Shannon Watts: By the time I was 29, I had three kids and a career. It was really hard. We struggled a lot financially. I can remember once selling our microwave to pay the electricity bill. We were really young, trying to figure out all out. Eventually, I became the family breadwinner and we just went. There was no enjoying our 20s kind of moment. Now I'm enjoying my 40s and 50s because I'm an empty nester. I felt a lot of pressure to succeed because I had this family that I needed to support and just became really, really ambitious.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the MILF podcast. This is the show where we talk about motherhood and sexuality with amazing women with fascinating stories to share on the joys of being a MILF. Now, here's your host, the milfiest MILF I know, Jennifer Tracy.
Jennifer Tracy: Hey, guys. Welcome back to the show. This is MILF podcast, the show where we talk about motherhood, entrepreneurship, sexuality, and everything in between. I'm Jennifer Tracy, your host. Welcome back guys. This is an exciting week. This week on the show, I have Shannon Watts. Shannon is the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. She also wrote a book recently that's out if you want to buy it. I highly recommend it. It's called Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World. Yes, by HarperOne, published by HarperOne. Shannon's a mother of five kids.
Jennifer Tracy: She used to be in the corporate setting. Then, she was the stay-at-home mom during the Sandy Hook shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary mass shooting. She just had to do something. She was called to do something. I got the chance to sit down with her here in Hollywood at a recording studio and we talked about it. I'm absolutely in awe of this woman and what she's done, what she has started, what she's connected, how many women and moms and people, not just moms, not just women, not just men, but this whole movement of awareness and support that really has grown into one of the largest grassroots movements in America. It has over five million supporters.
Jennifer Tracy: I can't wait to share this with you. Before I do, I wanted to remind you that this month's give that I'm spotlighting is Every Mother Counts. I'm a big fan of theirs. In case you guys hadn't noticed, I used them over and over again to highlight what they're doing. The organization is incredible. There's a link to them on my website, milfpodcast.com. You can also go to everymothercounts.org and donate directly. Also, this episode is sponsored by our newest sponsor, Clutch Gift. This is such a beautiful store, you guys. It's an online curated gift store. Their website is clutchgifts.com.
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Jennifer Tracy: There's a clutch gift for anyone lucky enough to be on your list. Tracy and Molly, my two dear friends who started this company are geniuses and they are so generously not only sponsoring this episode but they're offering my listeners an exclusive 15% discount with the code MILF15, that's good through September 30th, 2019. Head on over to clutchgifts.com. There'll be a link to their site also on the show notes on this page, on my website, milfpodcast.com. That's a lot of .coms. Anyway, it's all there waiting for you. If you're driving, if you're doing laundry, if your childcare taking, if you're walking the dogs, you can always come back to milfpodcast.com and look at this episode or do a search and you'll find it.
Jennifer Tracy: Anyway, I'm just so lucky that I get to work with other women, other moms. Tracy and Molly are moms as well, and support them and be supported by them. It's just this magical train that keeps going. Thank you, Tracy and Molly, so much. Thank you, Clutch Gift. Thank you to my listeners. I hope you guys enjoy my conversation with Shannon Watts. Hi, Shannon.
Shannon Watts: Hi.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you so much for being here.
Shannon Watts: Thank you for having me.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm really excited to have you.
Shannon Watts: It's so great to meet you.
Jennifer Tracy: Just before we hit record officially, you were talking about how you grew up in Connecticut?
Shannon Watts: No, Upstate New York. Yeah, close, closer enough.
Jennifer Tracy: Upstate New York, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I was half listening, which is fully engaged but I was testing this stuff.
Shannon Watts: You got East Coast.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes. Upstate New York, and you said your dad worked for Xerox which you said being in the military because you moved ...
Shannon Watts: We moved everywhere.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow.
Shannon Watts: I went to high school in San Diego and then in the middle of junior year, we moved to Plano, Texas which is just outside of Dallas. Then, I ended up going to college in Missouri which was a place I'd never been. I stayed there for a decade. Name a state, I can pretty much find a tie to it.
Jennifer Tracy: Really? Florida.
Shannon Watts: That's the one that I can ... My dad lived there. My dad lived there.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so funny. That's so funny. New Jersey. Well, that's too easy, no. Maine.
Shannon Watts: I've gone there a lot with Moms Demand Action.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay, see? That's right. You grew up all over, college in Missouri. What was your major?
Shannon Watts: It was journalism and sociology.
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting.
Shannon Watts: That's a really productive double major.
Jennifer Tracy: Are you kidding? That's so fascinating. Well, that's always the thing. It's like no matter I think what the major is ... I mean, we could have a whole conversation about college and your kids are in college, most of them now.
