining had kind
Speaker 4: of unpredictable hours and unpredictable focus, Like if a crisis
Speaker 4: came up, you would have to drop we know, wherever
Speaker 4: you were with the family and run towards it. How
Speaker 4: did you manage that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I was really the person who was mainly
Speaker 1: supporting our family, and so my ex husband, my ex husband,
Speaker 1: now he had a job, but he was able to
Speaker 1: be home most of the time with the kids, and
Speaker 1: that was also, I think a little bit unheard of
Speaker 1: back then. So he started out making sure that his job,
Speaker 1: because I was paid more, that his job was more
Speaker 1: conducive to childcare and staying home on paternity leave and
Speaker 1: picking kids up from school, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So you were doing incredibly well in your career, your
Speaker 4: kids are growing. In two thousand and eight, you were
Speaker 4: named to pr Week's forty under forty list and in
Speaker 4: the same year you decided to leave to stay home
Speaker 4: with your kids. So tell us more about that decision.
Speaker 4: And I mean, what was that juxtavision? Like, you know,
Speaker 4: you're the top of your field and you say, you
Speaker 4: know what, it's not for me right now.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a pattern in my life where I
Speaker 1: always try to go out on top, but I ended
Speaker 1: up divorcing in my early thirties. When you get married
Speaker 1: at twenty three, you don't really marry the person you
Speaker 1: would probably marry in your thirties, which is why I've
Speaker 1: encouraged all my kids to wait until they're thirty to
Speaker 1: get married. We have a wonderful relationship. I think Gwyneth
Speaker 1: Paltrow would call it conscious uncoupling. You know, we've been
Speaker 1: able to parent our kids together for the last couple
Speaker 1: of decades very well. But we just realized at a
Speaker 1: certain point that we were not going to have the
Speaker 1: marriage that either of us wanted. And so after we divorced,
Speaker 1: I ended up meeting my now husband and remarrying. And
Speaker 1: he had two older children in high school and college,
Speaker 1: and I had children in elementary and middle school, so
Speaker 1: it was a very complex dynamic. You know, we wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that our family felt like a family.
Speaker 1: We wanted our kids to come together, and I just
Speaker 1: knew there was no way that I could keep working
Speaker 1: full time and do that, and it seemed like a
Speaker 1: good time to take a break, and so I just
Speaker 1: decided I would step back from the day to day,
Speaker 1: always imagining that it would be about a five year
Speaker 1: break and that I would certainly go back into the
Speaker 1: workforce full time.
Speaker 3: What I love about Shannon's story is how she speaks
Speaker 3: openly and honestly about putting her personal life and her
Speaker 3: family first. When I made the decision to leave my
Speaker 3: career in politics to be more present with my family,
Speaker 3: I felt a sense of shame around it, as if
Speaker 3: that reason wasn't good enough, But Shannon was steadfast in
Speaker 3: trusting herself and her decisions.
Speaker 1: I was much more concerned about wanting to make sure
Speaker 1: that my kids had someone home when they came home
Speaker 1: from school, that I was helping them through the divorce
Speaker 1: and remarriage, that I was getting to know my husband's kids,
Speaker 1: and also that I was spending time with my new husband.
Speaker 1: You know, we had both been married before, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that the same things that got
Speaker 1: in the way of our first marriages didn't get in
Speaker 1: the way of our second marriage. So that was really
Speaker 1: my priority. And my husband was working full time. I
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a luxury to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can put this on the back burner and go
Speaker 1: back when I'm ready, but always believing that because of
Speaker 1: my personality, because of the career I had created, I
Speaker 1: would go back.
Speaker 3: Talk to us about the moment it clicked for you
Speaker 3: to take action again against gun violence. Had it been
Speaker 3: about five years for you at that point.
Speaker 1: I had been home almost exactly five years, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I had started looking at jobs. I had started sending
Speaker 1: out my resume, and it was a very cold day
Speaker 1: in Indiana, December fourteenth, twenty twelve. I had just dumped
Speaker 1: like five huge baskets of laundry out on the bed
Speaker 1: in my primary bedroom. As you can imagine, like laundry
Speaker 1: is a full time job when you have five kids,
Speaker 1: and I was just I was going to have CNN
Speaker 1: on the background while I fulded close and suddenly there
Speaker 1: was this breaking news chirn that there was an active
Speaker 1: shooter inside in elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. I had
Speaker 1: never heard of Newtown, Connecticut. But I knew based on
Speaker 1: the footage I was seeing of people in the parking
Speaker 1: lot and families crying, and these reporters who were already
Speaker 1: on the scene, that this was horrific.
