WUNRN
The day still haunts me--from 25 years ago--when my junior high school went
into lockdown after a mass shooting at the nearby grade school. Now, after
(WOMENSENEWS)--In
the hours after the massacre at
The group
is holding demonstrations in
MomsRising, a national
grassroots advocacy based in
Veronique Pozner, a mother of one of
Moms, in
other words, are speaking out as President Barack Obama
and Vice President Joe
Biden try to build consensus for a
controversial gun-control package that could include a push for background
checks for all gun buyers and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity
magazines. Obama is also reportedly considering using the power
of his executive office to restrict access to guns.
When mothers speak about slain children, they awaken the primordial parent
in all of us, and we are collectively driven to protect our young--at all costs
and against all odds.
Compounded Fear
I'm a
mother now, and for me the fear is compounded. I don't want my own children to
go through the kind of mass-shooting ordeal that I did.
Twenty-five
years ago in my hometown of
Obama is
calling on us, as a society, to come together to make all our children safer.
"We
bear responsibility for every child, because we're counting on everybody else
to help look after ours, that we're all parents, that they are all our
children," Obama said in a memorial service after the
If history is any guide, mothers' powerful advocacy role may turn out to be
crucial to our national response to
Historical Responses
Back in
1903, Mary
Harris "Mother" Jones, a prominent
labor activist, launched the fight for child labor laws with a famous march of
"mill children" to the
In the
1980s, Candace
Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving
and sparked a national movement that has lowered
drunk-driving related fatalities by more than 40 percent,
according to the Department of Transportation.
Dennis and Judi Shepard started an
organization to combat hate crimes after their son Mathew was beaten and left
to die because he was gay.
Jeanne Manford founded Parents,
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAGG) after
her openly gay son was beaten and hospitalized; and Cindy
Sheehan led the anti-war movement in the last
decade after her son was killed in the war in
The list
goes on.
Mothers,
of course, have been pushing for gun control for years.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat
from New York whose husband was killed and whose son was severely injured
during a shooting on a Long Island commuter train in 1993, won a seat in
Congress on the issue and ever since has been the leading voice for gun control
in the U.S. Congress.
In 2000, hundreds
of thousands of mothers descended on
Now, the
bereaved mother Pozner could emerge as a key leader in what happens next.
"As
the mother of a 6-year-old victim of a cold-blooded massacre of school
children, I am puzzled and disappointed by the fact that I have had no
information or opportunity to be heard regarding the upcoming legislative
proposal in
I have a belief that if we give moms like Pozner the
space to tell their painful stories, people will listen, and act, to prevent
more gun violence.