Shannon Watts: Yes, many of them.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Or I guess some of them are done.
Shannon Watts: Two are done.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my gosh.
Shannon Watts: We've got in Bloomington, Indiana. She actually just dropped out of college to become a standup comedian.
Jennifer Tracy: Great. Send her over here.
Shannon Watts: I will. My other one is at the University of Denver. Then, I have one going to University of San Diego.
Jennifer Tracy: Nice.
Shannon Watts: Nice place to visit.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, no kidding. Tell me what happened after you graduated college. You graduated college, you're a young girl, you have the world at your feet, what happens next?
Shannon Watts: I thought it was a really good idea to get married right out of college, I did that. Then, three months later, I got pregnant.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow.
Shannon Watts: I had that baby and then three months after that baby was born, I got pregnant. By the time I was 26, I had two kids. I also had started a career in communications. I went to work for Governor Carnahan in Missouri where I wrote speeches and did introductory communications stuff. Not too long after that, I went to work for a PR agency in Kansas City, went full force, very early. By the time I was 29, I had three kids and a career.
Jennifer Tracy: How did you balanced that?
Shannon Watts: It was really hard. We struggled a lot financially. I can remember once selling our microwave to pay the electricity bill. We were really young, trying to figure out all out. Eventually, I became the family breadwinner and we just went. There was no enjoying our 20s kind of moment. Now I'm enjoying my 40s and 50s because I'm an empty nester. I felt a lot of pressure to succeed because I had this family that I needed to support and just became really, really ambitious, and really was on this career trajectory for the first couple of decades out of college. Then, that marriage ended. We were married so young. It's really difficult I think to make a marriage work when you're married in your early 20s and then you get to be in your 30s and you're like, oh, we're completely different people.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm not the same person ...
Shannon Watts: No.
Jennifer Tracy: ... and you're not the same person.
Shannon Watts: Exactly. Then, I decided to take some time off because we were blending this family of five kids.
Jennifer Tracy: Wait, wait, wait. You remarried?
Shannon Watts: I remarried just a couple of years later. We were blending this family of five and several of them were in elementary, middle and high school. That's just the time when kids get into trouble. I thought I'm going to take a break. Five years into that break, I absolutely thought I'm going to go back to work. I will go back in communications. The Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy happened and completely altered my life's path.
Jennifer Tracy: And spurred this amazing movement that you have started and inspired so many people. I was just reading the Denver Post article. You saw that on your news and you took action. What did you do?
Shannon Watts: Well, I can remember it was a December day and I was folding laundry and started to see the news come in that this horrific tragedy was unfolding in Newtown, Connecticut. Not too long after, there were actually pundits on my television saying that the answer was more guns, that hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of civilians just ... That wasn't enough to keep us safe, we needed more. I knew nothing about gun policy. I really wasn't politically active. I certainly knew nothing about organizing but I knew that that wasn't true and that really something had to be done.
Shannon Watts: Because I'd seen, as every American had, all of these mass shootings happen and playing out for decades, and not to mention the daily gun violence that happens in this country. No one had really acted, even after one of congress' own colleagues, Gabby Giffords, was shot. Really, no one did anything. I thought, okay, I'm going to get online and I'm going to join something like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I searched and I couldn't find anything. I found male run think tanks in Washington, D.C. I found some one-off organizations in states, again mostly run by men. I knew that I wanted to be part of a badass army of women.
Shannon Watts: I thought, okay, well, can I do ... I'll just start a Facebook page. I lived in Indiana at the time. I really did not have any social media footprint at all, so why I thought I would end up having a conversation with other people. I'm not sure. That's exactly what happened. It was like lightning in a bottle where tens of thousands of people joined this Facebook page very quickly. It's because so many women and moms had the same idea that day which was it was time to get off the sidelines.
Jennifer Tracy: When a mother has passion and clarity around that passion and then she plans together with other mothers, not that they have to be mothers, but there's something magical happens. I love that you say that you wanted to be a part of a badass army of women because that just makes me want to stand up and yell like a Viking with a cry song. I'm shaking my fist in the air, no weapon. I don't have a weapon but my weapon just is my voice or my defense is my voice. You found your voice and you amplify that and attracted a tribe who said, "Yes, let's do something about this." From there, you have this Facebook group that's really active. You guys are communicating. What happened? This was 2014?
Shannon Watts: No, this was 2012 going right into 2013.
Jennifer Tracy: Right, because Sandy Hook ... Yeah.