Speaker 5: Any hooks cool, I think there's somebody shooting in here,
Speaker 5: a New Hook school.
Speaker 4: Okay, what makes you think that?
Speaker 5: Because somebody's got I thought a glimpse of somebody they're
Speaker 5: running down.
Speaker 2: If she thinks that so much?
Speaker 8: The Mental Report, I'm Rebecca Jarvis with the latest on
Speaker 8: the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut,
Speaker 8: the Sandy Hook School, and it is turning out to
Speaker 8: be worse than anyone could have imagined.
Speaker 9: One fifteen asked everybody to sit down, and they said
Speaker 9: that it was a tragic day in Newtown today and
Speaker 9: twenty children were killed.
Speaker 3: Tell me little girl was gone.
Speaker 1: There was so much panic and confusion when that announcement
Speaker 1: was whatever was about to unfold was going to sear
Speaker 1: the psyche of Americans. So I'm sure, like so many
Speaker 1: people listening, you know, I just kind of sat down
Speaker 1: where I was that day and I just watched this
Speaker 1: tragedy unfold for hours and hours and hours and I
Speaker 1: was inconsolable. It's still unfathomable, even though it shouldn't because
Speaker 1: there have been so many mascul shootings since. But you
Speaker 1: know that twenty children and six educators were slaughtered inside
Speaker 1: in American elementary school in seconds. Because this, you could
Speaker 1: call him a man, but he's really he was barely
Speaker 1: a man who had easy access to a weapon of war.
Speaker 1: I went to bed that night, I woke up the
Speaker 1: next morning, and I'm not even sure I can explain
Speaker 1: to you the rage I felt, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a common denominator in my life, Like my go to
Speaker 1: emotion is anger pretty much for anything good or bad.
Speaker 1: And I was so angry that I didn't really know
Speaker 1: what to do with it. I had to channel it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, okay, I'll join something like Mother's against
Speaker 1: drunk driving, but for gun safety, that's got to exist.
Speaker 1: Mad was so influential to me as a teen in
Speaker 1: the eighties growing up. You know, they used to park
Speaker 1: the cars, the crumpled cars full of victims block still
Speaker 1: like in front of your high school, to say like
Speaker 1: this could happen to you if you drink and drive,
Speaker 1: which just was like very impactful, and I thought, there's
Speaker 1: got to be a group of moms who are doing
Speaker 1: this for gun safety. You know, I'm a mom of five.
Speaker 1: That's how this issue speaks to me. It was in
Speaker 1: an elementary school. I've got kids in an elementary school.
Speaker 1: So I went in my kitchen and I looked for
Speaker 1: this organization, and I could not find anything like it.
Speaker 1: I found some think tanks, mostly run by men. I
Speaker 1: found some one off city and state organizations mostly run
Speaker 1: by men. Like I wanted to be part of a
Speaker 1: badass army of women like I had seen when I
Speaker 1: was growing up in Rochester, New York, who I think
Speaker 1: are the special sauce of forcing change in this country.
Speaker 1: I had seventy five Facebook friends. I was not exactly
Speaker 1: a social media phenomenon, and I just thought I know
Speaker 1: how to start a Facebook page. I'd actually just recently
Speaker 1: learned how to start a new Facebook page for like
Speaker 1: a business or a brand. So I created it in
Speaker 1: my kitchen and I called it one Million Moms for
Speaker 1: Gun Control. And it was like lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 1: The direct messages, the texts, the emails, the calls. Like
Speaker 1: I didn't think I'd be a public figure. All my
Speaker 1: information was out there to contact me, and so what
Speaker 1: I thought was an online conversation very quickly became an
Speaker 1: offline organization.
Speaker 10: Market market moms demand action, not politicians. It started as
Speaker 10: a Facebook group of concerned moms and has transformed into
Speaker 10: a grassroots campaign with a presence.
Speaker 4: So how did you decide what the steps were or
Speaker 4: the information was that you were going to be providing
Speaker 4: to all of these people who were joining your one
Speaker 4: million moms group.
Speaker 1: I had absolutely no plan, to be clear. I just
Speaker 1: was so angry that I felt I had to act.
