Shannon

So I want to begin the interview by saying that I would like to interview not Shannon Watts the organizer and activist — the famous person, really— but Shannon Watts the mom, the human being, the woman.

Yeah, sure! I’m a mom of five. I have two stepdaughters and three children of my own. I now am a Coloradan. For about fifteen years I was a corporate communications executive, and then I stayed home for about five years, and at the end of that five years is when Sandy Hook happened and when I started Moms Demand Action. And ever since then I have been an activist for gun safety with other women across the country.

I’m also a board member of Emerge America, which is an organization that trains progressive women to run for all levels of office from school board to mayor to state lawmaker. I’m very passionate about that — turning activists into lawmakers. Women’s issues are just incredibly important to me, and that’s part of why I’m marching.

So, I’m wondering what — if any — are your fears for your family, for yourself, and for your country at this moment in American history?

Yeah. [pause] A lot of what I see is through the lens of gun violence, so if you want me to be more general I can be.

No, I want you to speak from your heart — whatever is moving you.

Well, I have two lenses. One is gun violence reduction. I think that we have become complacent about the gun violence we have in this country. We’ve sort of accepted that senseless gun violence is normal.

As a parent who is working for gun safety, I am very fearful that we are substituting lockdown drills in our schools — which is essentially children rehearsing their deaths, right? They’re practicing how to die — as opposed to working to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. So I’m worried that these drills won’t just be drills and that we’ll continue to see active shooter situations become more common.

I’m worried about hate in this country, and I’m worried about guns enabling hate to become fatal. We’ve made access to guns so incredibly easy. I think a good example is the horrific shooting of James Means recently — a young kid who was shot by a white man who said of the boy, “Another piece of trash off the street.”

Or if you look at what happened in the nightclub in Orlando, the Pulse nightclub. As the mom of a gay college student, I worry about enabling people who are full of hate, people who have been and will be emboldened by this new administration to make that hate deadly.

I’m worried because four of my children are girls — women. I’m very fearful about their rights being taken away. You know, women are 11 times more likely to be shot and killed in America than in any other developed nation. We are the vast majority of mass shooting victims, which often involve domestic violence.

I worry a lot about hatred and sexism and bigotry being made deadly by guns, and I’m worried about an emboldened gun lobby. Did you know they were the largest outside donor to the incoming administration? They donated more than 35 million dollars, and they’re going to expect something in return for that investment. They’re pushing a very dangerous agenda of “guns everywhere,” which is basically guns anywhere, anytime, for anyone — no questions asked. And that includes guns in schools.

Yeah, that’s terrifying to me, too. So with all that knowledge and all that awareness, how do you find hope and optimism? And what are your hopes and dreams for the future?

[Deep exhale] Well, I feel very strongly that if women use their voices and votes, we will see change. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think something like 5,000 women have registered to run for office since the election. That makes me very hopeful because when women get in office, their policies are often based more on empathy and a maternal sense of protecting others, so that makes me very optimistic.

And when women do things like this march — I think that in and of itself is very optimistic. I always talk about the fact that women are the voting majority; we make 80 percent of the spending decisions for our families. Unfortunately, I think we’re just 17 percent of the elected officials in this country; we’re only 19 percent of Congress; 25 percent of state legislatures. But — we have those two levers. We have our voices and we have our votes. And so when we pull those levers, we win.

We’ve seen that in the gun violence prevention movement with Moms Demand Action volunteers. Because women are involved in every state in the country, we’ve killed hundreds of bad gun bills over the last four years. We’ve gotten companies to change their policies around guns because we make the spending decisions. The power of women makes me hopeful — and harnessing that power and mobilizing that power — and I think the march is a really good example of that.

Wow! Well, I think you just answered what was going to be my next question: Why are you marching?

I think that everybody has a different reason for marching — all of those reasons that impact women, for sure! And I’m marching with hundreds of other moms from Moms Demand Action because, you know, 91 Americans are shot and killed and hundreds more injured every day. We want to make sure that we’re sending a strong message to our nation’s capitol and to state houses that women are not going to take having our rights stripped away. It’s important for others to see we’re not going to sit on the sidelines — that we’re going to fight like hell!