Shannon Watts: Sandy Hook, the shooting was at the end of 2012. First of all, these type A women all start Googling me and they found my personal contact information. Of course, they start calling me and emailing me as women will do and just saying like, "I want to do this where I live," not really knowing what this was at the time. We just began organizing. It first started out as people would call from a certain state. Really, they were calling from every state and they were saying, "Okay, I want to start a Facebook page for my state." That was really how we started organizing. We also had private Facebook pages where we could find one another.
Shannon Watts: That was a first thing that you did in the early days, was she would start Facebook page for your state. Then, we were organizing like that. We got a call from the White House. They said, "We have been waiting for women and moms to organize in this way across the country. We want you to stand with us as we try to pass the Manchin-Toomey Bill. The Manchin-Toomey Bill was a bipartisan bill by republican Senator Pat Toomey and democratic Senator Joe Manchin. They got together and this bill would in honor of the Sandy Hook victims, require a background check in every gun sale.
Shannon Watts: Right now, you only have to have a background check on a gun sale if it's from a licensed dealer. This would have covered unlicensed dealers. That's what we began organizing around more specifically. That took several months. We would go to meetings in district with our senators. We would go to D.C. on our own dime and meet with them there. We did all of these different creative mom things, crafts, and all these different things to bring attention to this issue on social media and all. Then, it failed to pass by just a handful of votes in April of 2013 including some democratic senators who voted against it.
Shannon Watts: One of those senators was North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a woman, a mom, a democrat. She said the reason she voted against it, against Manchin-Toomey, was because she'd hurt more from the other side, meaning gun extremists. We really just decided then and there that that would never happen again, that we would never allow a lawmaker to say they made that decision because we hadn't been loud enough. Our volunteers intuitively pivoted to doing this work in state houses and boardrooms where they lived as opposed to counting on congress. There were governors who were willing to act after Sandy Hook, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware. That's really how we realized we would have to spend years building a political movement that didn't exist.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Quite literally, grassroots from just your kitchen sink, folding laundry, out to all these other moms doing whatever they're doing and then on to all these bigger things. You realized it had to be at that level, at that personal level, mom to mom, and then to community is what I mean. That's so interesting. Wow, okay. I had a question, then I forgot it. I'm going to come back to it. My mind is just going on. I got chills just when you said you never wanted that to happen again because your voices weren't loud enough. Because it seems like from there, that's when you were like, "We are going ovaries to the wall, we're not stopping." From then, you have not stopped a second.
Shannon Watts: We haven't. My schedule is incredibly busy but also every volunteer ... I'm a full-time volunteer. These women on the ground figure out how sometimes to carve an entire extra work week out of their already busy schedules to work on this issue as volunteers. All of it matters, right? Even if you are a mom who has an hour when her kids take a nap or when you get home from work, it all matters and it all accumulates. The problem is, we have been a silent majority for so long in this issue. This local minority, these gun extremists have really been writing our gun laws.
Shannon Watts: Now that we're getting off the sidelines and building political power and pulling the levers of power that we have because we're only 20% of lawmakers, we're only 5% of Fortune 1000 CEOs, we're not making the laws and the policies to protect our families and our communities. We're the majority of the voting electorate. We're the majority of the population. We make 80% of the spending decisions for our families. Those are super important levels of power. Eventually, we'll be 50/50. I'm confident of that. In the meantime, these are the ways that we can make a difference, make people listen.
Jennifer Tracy: What shifts have you seen since that time when that didn't pass?
Shannon Watts: Well, we were able to, in that first year, in 2014, pass stronger gun legislation through some of the state legislatures I mentioned. The other thing we realized very quickly was that we would have to play a lot of defense. The NRA is really insidious at the state level. They have passed horrible laws or they try to pass horrible laws that we have to beat back. We became very successful at playing defense. In fact, we have about a 90% track record of beating bad NRA bills like arming teachers, stand your ground, something called permitless carry, forcing guns onto college campuses. Those bills show up year after year. That was one piece of it.
Jennifer Tracy: I didn't even know about some of those. Just as you were listing them, I'm like, that sounds so absurd. This is all coming from the NRA?
Shannon Watts: Most of it is coming from the gun lobby, yes. Whether that the NRA is a national organization or the state gun groups that in many ways are even more extreme than the NRA. There was also a corporate piece of this. We were just talking about spending power. It was June of 2013 when I saw on the news that Starbucks was going to stop allowing cigarette smoking 20 feet outside its stores regardless of state law to protect customers including electronic cigarettes. There's something legal in this country in 45 states called open carry, which you don't see here in California.