Speaker 1: But there were so many other women who felt the
Speaker 1: exact same way that day. You know, if you talk
Speaker 1: to people, they walked out of their jobs the day
Speaker 1: of the sany Hook School shooting because they knew they
Speaker 1: had to be doing more on this issue, or they
Speaker 1: felt an urgency to be with their kids. It kind
Speaker 1: of made anything else you were thinking about feel insignificant
Speaker 1: because of that. So many women that day in the
Speaker 1: days after came to me and said, I want to
Speaker 1: do this too, I want to do it where I live.
Speaker 1: Let me help you. The skill set I brought to
Speaker 1: the table with storytelling and communications and messaging, but I
Speaker 1: needed web developers and I needed strategists, and I needed organizers,
Speaker 1: and I needed litigators and trademark lawyers like you name it.
Speaker 1: These women came and they brought their skills to me
Speaker 1: and said, I want to help you in any way
Speaker 1: I can. So it was really this community effort to
Speaker 1: create our strategy and our plan that I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, started to solidify in the days and the
Speaker 1: weeks that winter. I mean, we showed up in mass
Speaker 1: all over the country on January twenty sixth at marches
Speaker 1: and rallies, and I kind of thought, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: what we do. We're going to show up. But legislative
Speaker 1: sessions started just two months after the Sandyek school shooting,
Speaker 1: and then it became apparent, oh no, we actually need
Speaker 1: to show up in state houses where the gun extremists
Speaker 1: have been writing all the policies that are resulting in
Speaker 1: these mas school shootings. So it all happened very very quickly,
Speaker 1: but only because of this huge amount of support that
Speaker 1: I had from complete strangers all over the country.
Speaker 3: When we come back, Shannon talks about early lessons Moms
Speaker 3: Demand Action learned after losing the vote on universal background
Speaker 3: checks just a few months after founding, just months after
Speaker 3: the Sandy Hook shooting, Congress was poised to vote on
Speaker 3: a universal background check bill. It was a bill that
Speaker 3: I actually worked on in my pre pivot days, and
Speaker 3: so we.
Speaker 1: Put a lot of our time and attention towards supporting
Speaker 1: the passage of this bill. I can remember going to
Speaker 1: the White House, I can remember standing behind the pres
Speaker 1: during press conferences. We thought for sure that this was
Speaker 1: going to pass. Right after twenty six people are killed
Speaker 1: in an elementary school, like, Congress isn't gonna act. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen. They're going to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. It may sound like it's close, but surely
Speaker 1: Congress will pass this legislation. And I was in the
Speaker 1: Senate gallery when it failed by a handful of votes
Speaker 1: in the Senate that March, including some Democratic senators who
Speaker 1: voted against it.
Speaker 11: The order of the Senate the vote on this vote.
Speaker 11: The a'sr fifty four. The na's are forty six. Under
Speaker 11: the previous order requiring sixty votes to the adoption of
Speaker 11: this amendment. The amendment is not agreed to.
Speaker 12: My part is A deal to expand background checks was
Speaker 12: defeated just moments ago with bi partisan opposition. It was
Speaker 12: one in a series of votes, all amendments to a
Speaker 12: larger piece of legislation that is now unlikely to end
Speaker 12: up on President Obama's desk anytime soon, with more from
Speaker 12: this that we're doing now.
Speaker 1: And then I can remember going over to Starbucks, the
Speaker 1: Starbucks in DC near Congress and thinking to myself, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we just had a huge failure. If we can't do this,
Speaker 1: maybe we can't do anything. Maybe the country isn't ready
Speaker 1: for this to happen, and are we wasting our time?
Speaker 1: And I was getting ready to write a statement and
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that statement should say in response
Speaker 1: to this bill failing. And at the same time, I
Speaker 1: was getting all these texts and these dm from volunteers
Speaker 1: across the country who were saying, it's okay, my governor
Speaker 1: wants to pass gun safety legislation or my lawmakers want
Speaker 1: to act in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. And then
Speaker 1: at the same time, I was getting messages from volunteers
Speaker 1: that were saying, my governor, my lawmakers actually want to
Speaker 1: loosen our laws. So that's why it's even more important
Speaker 1: than we stick around. So that's how we decided to
Speaker 1: keep going, which actually became our mantra as an organization,
Speaker 1: and many of our volunteers have had that tattoo on them,
Speaker 1: this idea that we have to loose forward, that we
Speaker 1: are going to have a lot of losses. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that loss taught us was if we
Speaker 1: could peel Democrats away on this issue, we would eventually win.
