How One Angry Mother Built an Army of Activists to Curb Gun Violence

These days, Shannon Watts seems to be everywhere. The founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America — created in her living room in 2012 and now a volunteer army powered by big-ticket philanthropy and dedicated to stemming the scourge of American gun violence — Watts is a national voice for change at a moment when the public is clamoring for change.

Her journey from angry mother of five who was disgusted by an epidemic of mass shootings to omnipresent speaker, social-media voice, and leader of an organization that now counts 4.5 million members in its ranks holds lessons for anyone building a movement fueled by public advocacy and personal commitment.

Watts decided to take action after 20 children who were 6 or 7, as well as six adult staff members, were shot in a Sandy Hook, Conn., elementary school. “When Sandy Hook happened, I felt like so many other moms did — simply devastated. I had five children school age, and I remember feeling that I should either move our family of seven out of the country or stay here and fight.”

Watts began her fight by starting a simple Facebook page. “I had 75 Facebook friends at the time,” she recalls. “But strangers quickly began to connect to other strangers. After a few years, we had chapters in all 50 states and hundreds of thousands of volunteers.”

Today, Watts is the full-time lead volunteer of Moms Demand Action. The original campaign merged in 2014 with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Boston Mayor Tom Menino, and become Everytown for Gun Safety, funded with an initial Bloomberg commitment of $50 million. Major donors include Eli Broad and Warren Buffett.

Everytown has fewer than 200 employees, and much of the funding goes to pay for professional organizers. The real firepower comes from what Watts calls her “grass-roots army.”

The payoff of putting years into building a national network of local activists became clearer than ever in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shootings. Because it operates in all 50 states, Moms Demand Action was ready to mobilize the angry citizens who wanted to find a place to volunteer and push for change. In the days after Parkland, 93,000 Americans donated to Everytown and Moms Demand Action, 137,000 become active volunteers, and more than a million became members.

Legislative Wins

As Moms Demand Action has grown, it is chalking up more and more victories, county by county, state by state. Even before Parkland, it successfully advocated to pass laws in 25 states and the District of Columbia that disarm domestic abusers. In Florida, it played a key role in pushing action soon after the Parkland shootings, as the governor signed a bill imposing a 21-year-old legal-age requirement and a three-day waiting period on all gun purchases.

And just this week, the Pennsylvania Senate unanimously approved a bill to force people convicted of domestic violence to more quickly give up their firearms — a measure supported by massive Moms Demand Action rallies.

The growing political might of Moms Demand Action is being felt in corporate boardrooms and marketing departments as well: The boycott campaign against companies doing business with the National Rifle Association was a stunning success, as was the effort to get national retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart to stop carrying weapons like the AR-15 and raise the minimum age for firearms purchases to 21.

‘Using My Real Voice’

In an interview with Watts, I asked whether she considered Moms Demand Action a resistance organization — and herself a resistance leader.

“You know, no one’s asked me that question until now,” she said, noting that Rolling Stone had included her in a list of resistance leaders. “I campaigned tirelessly for Hillary Clinton in 15 states, and I was quite comfortable with keeping to the safe talking points on Twitter, the organizational voice. But after the election, I changed to using my real voice, to talking about gun violence personally.

“I had to talk about it,” she says. “I had to use my authentic voice.”

That willingness not to mince words or adhere to strict talking points — and to speak up about politics and policy — has catapulted Watts to a platform as a major voice among the network of nonprofit leaders who consider themselves part of the resistance to the worst aspects of the Trump administration. It’s a thorny path that very few nonprofit leaders take, even those working in advocacy.

Yet Watts speaks clearly about a “seismic shift at the midterms.” Across the country, candidates are starting to wear pins with a big letter F on them, denoting their NRA rating on gun legislation.

Part of that is the result of Parkland. The eloquence of the young survivors of that horrifying mass shooting and their omnipresence on social media made a huge dent in the NRA’s support, says Watts. “They galvanized America to get off the sidelines.”

While she celebrates the efforts of the Parkland teenagers, Watts stresses that the incident received greater media attention because of the suburban makeup of that student body.

“The reality is that teens in urban centers across the country have been protesting the impact of gun violence on their communities for many, many years.” Those are voices that must also resonate with more Americans, she said.

The Power of Women

But another aspect is the increasing dominance of women in powering the political resistance to Trump — and support for causes like gun safety. Moms Demand Action is obviously a network created, managed, and powered by women, but Watts is also an active board member of Emerge America and Rise to Run, two of the nation’s leading organizations for recruiting and training women to run for office. And her work is closely intertwined with other resistance groups like Indivisible, with its 6,000 chapters nationally.

“Women are the secret sauce of organizing,” says Watts. “We’re multitaskers, and we’re passionate about protecting children.”

And there’s an another key ingredient to success we both noted in the conversation: So much of the resistance movement is run by women taking time from their careers to raise their children.

Watts, 46, is a self-described stay-at-home mom who had a 15-year career as a communications executive for both public-relations agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

Like many of the leaders of Indivisible, for example, she already has a background in developing messages and marketing. And while she spends much of her time speaking and traveling the country to promote the work of Moms Demand Action and Everytown, she’s also a fundraiser who meets regularly with major donors. If there’s one area of frustration Watts has with that aspect of her work, it’s that too many philanthropists don’t understand why grass-roots networks need financial support.

“They really don’t understand the funding work of grass-roots organizers,” she says, adding that organizational structure to support grass-roots advocacy costs money. “Funders should understand there is so much strength in our network and in our numbers. We show up.”

Tom Watson is president of CauseWired, a consulting firm that advises nonprofits. He is a regular columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy.