Shannon Watts: Mobilizing Moms to Demand Action

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Now, if you ever want to start a social move to make things change, this is the episode for you because we have the remarkable Shannon Watts. Shannon started this group called Moms Demand Action.
And if there's a group of people that you should not get in the way of, it is moms. Shannon started a Facebook group after the Sandy Hook tragedy. She called for responsible gun control, and this grew into this national organization, and it has nearly ten million supporters today. Mom's Demand Action has achieved significant legislative success. It has truly, truly challenged the NRA's political clout.
She's a member of eMerge America, a writer and an author of Fight Like a Mother. I would pronounce it Fight Like a Motha: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World. I highly recommend this book. So with no further ado, here is Shannon Watts and she's going to tell you how to make things happen. I'll let her introduce herself.
Shannon Watts:
Thank you. I'm Shannon Watts. I am the founder emerita of Moms Demand Action, which is now the largest gun violence prevention organization in the nation. And I'm also an organizer and an author and have been doing this work now for over a decade.
Guy Kawasaki:
Thank you very much for that intro. This is a weird general question that has no real concrete answer, but I just have to ask you, do you sometimes wonder, Shannon, whether as a society we have learned anything at all in the last twenty years?
Shannon Watts:
I don't think I could be an activist and feel that way. I think hope, as activists have said in the past, hope is a discipline and if you aren't hopeful and you aren't joyful in your activism, you will get burned out and I've seen that happen over and over again. The other thing that I would say is if you expect to win overnight, then sure you would feel like nothing had happened.
But that is another part of activism, which is it is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes decades if not centuries to get to where you need to be. That doesn't excuse you from having to do the work. You still have to do your piece of it, but when you can look at it as a long-term project that you are a part of, then you can get out of the weeds, and you can see how much progress has been made.
You think about movements in the past like civil rights or suffrage or even Mothers Against Drunk Driving and if those activists had given up after a month or a year, we wouldn't have the society that we have today. I really do try to look at it like we are making incremental change that leads to revolutions.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's just go back a bit in history and if you could just briefly summarize the genesis of Mom's Demand Action.
Shannon Watts:
I had taken about a five-year break from my corporate career. I had gotten remarried. I was blending a family of five children and I thought, I'm just going to take a beat. I'll go back to work. I was in corporate communications and I was getting ready to do that. I had prepared my resume. I was getting ready to go back into the workforce. And one day while all my kids were at school, at the time, they ranged in age from elementary school to high school, I was doing laundry.
That's like a full-time job when you're a mom of five. And so I poured all the laundry out on my bed and I had turned the TV on in the background and suddenly I saw this chyron of breaking news. This was December of 2012. that there was a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. I'd never heard of Newtown, Connecticut.
I couldn't believe there was a school shooting, and so I'm sure like so many other women that day, so many other mothers in particular, I stopped what I was doing and for the next many hours I was just riveted to the television and devastated.
I was in tears over this footage of families in the parking lot waiting to hear if their children or family members had been slaughtered by what appeared to be a very young man with an assault rifle. And I just was inconsolable. This was right before the holidays. It was so cold. I just was so devastated. I went to bed and when I woke up that devastation had crystallized into abject rage.
I was so angry I could not contain myself the next day. I can still summon the feeling. And so I thought, okay, I have to do something. I know how to create a Facebook page. In 2012, Facebook was a very big deal for women my age to communicate, and so I just started a new page.
I didn't have a focus group in my Indiana kitchen, so I called it One Million Moms for Gun Control, not realizing that One Million Moms was like this anti-gay group, and that gun control was a phrase that was verboten inside the Beltway. But I sent out this clarion call to other mothers and said, "It's time that we stand up and organize against the gun lobby." And that was the beginning of Moms Demand Action.
Guy Kawasaki:
Just like that. And you have created an organization that has about ten million members. You must be just a fountain of wisdom about how to create an activist organization. Give us some lessons about what you learned back then that other people listening to this can apply when they want to be an activist.
Shannon Watts:
I want to be clear that when I started Moms Demand Action, I knew little to nothing about organizing, about the political process, about gun violence even. I was an absolute novice and I was told that every turn, I wasn't the right person to lead this organization. It already existed. I couldn't do it. It would never work. It needed to be a lobbyist or a lawyer.
It needed to be a survivor of gun violence. And I'm not saying none of those things held water, I'm just saying that I trusted my gut and my gut told me that the best way to take on the most powerful, wealthy, dangerous, special interests that ever has existed was an army of angry mothers. That is what my intuition told me.
And one of the most important lessons I would say is that we built the plane as we flew it. We did not wait until we crossed every “t” and dotted every “i”. I would still be learning about all of those things, organizing gun violence, the political system, if I had waited. We just jumped in, and we saw an opening to put pressure on the country.