Speaker 1: Because what happened was the NRA gave A ratings to
Speaker 1: all the lawmakers who voted against that background check bill,
Speaker 1: and these Democrats who voted with them to protect their
Speaker 1: A rating learned a really important lesson that next election cycle,
Speaker 1: which is with friends like the NRA, who needs enemies.
Speaker 1: The na went in and invested millions of dollars in
Speaker 1: their competitors, their Republican competitors. Not a single one of
Speaker 1: the Democratic senators who voted against that bill, which was
Speaker 1: called the Mansion Toomy Bill, still has their seat. So
Speaker 1: what Democrats realized was we can vote with our constituents,
Speaker 1: We can vote our conscience and still keep our jobs
Speaker 1: because we have this army of women in red shirts
Speaker 1: who will support us.
Speaker 4: Around that same time you started to practice yoga and Buddhism.
Speaker 4: Around the same time of that founding was that can
Speaker 4: you explain what your headspace was that all of this
Speaker 4: change is happening for you so quickly, and how you
Speaker 4: made these decisions, like how they interacted with one another.
Speaker 1: There was so much change in my life. I think
Speaker 1: I was just forty one years old when the Santay
Speaker 1: Hook School shooting happened, and as you said, I had
Speaker 1: recently practiced started practicing Buddhism. I was training to become
Speaker 1: a yoga teacher, like I was living sort of this
Speaker 1: very zen, stereotypical Midwestern white woman life. And it's a
Speaker 1: little bit cliched, but it was also incredibly important to
Speaker 1: who I became as a leader because all of the
Speaker 1: tenets of Buddhism, like the eightfold path and just right
Speaker 1: speech and right action. It helped me, I think to
Speaker 1: maybe the overarching thing here is that it helped me
Speaker 1: keep my ego in check and to realize that this organization,
Speaker 1: this work was not about me. It was not even
Speaker 1: about my leadership. It was out the volunteers and the
Speaker 1: survivors who came into this space. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: that helped keep me kind and compassionate online. It's the
Speaker 1: same thing that helped me realize, you know, our message
Speaker 1: has to be broadly appealing, that we have to be
Speaker 1: emboldening and empowering women. And so I think the two
Speaker 1: things were incredibly important to one another. And I kind
Speaker 1: of look back and see my leadership of Mom's to
Speaker 1: Man action as part of my practice right to follow
Speaker 1: that eightfold path that Buddhism lays out for me.
Speaker 4: I mean, as someone who's been you know, like in
Speaker 4: the weeds on this issue for a decade, like what
Speaker 4: is realistic? Like should what can we actually hope for?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's important to remember that we actually
Speaker 1: have accomplished so much right. We've passed over five hundred
Speaker 1: good gun laws, everything from background checks to red flag laws,
Speaker 1: to disarming domestic abusers to secure storage requirements. We've also
Speaker 1: stopped the Enemies Agenda ninety percent of the time every
Speaker 1: year for the last decade. That's preventing teachers from being armed,
Speaker 1: allowing guns inside our schools. But also we've had a
Speaker 1: seismic shift in American politics on this issue. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: a quarterball Democrats in Congress had an A rating from
Speaker 1: the NRA when I started doing this work. Today not
Speaker 1: one does, and in fact, fifteen Republicans voted for the
Speaker 1: bipartisan Saber Communities Act that passed last summer. It was
Speaker 1: the first federal legislation on gun safety and a generation
Speaker 1: to be signed into law by a president. So all
Speaker 1: of these things are unbelievable that they've happened in under
Speaker 1: a decade. You don't see that on many political issues.
Speaker 1: And it's also how these issues play out. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea that you're going to have wholesale, significant change
Speaker 1: overnight is not realistic. I think incrementalism gets a dirty
Speaker 1: is seen as a dirty word sometimes, but it's what
Speaker 1: leads to revolutions. If you learn how to play the
Speaker 1: long game, and you show up over and over again,
Speaker 1: you will evenge will he win? And there's certainly a
Speaker 1: lot more that has to be done on this issue
Speaker 1: going forward at a state level, at a federal level.