Shannon Watts: It means that you can go into a restaurant or retailer that allows you to with a semiautomatic rifle or with a gun just loosely in your pocket, not in a holster. It's called open carry. I see it all the time in Colorado. I called Starbucks and I said, "You've been allowing open carry in your stores, we can see that online. Are you still going to allow that even though you're not allowing cigarettes?" They said, "Yes, we're going to follow state laws when it comes to guns." We embarked on something called a Momcott. We were so small. We were only six months old that we could not even do a full out boycott. We did not have the economic power.
Shannon Watts: We just did skip Starbucks Saturdays. We also made images of open carry inside Starbucks go viral using social media. Within three months, the CEO, Howard Schultz, came out on national television and said, "Guns are no longer welcome inside our stores." We realized the incredible power that we had there. We then replicated that at a lot of different companies. Then, we also wanted to teach people about responsible gun stores. We started a program called Be Smart. It's a really non-polarizing way to talk about the fact that 4.5 million children in America live in homes with unsecured guns and that they need to be locked unloaded and separate from ammunitions. All of these things, the legislative piece, the corporate piece, the cultural piece, that really was the genesis of our grassroots movement.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. I'm a little bit star-struck right now just listening you talk. I'm like, she's so smart, she's so amazing, she's doing all this stuff, and she's really hot.
Shannon Watts: Thank you. Wow, the hot part is an added bonus.
Jennifer Tracy: It's true. Also, what you're doing is sexy.
Shannon Watts: It's empowering.
Jennifer Tracy: It's sexy to be a woman empowering her voice, empowering other women's voices, and protecting our children ultimately. I'm reminded, I haven't thought about this in years. I was in journalism school as well for a minute. I switched my major to screenwriting. Shannon's so ... She's being so careful about crossing her legs. I'm like a bull in a China shop. Anyway, I interned at a local Denver news station in ... Gosh, 1995 I think, '94 or '95. Anyway, it was over the summer, I was home from college, interned. I remember us getting a call. I was just the young intern that would go with these news crews. Again, this was before cellphones. This was in the mid-90s.
Jennifer Tracy: We got a call there was a gunshot. We went to this area of Denver that I'd never been to before. It didn't seem like a poor area, but it was just an area where I was not familiar with. I grew up in a very White privileged suburb. I had been to college, I traveled a little bit. My point is, it was this Filipino family and what had happened was this young nine-year-old boy had found a loaded gun in between the headboard and the mattress and was playing with it. I don't know where the parents were. They were home but they weren't watching him. He was playing with it with his six-year-old sister and he ended up killing her, not knowing obviously what he was doing or that that would have happened.
Jennifer Tracy: I remember pulling up and just the wailing crying of the mother and the grandmother, because they all lived together, was just so horrific and so agonizing to listen to. I was just a kid. I think I was 19 at the time. It really shook me. Even though I didn't meet them or ... That was the other thing. The news crew I was with, they wanted me, me, they wanted to get me, the lucky, the 19-year-old to go up to the family and try to get an interview. I started walking up and thank God, this police officer in a suit said, "Please leave the family alone." I was like, "Great." I went back. I said, "No, we're going to give them their privacy." It was such a horrific scene.
Jennifer Tracy: I will never forget it for the rest of my life. I haven't thought about it for a while, but it gave me that personal experience because I had never been exposed to guns. I wasn't raised in a house where there were guns around or hunting or anything like that. To have that experience and just to know like, wow, that's a choice that that ... I'm sure there's a cultural element to that too that I didn't understand. That was before all these mass shootings started happening. Anyway, I don't know why I told you that, just because it was such a personal story.
Shannon Watts: It is. It is the only country where we see children getting a hold of guns and either shooting or injuring themselves or others. It is a uniquely American epidemic. It's because the responsibilities that go along with gun rights have been so incredibly eroded over the last few decades. NRA instructors sometimes encourage people to keep loaded guns in their kids' closets. Given that there are 4.5 million unsecured guns in children's homes in this country, it's such an important conversation to be having because you may think you know your friends or you may think, oh, I live in a blue state or you may think, I know my family.
Shannon Watts: I can't tell you how many volunteers have said to me, I finally asked my parents because I know they have a handgun, I asked them how they store it. They found out that they keep it in a shoebox under the bed where their kid sleeps when they visit. If people want to learn more about it, besmartforkids.org. You can go there and learn all about how do I ask this question when I send my kids to friends and families' homes.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. You really have to ask it. I've shared this on the show. My son is 9, going on 10. He's a history buff. He's obsessed with war, World War I, World War II, Vietnam. Now that he's such a reader, he will read about it and he's really learning about why and how it happened and what it was. He loves having toy guns. He loves these airsoft rifles. Airsoft rifles, you know this, but for the listeners, if you don't know, they're like BB guns but the pellets are like these round plastic things. It still would hurt if you shot them out. My son is obsessed. If you walked into my house right now, you would be horrified because it's all these airsoft rifles.