And that was a really important lesson. I think a lot of people have good ideas and they just wait too long and the moment passes them by. The other lesson I learned is that we're all leaders. I'm not a unicorn. I wasn't born with some amazing talent to do this. I just was an outraged citizen in a democracy, and we all hold that potential to make a difference and to create change. Even if it isn't a national organization, it might be in your neighborhood or your community, maybe your state.
But that's the beauty of living in a democracy. As Alice Walker says, activism is the rent I pay to live on the planet. And so we all should be thinking about what is the rent we're paying?
And the last thing I would say is that politics is cyclical and if you don't have hope, if you believe that things are screwed up and that's the way they're always going to be and there's no chance of changing for the better, then I think in a lot of ways you're complicit in the system that we have. It is just morally unacceptable to sit on the sidelines. And in fact, I would go a step further and say there's a moral imperative to run for office, particularly for women.
I think that's another important lesson. When you give women the skills to shape policy, they intuitively want to start making it. They want a seat at the table. Women only hold about 25 percent of the 500,000 elected positions in this country. And as the saying goes, when you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. And women in America right now are on the menu.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow, that's a hell of an eloquent statement. My goodness. No wonder ten million women follow you. My God. Let me ask you kind of a gut level question. So obviously gun violence has not exactly stopped. What's your visceral reaction when you hear politicians say, "I'm sending my thoughts and prayers"? How do you even cope with somebody saying that?
Shannon Watts:
As my children say, that is so cringe at this point to even think that is an acceptable thing to say after a shooting tragedy. And we really have gone out of our way in the last decade to point fingers at people who have been elected to shape policy in this country, who have the power to stop these deaths relying on thoughts and prayers. We aren't electing you for your thoughts or your prayers. We are electing you to make policy. And if you are too cowardly to do that, then you shouldn't have that job.
But the reality is they're only cowardly often when it comes to gun violence. I think Ted Cruz is such an interesting example of this because he, after every mass shooting tragedy says, "Oh, we can't talk about this. We can never change this. Laws won't impact this." And yet after over a dozen people were killed in a hot air balloon accident in Texas, what was the very first thing Ted Cruz did?
He passed safety legislation to regulate hot air balloons throughout the entire country. He knows laws work. He didn't just rely on thoughts and prayers when it came to the safety of hot air balloons. He acted.
And we know that the reason that America is so unique, we have a twenty-five times higher gun homicide rate than any peer nation is because we also have something no peer nation has, a gun lobby. A gun lobby that is using its wealth and its political power to shape who is elected in this country.
And that is on us, on voters. I understand we don't lead single issue lives, but when you go to the polls, if you aren't voting on gun violence prevention as an issue, what does it matter if our economy is great or if we have access to healthcare or if we aren't paying capital gains tax, if our children are being slaughtered inside their schools? What does any of that matter? And that is the goal of Moms Demand Action is to make sure people are thinking about this issue with that lens.
Guy Kawasaki:
There is a certain almost unbelievable irony about Ted Cruz legislating safety for hot air balloons. Yeah. You cannot make that shit up.
Shannon Watts:
It's hypocrisy.
Guy Kawasaki:
So in a perfect world, what does good gun safety look like? Are you saying people shouldn't be able to hunt or there should be no guns at all? What's good? What's a win for you?
Shannon Watts:
I think moderation is the key to a lot of what ails us in this country. I was raised by a gun-owning father. Both of my grandfathers who fought in World War II were hunters and gun owners. This is not about taking away anyone's rights. This is about regulating the rights that we have, and all rights should be regulated, are regulated. There's no reason for everyday civilians to have unfettered access to arsenals and ammunition, no questions asked.
About 90 percent of Americans agree with that. We all can agree, and Republicans and Democrats do on several gun safety measures that would save lives. First of all, background checks on every gun sale. Right now, federal law does not require states to perform background checks on guns sold by unlicensed sellers at gun shows or garage sales. People who are just selling them who aren't dealers. Millions of guns are sold that way.
If you're a domestic abuser, how are you going to buy a gun? Are you going to go through the background check you know you're going to fail? Are you going to go to a gun show and get a gun from someone you know doesn't have to perform a background check? It's intuitive and obvious, but this is a huge loophole in our laws. The other policy that almost all Americans agree on is keeping guns away from domestic abusers.
Domestic abusers shouldn't have guns in this country, and yet the Supreme Court just agreed to hear a case. Thankfully they made a decision in the right way, but there's going to be more complaints and we're going to keep pressuring the boundaries of whether domestic abusers should have guns. So we've gone state by state and passed those laws.