Speaker 1: But I think the fact that we've built this foundation
Speaker 1: means that when we elect a majority of gun sense advocates,
Speaker 1: we can have pretty quick change. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: I mean in Virginia, which was a very red state
Speaker 1: until it flipped in twenty nineteen, we elected a gun
Speaker 1: sense trifecta. We've passed over a dozen good gun laws
Speaker 1: in that state, and even though there's a Republican governor now,
Speaker 1: none of that progress has been rolled back because it's
Speaker 1: what the people want and they're holding their lawmakers accountable.
Speaker 1: And we've elected now gun sense trifectas in places like
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and Michigan and Minnesota, and those are the places
Speaker 1: where we are passing strong gun laws. So we have
Speaker 1: to keep building the foundation and electing the lawmakers who
Speaker 1: will do what citizens want.
Speaker 3: Shannon truly sees the issue as the multifaceted issue. It
Speaker 3: is something she says she learned in part from Congresswoman
Speaker 3: Lucy Macbeth.
Speaker 1: Introduced to Lucy Macbeth in the spring of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: her son, Jordan Davis, a black teen, was shot and
Speaker 1: killed in a Florida gas station by a white man
Speaker 1: who thought Jordan's music was too loud. And that happened
Speaker 1: just weeks before the San Hook school shooting, which I
Speaker 1: don't think I even heard about. And when I was
Speaker 1: connected to Lucy, I just realized that she was such
Speaker 1: a light and was so important to this movement, and
Speaker 1: I remember saying to her like, can you be a spokesperson?
Speaker 1: Which you know, this was just after starting mom'ster Man Action.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any money to give her. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any other spokespeople. I didn't even know what that meant,
Speaker 1: but she said yes. And really, the whole reason our
Speaker 1: Florida chapter started was to support Lucy during the two
Speaker 1: trials of her son's murderer. The first one was a mistrial,
Speaker 1: and then Lucy became a colleague. We hired her to
Speaker 1: work on this issue, particularly as it pertained to religious communities,
Speaker 1: and then she eventually decided to run for office. But
Speaker 1: the role that Lucy has played in my life and
Speaker 1: in the development of Mom's Manact that was so important
Speaker 1: was that she was the person who came to me
Speaker 1: and said, you can't just care about school shootings. You
Speaker 1: can't just care about mass shootings. You know, I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful to have this opportunity to speak about my cause
Speaker 1: and my son, but when I do that, it's mostly
Speaker 1: to white women. And if we don't diversify our volunteer
Speaker 1: base and our own internal leadership, we will not succeed,
Speaker 1: like we will not last into perpetuity. And really made
Speaker 1: it her mission to help me do that with Mom's
Speaker 1: me in Action, which I think we've been successful doing.
Speaker 6: A Democratic Congresswoman Lucy Macbeth took her gut renting tragedy,
Speaker 6: the murder of her son Jordan, and made it her
Speaker 6: mission to prevent other mothers from enduring the same agony.
Speaker 9: Here, everything I.
Speaker 5: Had done to protect him, it wasn't good enough. She
Speaker 5: didn't matter because he was a young plat maile and
Speaker 5: was simply because of the color of biscuit.
Speaker 6: She redirected her pain into purpose became active in the
Speaker 6: gun control group Mom's Demand.
Speaker 5: I started speaking out about Jordan's tragedy. Any person that
Speaker 5: would allow me to speak or tell my story, I
Speaker 5: That's what I did. But this isn't an issue that's
Speaker 5: just facing black mothers, although it happens to women who
Speaker 5: look like me far too often. This is an American
Speaker 5: crisis and a public safety issue.
Speaker 1: School shootings and mass shootings are about one percent of
Speaker 1: the gun violence in this country, and it's what gets
Speaker 1: so many of us off the sidelines. And I think
Speaker 1: my role as a white woman has been to say
Speaker 1: to these other white women and also some men, I
Speaker 1: understand you're afraid. I understand you want to protect your kids,
Speaker 1: but we have to look at this as the complex
Speaker 1: issue that it is, and it deserves holistic solutions. It's
Speaker 1: not just an assault weapons ban. It's not hardening schools.
Speaker 1: It's keeping guns out of schools in the first place.
Speaker 1: But it's also background checks. It's also storming domestic abusers.