Jennifer Tracy: My ex-husband and I have also made a point of really sitting down with him from when he started having interest in this, from when it segued from cars to guns and soldiers about the realities of this, about the ... Not to scare him but just, well, this kind of gun and a gun with a bullet, what are the consequences. My ex-husband grew up in Louisiana hunting and he knows all about gun safety and he started teaching him about that, even with some of the plastic ones about this is where the safety would be. It was interesting being that mom and having that experience and having other kids comes over and the moms. My son would be talking about it.
Jennifer Tracy: A lot of moms will say, well, we don't play with guns, or we don't talk about guns, or we don't ... I'm like, well, okay, we do. I think it's really important to talk about because the fact is these little boys and it's mostly little boys, not always, sometimes girls too but they're just drawn to that from the time they can talk.
Shannon Watts: I have five kids, four girls. When I had Sam, I thought, okay, he's just going to be like his sisters. It's intuitive. I can remember he would be in the bathtub and he would take the Barbies they had left. He would turn them into guns. This is not a kid who was exposed to stuff like that.
Jennifer Tracy: Same. My son wasn't either. He hadn't even watched anything on TV at that point. He was still in preschool when he started showing interest in it.
Shannon Watts: I was like, oh, okay, this is slightly an eight then.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, yes. As with everything, information, education, showing them the broad spectrum of it but also the specifics, age appropriate I'm talking. I'm not ...
Shannon Watts: Yeah, of course.
Jennifer Tracy: It's crucial.
Shannon Watts: The other part of that is we have seen studies that show that while it's fine to educate your kids about guns, if you leave them alone in a room with a loaded gun, especially boys, they will still play with it because they are curious. We don't teach kids not to touch the stove and then leave it on. That's why our program is all about educating adults to take responsibility. Only 28 states in this country hold gun owners accountable for safe storage of their guns. Where I live in Colorado, if I left a loaded gun on my kitchen counter and my son got it and injured himself or someone else, it would be a misdemeanor and a $400 fine. That's why it's so important that we have stronger gun laws in place to really be a part of the education.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, thank you for that. For my listeners, we'll have links to all of these in the show notes and all these websites so that you can go on and learn and also get involved. Wow. You also just had a book come out. Can we talk about your book?
Shannon Watts: Yes, Fight Like a Mother. It came out two weeks ago, I guess now.
Jennifer Tracy: Congratulations!
Shannon Watts: Yeah, thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so exciting.
Shannon Watts: It has been really fun to travel across the country and do book events with volunteers and thank them for their work. This book tells a lot of their stories. I say it's part memoir and that I talk about what was it like to go from being a corporate communications executive to being a full-time mom to now the tip of the spear on an issue that can be very volatile. I say it's part manual because I get so many calls from especially women and moms who say, "How did you do this? Because there's an issue that I'm passionate about and I want to do something similar in my neighborhood, or my community, or my state." Then, I say it's part manifesto because I want women to take the skills they learn as activists especially with our organization and move from shaping policy to making it as lawmakers.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so badass. That's so awesome.
Shannon Watts: The three Ms.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, I love that. I forget what you just said. You said you're the point of a spear.
Shannon Watts: The tip of the spear, yup.
Jennifer Tracy: The tip of the spear, excuse me. That's powerful. That's also really threatening to a lot of people.
Shannon Watts: Yes, I've noticed. It's been an interesting six years.
Jennifer Tracy: How has that affected your private life and your own safety and security? How do you move around? I was doing an Instagram before this and I was like I'm at an undisclosed location interviewing a very important woman who's coming, not that I was afraid of anything but also because we're in a secured building and so on and so forth. However, it was something I thought about when I was interviewing him. It's actually why I picked this place. I was wondering how you personally negotiate that.
Shannon Watts: Within hours after starting the Facebook page, I started to get threats. All my personal information was public. I was getting texts and calls and ...
Jennifer Tracy: Did anybody show up at your house?
Shannon Watts: Yup.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my God.
Shannon Watts: People drove by my house really slowly. People started sending me letters with the Son of Sam stuff cut out magazines.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my God, you're kidding me.
Shannon Watts: Early on, this is when I lived in Indiana. I called the police and the local policemen came to the door. I just want to say could you keep an eye on the house kind of thing. He said, "Well, that's what you get when you mess with the Second Amendment, Ma'am." I realized early on I was in this alone, at least from that standpoint. There's this underbelly of America that exists and they are gun extremists. They want to silence you. They want to intimidate me, our volunteers. I just refused to let that happen because if we lose our children, we really have nothing left to lose. It became like white noise for me for the last several years.