Most Americans agree that there should be something called a red flag law, which means if you are a danger to yourself or someone else, you should not have access to guns until law enforcement and a judge can decide whether you should have access to those guns. Those laws are incredibly effective, but only about twenty states have them now. Not everyone agrees, but something like 70 percent of Americans agree that civilians shouldn't have unfettered access to weapons of war.
A semi-automatic rifle. If we look at a lot of the shootings in this country, the mass shooting tragedies with major casualties, it's because the gunmen had an AR-Fifteen and that is the weapon of choice among white supremacists and mass shooters. It's incredibly dangerous, it is immoral, and yet we have lawmakers who are doing the gun lobby's work and trying to make sure that we all have access to them.
Guy Kawasaki:
Would you say that at this point that these gun lobbies and the NRA, what is the arc of their power? Is it peaked? Is it still going up? Is it going down? Where are we right now?
Shannon Watts:
When I started Moms Demand Action, our theory of change was we will shine a light on the NRA, the National Rifle Association, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. People will see how corrupt they are. People will see that they are in no ways moderate. That in fact, they've become an extremist organization.
People will see that they're not spending donors dollars wisely and they will move away, and we will win. They did move away. The NRA had to declare bankruptcy. Wayne LaPierre has resigned. They are in a world of hemorrhaging political power and dollars. The NRA was not even invited to the table to discuss recent federal legislation on guns.
What we did not account for in 2012 was that all of these other gun groups that were even more extreme than the NRA that were to the right of the NRA would pop up at a federal level. And then in fact, guns would become an organizing principle for the right wing. Guns are a way to get young white men in the door to give dollars and to volunteer, and then they use those new volunteers and excite them around a whole host of issues that have nothing to do with guns.
And who could have predicted that? But now when you talk about the stranglehold that the gun industry has on our political system and you have to undo it finger by finger, that is a finger that it'll be interesting to see what happens next. And maybe when we break the MAGA fever, we will break the gun extremism fever.
Guy Kawasaki:
And pray tell what happens if we don't break that fever? What happens if Trump gets elected? What happens if the Republicans control Congress? They already control the Supreme Court. Then what?
Shannon Watts:
I think you can see exactly what's going to happen in states like Tennessee. Tennessee has a Republican super majority made up of gun extremists, meaning these lawmakers, almost all men, most of them white men who have bought the whole gun lobby rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. It's not like they're just doing this now because it's a political prop. They have bought into this idea that guns have more value than their constituents.
And so when there was a shooting at Covenant School in Nashville last year, there were Congress members and state lawmakers who wouldn't even talk to the survivor families. They had no interest in showing compassion or concern. And when women from both parties, Republicans and Democrats alike, rose up. Mothers who were terrified not just by what had happened, but by also their lawmakers' inaction in the face of this tragedy, what did that Republican super majority do?
They women physically out of the galleries in the statehouse for having signs or wearing shirts that protested gun violence. This is how authoritarians behave. This is the decay of a democracy. That's what all the signs coming out of Tennessee are. We have a choice in this country.
That's the way we're going or we're going to go back toward what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are working on, which is both of them in their own right have passed gun safety legislation and want common sense laws in place. But to your question, if that doesn't happen, if we continue to move right, Tennessee is a harbinger of what is to come.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right. So let's back off from the worst case, but tell us the steps that seem doable and practical to get to this point of gun safety or gun control.
Shannon Watts:
First is finding a piece of the work that you're passionate about and doing it. What I have seen through Moms Demand Action, and we're not just moms, we're not just women, we're all carrying Americans. We even have Students Demand Action now. But what I have seen is that there's this trifecta.
When women figure out what their abilities are and they also start to unearth their values and then their burning desires, those three things, their abilities, their values, their burning desires, they come alive. I think that's why activism is so joyful and so hopeful because you are using the things, the skills, the passions that are important to you to help other people. That's the secret sauce of life. That's why we're here. That's the point of earth school.
And when you get involved, you realize, oh, there's so many different ways. Maybe I want to work on this legislatively. Maybe I want to work on it electorally. Maybe I want to work on it culturally. It isn't like you just become an activist and you're showing up at protests and marches. That isn't activism. Maybe you are in charge of data management entry.
Maybe you're meeting with lawmakers or maybe you're tabling at farmer's markets. I don't know what is important to you, but it is important to figure that out. And when it comes to gun safety, we're working on this at all levels of government.
Everything from school boards and city councils to state houses to Congress, changing the way people see secure storage, making sure that people vote on this issue, making sure that we pass or stop laws depending on whether they would save lives. It's really a huge scale of what you can get involved in, but it's an important to first take that step and get off the sidelines.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can you tell us some power tips for influencing and persuading people who at least at start are just diametrically opposed to what you want to accomplish? To take the worst case if you had to meet with Ted Cruz, what would you do?
Shannon Watts:
I think it's really important to delineate extremists from average Americans who have questions or concerns or want to debate. What I have realized in the last twelve years is that there is a very vocal minority, and you will not change their hearts and minds. It is not worth our time. Given that 90 percent of Americans support gun safety, why try to change the hearts and minds of this very small minority who are extremists?
I think I would have to put Ted Cruz in that bucket at this point. However, there are people like my dad. My dad is very conservative, Catholic who voted for Donald Trump. I know in the first election. I'm not sure about the second because I don't want to ask him, and I don't know how he's going to vote in this next election because I don't want to know that either. But when I first started Moms Demand Action, he reached out to me and he thought that I was doing something that was unconstitutional.
He thought that I was doing something radical. And it just took a lot of conversations over that first year. The way my dad eventually got to wrapping his arms around supporting gun safety was to decide that he thought it was part of a pro-life platform. We disagree on abortion rights, but he now says, "If I don't support abortion, then I can't support unfettered access to guns."
That's his thought process. But we got there because I shared data and anecdotes and stories. And eventually my dad started showing up at Moms Demand Action events wearing our shirt. And that is I think, the importance of discussion with people who probably agree with you on some things but not on others and that's democracy.
Guy Kawasaki:
And I don't know if I'm incorrectly assuming this, but why do you not feel that you should convince your dad not to vote for Trump? You're an activist, right?
Shannon Watts:
Yeah. And I have laid out my case. Maybe my dad is an extremist when it comes to that. I've had to have my own reckoning with whether my dad has some misogyny in him. I have certainly tried, but I worry that if I know how he voted in the last election or will vote, that I would have a difficulty continuing those conversations with him. I want to continue the conversations, but I'm not sure I'm ready to have the proof that those conversations are fruitless.
Guy Kawasaki:
Fair enough. Generally speaking as a political force, do you believe that moms have now arrived as a force?
Shannon Watts:
Oh, absolutely. It did take a while. In the early days even Democrats did not want their pictures taken with Moms Demand Action volunteers. They wanted nothing to do with our red shirts. And the more power we gained, the more we started to organize state by state, the more they were thrilled to have these volunteers in red shirts show up to support them.
In 2012, when I started Mom's Demand Action, about a quarter of all Democrats in Congress had “A” rating from the NRA. A quarter of all Democrats. Today, not one does. And in fact, they're very proud of their “F” rating. And the way that seismic shift occurred, and that is unheard of in politics, is because they saw they had this army that would support them. And they'd never had that before. They'd only heard from extremists who supported gun manufacturers.
Suddenly they had these moms who actually lived in their districts saying, "If you do the right thing, I'll have your back, and if you do the wrong thing, I will have your job." And that was a pretty easy choice for them to make. And so now Moms Demand Action volunteers are everywhere and lawmakers, at least Democrats are happy to see them. But the way we win on this issue is for Republicans and Democrats alike to see moms demand action as a force for good.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you have a mom's demand action grading system ala the NRAs?
Shannon Watts:
Yes. It's not a grading system, so to speak. It's more of award of honor. So it's called Gun Sense Voter. You can go to gunsensevoter.com. Or I'm sorry, .org. And you will see where your candidates are in your area. And that means if they have filled out a form and the way they filled out the form made them a Gun Sense candidate, they will be there. If they didn't, they won't. And it's funny because we've even seen Republicans want to have this stamp of approval from Moms Demand Action.
This has become a very important way to delineate between those people who are extremists and those people who are open. And they compete for it in the primary and then in the general election. So it's not necessarily grading system, it's more of an award, but it's a really important filter for voters to know where their candidates stand going into an election.
Guy Kawasaki:
But as you mentioned, they fill out the form. If I went there right now and looked up Ted Cruz, there wouldn't be an entry. Why don't you just give them an F?
Shannon Watts:
We don't have a grading system necessarily because that gives too much room for gray. And what we really want is to stay in the black and white. If you don't fill out the form and return it, if you don't fill it out the right way, you don't get it at all. And I would hate to give someone a C who is maybe good on one thing and bad on another.
This has worked out really well. I think the NRA has even seen the error of their ways. They no longer grade candidates because an “A” rating from the NRA has become a scarlet letter, if you will. And so they actually took all of their grades down because they didn't want us to use them against them. So Gun Sense Voter has become a really solid way of deciding who has gun sense and who doesn't.
Guy Kawasaki:
Great. Okay. Do you have tips for women about how to become even more audacious?
Shannon Watts:
I do. I really think women, especially middle-aged women, underestimate how much power they have and how much wisdom they have. The average age for a woman to run for office is forty-seven, and usually after they've been asked at least seven times. Men don't have that same gating factor. Often they think about this as a career on top of the career they already have. They don't see it interrupting their ability to raise a family.