Speaker 1: It's also unlocking dollars for community violence intervention programs. Right,
Speaker 1: gun violence is happening everywhere all the time. One hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty people are shot and killed every day, hundreds
Speaker 1: more are wounded. That's a lot of mass shootings in
Speaker 1: one day in America that aren't happening inside schools. So
Speaker 1: I think it's first of all, understanding the issue, understanding
Speaker 1: the data behind the solutions, advocating for more than just
Speaker 1: your own security and your own kids protection, and realizing
Speaker 1: that you have to find a piece of the work
Speaker 1: and take it on. I realize we don't lead single
Speaker 1: issue lives, but I am a single issue voter. If
Speaker 1: you don't support gun safety, you're not getting my vote,
Speaker 1: and that is how we affect change.
Speaker 4: I live in a Republican congressional district, and over the summer,
Speaker 4: my friends and I started a Mom's Demand chapter. We
Speaker 4: started one that we didn't have in our talent and
Speaker 4: I would love to take credit for this. I did
Speaker 4: not start it. My friend came to me, is that
Speaker 4: I think that we should. I think that we should
Speaker 4: do this, And we've been organizing a bunch of moms
Speaker 4: in our schools since, but we're starting from scratch. So
Speaker 4: give us advice, like how should we be thinking about this,
Speaker 4: How should we prioritize our time, Like how do we
Speaker 4: feel like we're making progress enough to keep people engaged?
Speaker 4: Because it is going to be a log paddle. I
Speaker 4: think it's first setting the table and explaining that to people.
Speaker 4: People get involved in activism, especially young people, which we
Speaker 4: need right We need their desire for significant overnight change
Speaker 4: to force politicians. We need their voices, we need the
Speaker 4: way they advocate differently to be at the table. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, we need to have a realistic
Speaker 4: expectation of what we can accomplish. We aren't going to
Speaker 4: have this happen in the next year or two years.
Speaker 4: We have to have people understand that what they're doing
Speaker 4: is building a foundation that we can work on. What
Speaker 4: we want is for all lawmakers to be on the
Speaker 4: right side of this issue, regardless of political party. So
Speaker 4: I think that is this idea of keep going. You
Speaker 4: may lose, you're going to learn from those losses and
Speaker 4: win the next time. I think it's understanding the context
Speaker 4: of history and the fact that we are getting Republicans
Speaker 4: to vote the right way on this issue, and that
Speaker 4: if they don't, we have to hold them accountable. Or
Speaker 4: it looks as though there's no accountability for being on
Speaker 4: the side of gun extremism. But mostly it's find a
Speaker 4: piece of this work that you're passionate about and commit
Speaker 4: to it. It can be cultural, like handing out secure
Speaker 4: storage information at a farmer's market. It can be electoral,
Speaker 4: like knocking doors during election season. It can be legislative.
Speaker 4: Maybe you're going to show up at a gun bill
Speaker 4: hearing at the state House. I think it's Alice Walker
Speaker 4: who said activism is the rent I pay to live
Speaker 4: on the planet. And if we are concerned about this issue,
Speaker 4: if we are worried not just about our kids' safety,
Speaker 4: but the safety of our communities, the safety of our country,
Speaker 4: the safety of our democracy, which guns makes vulnerable, then
Speaker 4: we are obligated to keep showing up and to keep
Speaker 4: doing the work.
Speaker 1: If you're angry, frustrated, and heartbroken.
Speaker 2: Let me hear you say a not very poster board.
Speaker 4: Yeah, raise if you're sign a little bit. Anna ev
Speaker 4: Era carried the sixth letter word. Our mom made it
Speaker 4: because she is part of this group and wants to
Speaker 4: prevent gun violence.
Speaker 3: Their mom, Rebecca mork Is.
Speaker 8: The Limanned Action held a gun violence awareness event in
Speaker 8: honor of ware Orange.
Speaker 3: This event for Change the Maryland Chapter A Mom's the
Speaker 3: Man Action heading to Annapolis tomorrow pushing for stricter gun laws.
Speaker 4: W leming r to do is Jif Morgan, So, what
Speaker 4: is one thing in retrospective, like doing the whole retrospective
Speaker 4: looking back, what is one thing that at the time
Speaker 4: you felt like was a real low point for you
Speaker 4: and now you see it as having having really launched
Speaker 4: the success that you've had.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's there. I mean, there's so many of those
Speaker 1: different inflection points. But I would say, as so many
Speaker 1: women say, the election of Donald Trump. You know, I
Speaker 1: really thought that would be the moment that the NA
Speaker 1: came into its power. I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 1: but Donald Trump one of the first things he did
Speaker 1: was in Wayne Lapierre, the CEO of the NRAA, to
Speaker 1: sit in on one of his roundtables about guns. The
Speaker 1: day of the Sandy Hook School shooting commemoration, invited Wayne
Speaker 1: Lapierre to the White House Christmas Party, like it looked
Speaker 1: like this was going to be the nre's time to shine,
Speaker 1: and in fact, thanks in large part to the work
Speaker 1: of Mom's Man Action volunteers, the NRA lost political power
Speaker 1: and wealth and unbelievable amounts during Donald Trump's administration, in
Speaker 1: part because gun sales went down. No one is afraid
Speaker 1: at that moment until COVID that their guns were going
Speaker 1: to be taken away, but also because Americans started to
Speaker 1: see through the corruption and the lies of the so
Speaker 1: called nonprofit So I really thought that that was going
Speaker 1: to be the beginning of the end for maybe gun safety,
Speaker 1: but in fact it was for gun lobbyists.
Speaker 3: After over a decade at the helm of Moms Demand Action,
Speaker 3: Shannon stepped down as CEO, passing the torch to the
Speaker 3: next generation.
Speaker 1: You know, I never saw the role a founder as infinite.
Speaker 1: I saw it as very finite that my job was
Speaker 1: to build a space for people to come together. But
Speaker 1: I knew that it I would eventually leave. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do this my whole life. But also I
Speaker 1: didn't think that served the organization, and I can remember
Speaker 1: standing in the Rose Garden when President Biden signed the
Speaker 1: Bipartisan Saber Communities Act into law, thinking, Oh, this is it.
Speaker 1: This is the bookend to my activism as the founder
Speaker 1: of Mom's Demand Action, and it was time for me
Speaker 1: to step back. And we had this amazing woman in
Speaker 1: place in our organization who was in charge of movement building,
Speaker 1: Angela Farrell Zabala. We hired her from Planned Parenthood a
Speaker 1: few years earlier, and I just think it's so key
Speaker 1: to the evolution of the organization. You know, I started
Speaker 1: this organization as a white suburban mom who's afraid her
Speaker 1: kids weren't safe in their school. Angela is a black
Speaker 1: queer woman, a mom of four in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Who has seen gun violence very differently in her community.
Speaker 1: And I'm incredibly grateful for her service. And I know
Speaker 1: that she will take the organization in a direction that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily have known to do, and I think
Speaker 1: that benefits the organization.
Speaker 4: So for you, let's talk about what's next. Which office
Speaker 4: are you going to run for?
Speaker 1: I really enjoy helping other women run for office. I'm
Speaker 1: on the board of Emerge America where we train and
Speaker 1: help women successfully run for office, progressive women all across
Speaker 1: the country, and to support my friends who are in Congress,
Speaker 1: like Lucy McBeth, who is a Mom's man, actual volunteers
Speaker 1: now congresswomen in Georgia. So I don't have any imminent
Speaker 1: plans to run for office. I'm actually writing a book
Speaker 1: right now, which takes up most of my waking hours.
Speaker 1: But I will never not be involved in helping other
Speaker 1: women run because what I have seen over and over
Speaker 1: again is that when women are given a seat at
Speaker 1: the table, everything changes. Everything the issues that they focus on,
Speaker 1: the lives of the people they serve, even the decorum
Speaker 1: and the dignity with which we make laws changes when
Speaker 1: we elect women.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much Shannon for coming on and
Speaker 4: sharing your story, and I promise that we will not
Speaker 4: disappoint you with our local Mom's Demand Action chapter. We
Speaker 4: will make you proud.
Speaker 1: I promise I'll check in on it.
Speaker 5: Ever.
Speaker 3: The passionate advocate, Shannon continues to support and encourage women
Speaker 3: through her substack Playing with Fire, which encourages us to
Speaker 3: find the spark inside us. Every week, she shares insights
Speaker 3: on what she's gained through her eleven years of activism, leadership,
Speaker 3: and women's advocacy. Be sure to subscribe and follow because
Speaker 3: she just might be coming out with a book next year.
Speaker 3: You can also follow her on Twitter, where she is
Speaker 3: a self proclaimed keyboard warrior, at Shannon R. Watts or
Speaker 3: on Instagram also at Shannon R.
Speaker 2: Watts.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots.
Speaker 13: If you made it this far, you're a true pivoter,
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