For this project, we decided early on to use only our interview subject’s first names — to protect them and their privacy. And I’ve heard women voice concerns for their safety at the march. What would you say to those women?

[Sharp inhale] Just hours after I started Moms Demand Action online, I received death threats, threats of sexual violence, for me, for my kids. My kids have been targeted online. I’ve received letters at my home. I’ve had to report suspicious people driving by my home. Wherever we have events, we are often surrounded by men who are armed, trying to intimidate and silence us. And I had never been exposed to that kind of underbelly before, and what I realized very quickly is that the goal of all of that is to silence us and to get us to not use our full names, and to get us to not attend something, or to get us to be silent and stand back.

And the human rights movements in this country have been so often pushed forward by women — whether it’s child labor laws or suffrage or civil rights. And so I think it’s incumbent upon us to shake off that fear and to know that what we are doing is important. The goal of these people is to silence. And look — when it comes to gun violence prevention — if I lose my kids, I have nothing left to lose, so it will never behoove me to be silent.

[Sigh] Yes! And I thank you so much for being so brave, and I do see your courage. I think it takes a LOT of courage to stand up to those gun bullies and not be silenced by them. I once tweeted about an article in GQ about the byzantine process police officers have to go through to trace a gun back to its owner, and the gun bullies piled on me immediately.

The block feature on Twitter is fantastic. You know, there are organized movements to silence people — particularly women. If you look at issues the gaming industry has had, it’s this organized effort to shut women down — to criticize our looks or our intelligence. Or even just the idea that we would speak out. But there are more women than there are men in this country, and there is safety in numbers.

I agree. Some people have said, “What’s the point of protesting, of traveling to this march?” What do you hope the march will achieve — beyond showing how many of us are willing to take to the streets to say that we’re here and we care?

Just like I was saying there is safety in numbers, there is also strength in numbers. And for women to turn out in such numbers the day after the inauguration, I think it’s incredibly poignant and incredibly important and reinforces what we already know — that when we come together to oppose extremist views that put our families at risk, we’re unstoppable!

And really sending a message to other women across the country who can’t be there that we are going to keep going. And also the idea that — using trump as a verb — that love trumps hate. And that women will not be silenced, and that starting at the very beginning of the administration we will be vocal and active and an obstacle for the next four years.

Yes . . . if you had the opportunity to speak to the president-elect, what would you say? Just one or two sentences — what would they be?

Hmmmm. That’s interesting [sighs]. I would say, “You campaigned as someone who would be a champion of women, yet your administration and your words so far fail to engender any trust or belief that you will be. The majority of the population is women, yet the majority of your cabinet is white men. And many in your newly appointed administration have opposed policies that would keep women safe. Several of them voted AGAINST the Violence Against Women Act.

So we are putting you on notice that we are going to be vocal and vigilant and we are going to fight policies that endanger women, every single step of the way.

By hurting women, he will be galvanizing us to mobilize against his policies. He’s doing for women what he did for the media. The more he tears down media outlets, the more powerful they become and the more people are subscribing. And the more he takes women down, the stronger we will become.

It’s like he opened Pandora’s box. No! It’s like the hydra — when he chops off one head, we grow five more.

Yeah! I love that.

The Pandora’s box comparison works for how when he was nominated and elected, it was like opening Pandora’s box and all these horrible things flew out that I wasn’t even aware existed! Do you feel like that character in the horror movie who has been seeing the monster all along and finally the other characters also start seeing the monster? Because you’ve BEEN seeing this hatefulness.

Well, I have said for a long time that what Moms Demand Action does is go into the state legislatures and shine a flashlight under the refrigerator and watch all the cockroaches run out. That’s our job. And then we have to step on all those cockroaches!

I think that that is what this last campaign cycle and the new administration is currently doing for America. A light is being shined on the unsettling characteristics and interests of some of our leaders and now it’s up to us to resist, to do something about it.

It was great to talk to you, Shannon. Thank you! And keep up the good work!

[Editor’s note: This interview was conducted by telephone, transcribed, and edited for length.]