And so I would love to see women exercise those leadership muscles earlier, but also to understand that they all have that within them. Again, this idea of what are your abilities, what are your values, and then what are your burning desires? And how do you keep that at the forefront of your life throughout your entire life? We all deserve to leave a legacy.
And again, that doesn't mean that you start a company or a huge organization, it just means you lived your life in a way that was authentic and true to you and that you felt alive. And I think men are taught to follow their desires and women are taught to fulfill their obligations.
And that is something that if we can start to shift that narrative in women's lives, so much would change not just in America but in the world. And I think the question is that a nice to do or is that at this point a moral obligation? And I would lean toward moral obligation?
Guy Kawasaki:
You mean it's a woman's moral obligation to be audacious and active?
Shannon Watts:
Yes. I do. I tell women, I appreciate that you might think about running for office, but you actually have an obligation to serve because women have not had power and therefore they have the ability to heal what is wrong in this country. And I don't care if it's a dog catcher or county sheriff, just find a position that is open near you and run.
And I think the same can be said for being a leader or following what you find fulfilling. Think of it in that way and it is more likely to happen than to put it on the back burner and act as though coming alive as something that you can do maybe when you're seventy-five and you have nothing else to focus on. That's just not the way men live and women shouldn't either.
Guy Kawasaki:
And let me be a devil's advocate for a second. So let's say I'm a woman listening to this and I'm saying to myself, yeah, I would love to be active, honey, but I'm a single mom with three kids and I'm holding down two jobs and now you're telling me to be an activist. What planet are you on?
Shannon Watts:
I think it depends on how you define activist. If you take a half hour out of every week to reach out to your lawmakers to express yourself, to follow something you're passionate about, to make a plan to start to make some of those burning desires come to fruition, you're an activist. Maybe we're setting the sights for what is an activist too high. This is just about staying involved. And I understand. I recently had a conversation with a woman in Missouri who moved to Missouri after Hurricane Katrina.
A black single mom who struggled to get on her feet. And she has three kids now, and she was just elected as a state rep in the state of Missouri. Because she was so outraged by the things that her opponent was saying in public and also because no one else stepped up.
And at the very last minute she decided to enter the race and the whole community came together and elected her. I hear stories like that all the time. I just think women are afraid of doing the thing that they want to do so badly, and that's what we have to unlearn.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm sure you've given this some thought, but perhaps you can explain to me and my listeners in a sense, what's with white men? How can they think they're the victims and they're being impinged and they're losing their rights? In what alternate universe are we supposed to feel sorry for them?
Shannon Watts:
I have to say I don't know the answer to this question because I struggle with it too. I feel like I'm constantly barraged with messages that I should feel bad for white men. I'm not sure why. The question isn't like, why are men doing this? The question is why aren't men fixing this themselves? Why are they looking to other people to make things better for them?
I'm not even sure I understand what the problem is, honestly, because they have amassed all the power and all the money. I think anytime there's a shift in demographics or power, you're going to have those people feel like they're being oppressed in some way. And I just don't have patience for that.
Now, let me say, I say that as a white woman. And I have learned so much along the way. I only got off the sidelines because I was afraid my kids weren't safe in their school. Not even paying attention to the fact that kids were being shot in communities thirty miles from where I lived for forever, and that black women were doing this work with very little attention.
And we stand on their shoulders. So I think that we can learn if we are open to understanding and being self-aware about how we come to the issues ourselves. I'm not seeing a lot of that in white men yet.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm glad that in a sense you don't understand it too. I really don't understand this at all. Listen, I have empathy for a lot of people, but not white men and particularly not white tech billionaires. Oh my God. I just want to throw up whenever they open their mouths, but anyway.
You being at the front edge of this and having built such an organization, I would love to hear your insights on what's effective now in terms of social media, newsletters, email. What works anymore? It's not as simple as you put out a tweet and everything happened. So what works now?
Shannon Watts:
It's funny because I always wonder how did Mothers Against Drunk Driving, how were they so successful so quickly in the eighties? Were they calling each other on their rotary phones and driving over to the State House and sending snail mail? I do not know how these women did it. We were very fortunate when I started Moms Demand Action that, as I said, Facebook was very much in the zeitgeist. We were organizing on private pages in Facebook for every state.
That was an incredible tool to us back in 2012. And then I probably started using Twitter a few years later. And then we realized, oh, with hashtags we could thank and shame lawmakers, we could get companies to change their policies around things like open carry. And we did that.
I remember there were pictures of men with AR-Fifteens inside Chipotle, and we started using the hashtag burritos, not bullets, and within a weekend, they changed their policy. And it seemed like this magic trick. We had access to this technology that could help us amplify our activism by a thousand fold.
Now, here we are twelve years later, obviously Facebook is not where people hang out anymore. Twitter has become X and is now a very toxic stew. So I think the important thing is to just always be at the forefront. I think it's really interesting to watch what Zoom is doing. And when the pandemic started, we started organizing on Zoom and realized it was a really important way for volunteers to have that lifeline to one another, not just to be activists, but as human beings.
And then recently after Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee, I saw black women and men having these Zoom calls. So I tweeted, will white women have one too? And lo and behold, within forty-eight hours, we organized the largest Zoom in history that raised eleven million dollars in two hours. So I think Zoom could definitely be part of the new political landscape. And it's just really important to be at the forefront and to be watching for whatever you can use as a tool to change opinions.
Guy Kawasaki:
So let me rephrase the question. If I'm a woman and I want to become active and change the world like this, are you saying that the top tool is Zoom? On the flip side of that, are you saying don't bother with Twitter, don't bother with Facebook anymore? What's really tactical?
Shannon Watts:
So I'm on Instagram because I'm too old for TikTok and I'm tired of Twitter. So I'm on Instagram and there is a lot of organizing going on there. I think it's a really important platform right now for activism. They're trying to change the algorithm so that political content doesn't pop up as easily, but that still seems like a place to be. I do think Zoom is a place to be. There are a lot of Zoom calls that are raising money, organizing people all across the country. I do think that's a good tool to use.
One thing that we're doing every Wednesday between now and the election is having a women Wednesdays for Harris call where we teach people who zoom in different ways to be activists. Whether it's relational organizing or registering people to vote, learning how to tell their story and have a conversation, which you asked me about earlier in this conversation.
How do you tell your story? How do you persuade people? And I think that just getting together, having house parties, meeting in person, knocking doors, doing the old-fashioned footwork, what I call the unglamorous heavy lifting of grassroots activism, that will never go out of style. That will always be an important way to force change.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can you see a day when Jim Jordan or some other clown in Congress is going to haul the CEO of Zoom in front of Congress and say, "You're a front for Chinese spying, so we need to ban Zoom from America," because they want to shut it down? As you say, such a powerful tool.
Shannon Watts:
Yeah. It'll be interesting. Zoom just said after we had the biggest Zoom call in history that they were expanding their ability to have up to a million participants. That is pretty astounding. And I haven't seen Republicans be able to use this tool yet. Now if they can figure it out, they won't ban it, but until then, it's probably in jeopardy.
Guy Kawasaki:
If you see what they did to the CEO of TikTok, what's the difference?
Shannon Watts:
Yep.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So now let's fast-forward to today and please explain what you are doing for the Harris-Walz campaign.
Shannon Watts:
Yeah. I'm really honored to be a surrogate. I was a huge fan of Kamala Harris becoming the candidate. I couldn't believe it when it happened. I was thrilled. And then she picked Tim Walz, who he has just been so good on the issue of gun safety in his state passing background checks. There's this anecdote from Minnesota volunteers.
They were really worried because when he ran, he originally didn't make gun safety a big part of his platform, and he is a gun owner and a hunter and a former military member. And so they went up to him at the state fair. And what I've learned is that a lot of things happen at state fairs. A lot of political persuasion happens at state fairs.
And so they approached him after he was elected or during the campaign, and he said, "I'm so grateful for you and for your support, and I will help you get this done." And he did. Every year that he has been governor, he has worked relentlessly on gun safety and it finally happened.
So the two of them as a ticket are the juxtaposition between what would happen if Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were elected on guns versus the Harris Walz ticket is very stark. I don't even know what the count is now. Whatever amount of days we have left between now and the election. I'm not going to waste a minute. I want to wake up the day after the election and know I left it all in the field.
And that includes traveling to battleground states and getting out the vote, continuing these Zoom education calls. Doing whatever I can as a citizen to make sure the Harris Walz ticket is elected. Not just for gun safety, but because all of our freedoms and safeties are on the line, and I just don't think any of us can rest on our laurels before this election.
Guy Kawasaki:
Could you just back up for a second and define the term surrogate? What does a surrogate do?
Shannon Watts:
It's someone who represents a campaign because they can't be everywhere. So if I can be on a Zoom call, if I can travel to another state, if I can do something where I live, I'm going to have a fundraiser for Kamala Harris at my home featuring the historian Heather Cox Richardson. If there's anything that I can do to be supportive of the campaign to give them more arms and legs given my profile as an activist, I will do that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So are you officially recognized by the campaign as a surrogate? You're on their website or something?
Shannon Watts:
We have surrogate calls where all the surrogates get together.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how does one become one?
Shannon Watts:
That's a good question. I think because I have a high profile and a lot of followers, it just made sense.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so they reached out to you.
Shannon Watts:
I was invited to be on the surrogate calls. And I think because I had the Zoom that was just so overwhelmingly successful, it got a lot of people's attention.
Guy Kawasaki:
If anybody out there is listening who is in charge of surrogates, call me.
Shannon Watts:
Excellent.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll be there for you.
Shannon Watts:
I will tell them.
Guy Kawasaki:
You tell them. You tell them that unlike the other assholes in Silicon Valley who are primarily concerned with the tax rate and making crypto successful, I don't give a shit about either of those two things. I just want to preserve democracy. And if I lose all my followers and everything else, tough shit. Like you said, I want people to know I left it on the field too.
Shannon Watts:
I like a surrogate with a salty vocabulary personally.
Guy Kawasaki:
You do?
Shannon Watts:
My kind of surrogate. Oh, I love it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, because backing up about five minutes. And I'm afraid Madisun's going to give me a lecture after I say what I'm about to say. But when I asked you this question about what's with white men and how they're victims and all that, I can actually show you.
Not that you could read it. But these are my notes. And the actual question that I had on this piece of paper is Why are white men such pussies? But I said, "No, Guy, you shouldn't ask that. That's very crass. That's very not pleasant. You got to stay away from that."
Shannon Watts:
But it's succinct.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I know Madisun is listening, so we're going to have to keep that section in.
Shannon Watts:
Poor Madisun.
Guy Kawasaki:
I know people who have very active roles in the fundraising, and I said, "Just make me CMO for one day and I'll change the slogan to vote for Trump and lose your vagina," and they said, "No, that's okay, Guy. You can just keep writing checks. Don't worry about the market."
Shannon Watts:
That might not be quite as succinct. You'd have to get an acronym for that, I think.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right. So a little bit of reality check here. So what are the personal costs for what you do?
Shannon Watts:
Well, I don't know that I would've started Moms Demand Action if I had known what they were ahead of time. I was very naive. All of my public information was my address, my phone number, my email. It was all out there. My kids' names, schools. I just never imagined that I would become a public persona. And so when I put out that clarion call to women and mothers within hours, I started getting threats of death, sexual violence to me, to my daughters immediately.
And it was coming in on texts and on calls and on emails, and eventually even to my home directly. To my kids at school, to my kids online. And it was really scary.
I can remember early on calling the police department where I lived in Indiana and they dispatched an officer to my house. And when I told him what was happening, he said, "Ma'am, that's the price you pay when you mess with the Second Amendment."
Guy Kawasaki:
That's what he said?
Shannon Watts:
Yeah. I'm either going to have to back down or double down. And my personality is such that I doubled down and I decided I wasn't going to spend however long I was an activist worrying every day about these threats, and I really haven't. And I don't think I could do this work if my husband and children were afraid. Thankfully, none of them are. They're all very supportive. But there are volunteers who are.
Who I understand they live in red states, they don't want to use their last names. They're afraid of armed men showing up. And that was never the intention of the Second Amendment to silence and intimidate other Americans and yet that's what it's turned into. So I would say that is part of the personal cost.
And the other part is that I was really away from my family for many years on the road. I had a global services' member for United because I had so many airline miles, and it's not something I'm proud of. But I get asked a lot by other volunteers, other mothers, should they feel guilty for the fact that they're activists or that they're focused on something they're passionate about.
And now I'm on the other side and all my children are grown, they're all adults, and they never say, "Oh mom, I can't believe you didn't go to that soccer game in September of 2010," or "Why weren't you at my play rehearsal?" They are only proud of me and they only remember the moments when they saw me doing something that lit me up, that made me come alive, that I was passionate about. And they're emulating that in their own lives.
So I think some of it is an anachronistic or even misogynistic narrative that becomes a talk track for women, which is don't go after things that you want to do that you're passionate about. Just do what you're supposed to do. And I guess what I'm saying is that I just at some point refused for these things to be personal costs and just saw them as concessions that I was going to make to do what I knew was morally correct.
Guy Kawasaki:
Did any of the threats come close to becoming true? Did anybody show up or did anybody cost you physically? Is it basically just digital threats? A sixteen-year-old kids sending you these text messages and emails?
Shannon Watts:
I think it's mostly older white men who still live in their mother's basement. That's the image I have in my mind. However, I have had to file restraining orders from people who kept coming by my house or putting things in my mailbox.
I remember during my book tour, I had a book come out in 2018 called Fight Like A Mother, and we were in Denver and my kid happened to go to college in Denver at the time and came with me to this event and saw security dragging this man out, this armed man who was there to threaten me. So there were some scary moments along the way. And I also want to be clear, it's not just me.
Our volunteers show up at the State House, I can remember in Virginia, and we're confronted by men carrying AR-Fifteens. So it's something that when you get involved in gun violence prevention activism, you realize you're going to encounter. For me, it just made me realize why my work was even more important.
Guy Kawasaki:
May I digress for a second and tell you as one author to another, your title Fight Like A Mother is just a great title.
Shannon Watts:
Thank you.
Guy Kawasaki:
I love that title. Oh my God.
Shannon Watts:
That's because you like to swear and you know what the next word would be.
Guy Kawasaki:
And did you come up with that title or some enlightened editor?
Shannon Watts:
No. Yes. And it was something that we were saying. Vote like a mother, fight like a mother. It's like we were using the mother moniker.
Guy Kawasaki:
My hat's off to you. That was a great title.
Shannon Watts:
Thank you.
Guy Kawasaki:
So listen, we're at the end of our interview and I've asked all the questions I want to ask, including why are white men such pussies? This is your platform. I don't hold myself out as a journalist trying to represent both sides. I am exactly on one side. So I'm as partisan as you can be. So I'm going to give you just free access because you've been so eloquent already. I know you can do this. Just give us your closing pitch. Give us your closing statement.
Shannon Watts:
I would hope that everyone who is listening to us would be inspired to find a piece of the work they're passionate about and start doing it. And it doesn't even have to be gun violence prevention. It can be any issue in America that you are concerned about and go after it. And I hope what you realize and what you learn is, especially if you're a middle-aged woman.
That is how you leave a legacy. That is how you feel alive in your life is to do this work. Because one, you'll feel like you're winning, but two, you'll feel like you found your people. I travel all the time and I see so many women saying, "Oh, I met this person who has become my best friend," and it's because they got engaged in activism.
And so I just hope that people see that this is, as Alice Walker says, the rent you pay to live on the planet and you can do it on top of whatever else is happening in your life. And in fact, you have an obligation to. It has changed my life for the better. I ended up creating one of the world's largest field experiments for mobilizing women in this country. And I am better for it. And I will never go back to sitting on the sidelines in this country.
I do see real progress in real change, but we are also at an inflection point as we are so many times in the history of America in this amazing experiment. And we have a very stark choice to make. It is between good and evil in my opinion, and we have to, as we talked about, wake up the day after the election and feel like we did everything possible to ensure the right outcome.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can I ask you a dumb question? Why don't you run for office?
Shannon Watts:
I feel in a way like I have been running for twelve years and I also like to speak my mind and my good friend Lucy McBath, who was a Moms Demand Action volunteer, she's a gun violence survivor. Her son was murdered by a man with a gun. She's now a congresswoman in Georgia. She always tells me; you can't say the things you're saying right now out there if you run for office and win.
I'm not willing to make that sacrifice, but I love helping other women get elected to office. I'm on the board of eMerge America. I'm constantly supporting and working on the campaigns of other women. And when we talk about what's a legacy you hope you leave, I hope it's that I inspired women to live up to their full potential and take elected office.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. You'll be happy to know that for two years Madisun and I pursued Stacey Abrams, and we finally got her to come on this podcast and she recorded it in my house. That's been one of the high points of this podcast. So now you're the second-high point of this podcast.
Shannon Watts:
Oh my gosh. That's very kind. Thank you.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right. I think we have more than enough. This has been remarkable. Thank you so much. Do you have anything else you want to tell us or let us know?
Shannon Watts:
No. That's great.
Guy Kawasaki:
Madisun don't stop recording it. She might come up with even great wisdom.
Shannon Watts:
No. No. I'm done. I'm done. I have to take a nap after all that talking.
Guy Kawasaki:
Thank you so much, Shannon. All the best to you.
Shannon Watts:
Thank you.
Guy Kawasaki:
And when you come out with books and stuff, let us know because we will publicize it for you.
Shannon Watts:
I have one coming out in June of 2025 which is basically about what we talked about. How do you inspire women.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. And maybe in April of 2025 when Kamala and Tim are in the White House, we can have a follow-up interview.
Shannon Watts:
Love it.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll tell you a funny Kamala Harris story. So I was flying back from Newark to San Francisco and she happened to be on the plane and I recognized her. And after we got off the plane in San Francisco after the three-hour delay, I went up to her and I said, "The next time you should be flying on Air Force One." And she laughed. So maybe it's going to come true.
Shannon Watts:
I love it. You manifested it.
Guy Kawasaki:
I just want to say, go Shannon, go. Get out there and kick ass and take names. And if any of you feel strongly about social change, I hope you're inspired by her example. And you go out and kick ass and take names to.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. Now let me recognize the rest of the kick ass Remarkable People team. First ass kicker is Madisun Nuismer, producer and co-author of Think Remarkable. Second ass kicker is Tessa Nuismer, our researcher. And the third and fourth kick assers are Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez, our amazing and remarkable sound design team. We are the Remarkable People team, and we are on a mission to make you remarkable and kick ass. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.