Shannon Watts: What has been a new chapter in that saga is that the NRA has started attacking me directly. A few days before Mother's Day, they started tagging me on Instagram and in Twitter and really telling their followers to go after me, and really graphic death threats and sexual violence threats began again really within the last month or so. I travel with security. I use an alias which to me is so bizarre because here I am, just this 48-year-old woman who wants a background check at every gun sale. I'm a mom of five, just ...
Jennifer Tracy: You have to be the one under ... Yeah.
Shannon Watts: Doesn't seem that controversial to me. Apparently, it is still to some people.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. I just so applaud you and everything that you're doing and your bravery. I just can't wait to see what you pull off next. This is really exciting. What does your husband think about this?
Shannon Watts: My whole family has been incredibly supportive. I don't think I could do this work if they were very afraid for me. They know that it needs to get done. I think anyone who has teenagers know that they don't really care that much what you're doing at any given time. They're glad you're busy doing something. My husband has been just incredibly supportive and wonderful.
Jennifer Tracy: Has he been scared by any of that stuff?
Shannon Watts: I've never felt like he was scared. I am glad because I think that would make me scared. I was in an event in Denver last week, there were protesters outside. Then, a man inside had to be dragged out by police because he was filming it and he started filming children in the audience. I came home and told my husband, and he thought that was so great and so amazing as opposed to being terrified or upset. He's like, "Wow, that's really cool."
Jennifer Tracy: You know you're onto something really important when it gets the attention of multiple perspectives.
Shannon Watts: Well, and it's not just me. This happens at volunteer events too.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm sure.
Shannon Watts: We just had to wear orange weekend which is a way to honor victims and survivors of gun violence but also just to bring national attention to this crisis. In Ohio, in Cincinnati, people open carrying showed up at our event just to make a point, a really gross point. It's just something that is par for the course when you're working on this issue. It really is meant to intimidate and silence.
Jennifer Tracy: Now that the book is out and you're experiencing all this, what is next for you? I know you're busy right now or is it just more of this, more of ...
Shannon Watts: I think we're at such an important inflection point in the movement. We outspent the NRA. We also outmaneuvered them in the midterm elections. They're under all this investigation right now from misspending members' money, for their ties to Russia. They go into 2020 with their hands tied behind their back. We go into 2020 stronger than we've ever been as a movement. After the horrible tragedy in Parkland, Florida, our organization tripled in size because so many Americans wanted to get off the sideline and we are not just moms, we're mothers and others. We have been able to take that new found size and really turn it into political power.
Shannon Watts: When Parkland happened, legislative sessions had just started. We were able to pass stronger gun laws in 20 states last year, 9 of which were signed by republican governors. I think the fact that every single candidate including the republican that's primary the president is fighting to be the best on this issue. They're competing, that to see change in American politics. I'm really excited about the upcoming election.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow, that's awesome. I have to ask, how are you feeling about ... It's off topic but not off topic, the recent changes in the abortion laws in several of the states. What do you think about that?
Shannon Watts: Well, it's interesting because these lawmakers who believe laws will stop abortion are the same lawmakers often who don't believe that stronger gun laws will stop gun violence. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I thought after the election of Donald Trump that we could lose a lot of energy in our organization because people would feel torn in so many directions to pay attention to different things that were going on, and people should. They should get involved in whatever issue they're passionate about. I think because we're actually the largest grassroots movement in the country now, we had built this machinery on the ground after the election.
Shannon Watts: Whenever there's a horrific shooting tragedy in this country and people decide they want to get involved, we make it so easy to join. We actually have this whole group of volunteers who call and welcome people who sign up to participate in our organization. We make sure you're invited to an event right away, and then we find out what you want to work and how you want to get involved and how we can best use your time. I think that attracts people to our organization. It makes them feel right away like they're plugged in and they're making a difference, and they're winning. We did a pool of volunteers and said, "What keeps you motivated? What keeps you volunteering on this issue?" It was winning. That's not a story you hear that we're winning on this issue. It's just so important to keep that in mind.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, I love that. Do you watch Handmaid's Tale?
Shannon Watts: I watched the first season and then it just started to get so dark and so violent that I just couldn't do it.
Jennifer Tracy: So dark. Well, the second season just started and I watched the first three episodes. I have to say it's chilling watching it now almost a year later I think from when it was last on. What's changed here in the states and just to think about how oftentimes, and as you said earlier and you gave the statistics about we're only 20% of lawmakers, we're only ... To hear you say that you're optimistic that we will be 50% gives me so much hope because sometimes I will see what's going on in the world and get my snippets. I really only read the New York Times and the L.A. Times, and sometimes I listen to NPR.
Jennifer Tracy: That's how I get my news, because that's about all I can take honestly. Sometimes the takeaway for me and the walkaway is I feel defeated as a woman, I feel defeated. I have felt defeated as a mother, as a woman who has a child and then therefore has that vulnerability. What I'm hearing you say and what you're demonstrating with what you've accomplished and the movement has accomplished is actually the opposite is true.
Shannon Watts: That's right, yeah. If there's a silver lining to what is happening in this country right now, it's that women are energized like never before. 40 of our volunteers in gun violence survivors run for office in 2018, 17/1, everything from city council to congress including Lucy McBath. I don't know if you know her story.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, yes.
Shannon Watts: She was a Georgia mom whose son was visiting his dad in Florida. He was a Black teen, he was shot and killed by a White man who said his music was too loud. Lucy became a Moms Demand Action volunteer, eventually was on our staff, and decided she would run for a seat held for 30 years by republicans in Georgia, Newt Gingrich's old seat, and she won. The first thing she did five days into this congressional session was co-sponsor and help pass the most sweeping gun reform bill to go through any chamber of congress in two decades. Just last week, she introduced something called the red-flag bill at a federal level. When women vote, they vote on this issue. When they run and win, they legislate on this issue. It's just so incredibly important to keep talking about the fact that women have a moral imperative right now to run.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, yeah. Wow. Did you get tired? Because it's funny when you walked in, I know that you're on this whirlwind book tour and you're just doing event after event. I'm following along on social media with all that you're doing. You walked in and I said, "Are you tired?" You're like, "I'm so lucky I get to do this." I can just sense your passion fuels your energy is what I'm seeing. Do you have days where you just feel really tired and defeated?
Shannon Watts: I never ever feel defeated and I mean that. I'm not just saying that, because I see so much winning on the ground, because I work shoulder to shoulder with other volunteers particularly gun violence survivors who are taking their pain and using it, turning it into action to protect perfect strangers, because I see that we are a political powerhouse now. I know that this is a marathon, not a sprint, any political movement is. If you look at marriage equality, that didn't happen overnight. They started it at congress. They didn't get what they wanted, so they pivoted to state houses and boardrooms just like we have. It took many years.
Shannon Watts: They still have to protect the gains that they've made. This movement is really no different. We've only been at this for just over six years now. I believe it will happen in not too distant future. This will take several election cycles. Certainly, I have to take care of myself. I talk a lot in the book about self-care. It is so incredibly important to remember. It is a marathon, not a sprint but it's also a relay race. We can pass the baton to other people. Women so often think, first of all, I have to take on all this work because I'm a perfectionist and I can do with the best.
Shannon Watts: They also think if I don't take on all this work, it's a sign of failure or I'm giving it to other people when I should be doing it. There are all these things that we get caught up in. We've built this organization of volunteers where we really rely and trust one another. We rely on each other. When things get too hard, we can step out. I talk in the book about my daughter developed an eating disorder, probably two or three years into my work with Moms Demand Action. She was away to college. There were times when I would be driving to the airport and I would just have to call in and say, "I can't go to this event.
Shannon Watts: I'm going to turn back around, I'm going to go home, I've really got to take care of my daughter." That is important in activism. It's important in life. It's important to recuperate and rest. I'm really looking forward to I get to go on a vacation on June 29th. I will spend that week relaxing, because it has been a whirlwind. I also do feel incredibly lucky to have found something so incredibly fulfilling to do with my life.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so amazing. To have the support of your family behind you is huge, really huge.
Shannon Watts: Yeah. I think it would be really tough. Certainly, there are extended family members who I am related to who don't support what I'm doing. Again, that's like white noise. As long as my husband and my kids are good, I'm good.
Jennifer Tracy: Big dream, let's say however many years in the future, what's the ultimate goal? I know it's like you just said it's a long game, it's a marathon. As far as changing the laws and really seeing something that's going to say, "Oh, this is really ... We've hit this huge milestone that we've been working for," what does that look like?
Shannon Watts: Well, we're all waiting for this cathartic moment in congress. The fact that they haven't acted yet is often why I think people say to me, "Aren't you defeated? Aren't you feel dejected? Nothing's happening." Because they don't see the work that's happening in state houses and boardrooms. Eventually, when we do get the right president and congress in place to act on this issue, that will make a huge difference because guns go across state lines as easily as cars do. We really do need federal laws that protect everyone. I don't think that's too far off that happening. Also, working across party lines in state legislatures.
Shannon Watts: This has become in many places of bipartisan issue where we can get republicans and democrats alike to support the data that says stronger gun laws work. I'm eager to have that happen in all states. We are now starting to see influencers and companies join us. I have to imagine 20 years ago when marriage equality was similar. You couldn't get celebrities or people to weigh in publicly. Now, if you don't, you're on the wrong side of this issue. We do have amazing women like Julianne Moore who have spearheaded efforts among the creative community to get involved in this issue and then companies.
Shannon Watts: We don't have to necessarily drag them kicking and screaming into this anymore. Levi's, Toms shoes, Dick's Sporting Goods, they've all come to us to work on this issue to be part of our coalition. All of it is important change, all of it is building momentum on the ground. I believe that it will sooner rather than later point the right president and congress in the right direction.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow, that's so amazing. I'm so inspired by you, I mean absolutely inspired. We've come to the point in the ... At the end of every interview, I ask all my guests the same three questions and then we go into a fun round of lightning questions. What do you think about, Shannon, when you hear the word MILF?
Shannon Watts: Well, I think of the guy once before that was a popular phrase and I got off an escalator and it was a driver waiting to pick someone up the airport and that's what the sign said, MILF. I had no idea what it meant. I went and Googled it. I was like, "Wow, that is really brave and brazen."
Jennifer Tracy: Also, what was he thinking? How did he know that 80 women wouldn't come out and be like, "Oh, you must be here to pick me up?" That's so funny. Well, just to reiterate, some of my newer list, there's, yes, the old phrasing, the old male coined phrase is still around but my acronym is Moms I'd Like to Follow. Shannon, I would follow you anywhere.
Shannon Watts: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
Shannon Watts: The death penalty. I grew up in Upstate New York with very conservative parents. I don't know if it was recent but within the last five years, I realized that this is about social injustice and not about consequences for your actions and all the data. Again, I think things that we do and believe in life should be data-driven and research-based. I always thought when people committed horrible crimes, that made sense as a penalty. Now I realized that obviously that penalty is being given much more often to people of color and people in marginalized communities and would never support the death penalty now.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. How do you define success?
Shannon Watts: Wow. My view of success has changed so much because I always thought it was to be at the pinnacle of your career and to have the highest title you could and make the most money that you could. Now, I realized that I was not at all fulfilled doing that work. Success is getting to do something that you wake up and enjoy every single day.
Jennifer Tracy: You have so much passion behind it.
Shannon Watts: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: That's so evident. Okay, lightning round of questions.
Shannon Watts: Sure.
Jennifer Tracy: Ocean or desert?
Shannon Watts: Ocean.
Jennifer Tracy: Favorite junk food?
Shannon Watts: Ice cream.
Jennifer Tracy: Movies or Broadway show?
Shannon Watts: Broadway show.
Jennifer Tracy: Texting or talking?
Shannon Watts: Texting.
Jennifer Tracy: Cat person or dog person?
Shannon Watts: Dog. I used to be cat, now I'm dog.
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting.
Shannon Watts: Yeah, that was another thing I've changed my mind about. I should have used that answer.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. There are so many things, right?
Shannon Watts: Seems less serious than the death penalty.
Jennifer Tracy: Both great answers. Have you ever worn a unitard?
Shannon Watts: Certainly, in the '80s, who didn't? We all did. Danskin, anyone?
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, Danskin, oh my gosh. Shower or bathtub?
Shannon Watts: Bathtub, always.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Ice cream or chocolate?
Shannon Watts: Chocolate ice cream, can I go with that?
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, you can. Yummy. Oh my god, what is going on out there? There's just wailing things ...
Shannon Watts: It's like they're like ...
Jennifer Tracy: ... back and forth.
Shannon Watts: Are they out there or out here?
Jennifer Tracy: I think they're out there because there's an alley way. It's so funny because they put me in this room because it's quiet or it's not ...
Shannon Watts: Of course, not any ...
Jennifer Tracy: ... They had a pool and everything.
Shannon Watts: Yes, exactly.
Jennifer Tracy: On a scale of 1 to 10, how good are you at ping-pong?
Shannon Watts: I have to practice and then I'm really good. I'm going to say seven.
Jennifer Tracy: Nice. What's your biggest pet peeve?
Shannon Watts: I can't even tell you how many times a day I'm asked, why are you involved in this when we're losing on this issue? It's a little of like groundhog's day. It's an important role to play to explain that we're not losing all the time. I get asked that question a lot.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, yeah. I just asked it earlier ...
Shannon Watts: No.
Jennifer Tracy: ... asking do you ever feel defeated but I didn't mean ... It was a general.
Shannon Watts: You gave me an opening to explain how we weren't, but people really ... In media, for example, I argued with Chris Quimbo all weekend after the Virginia Beach shooting on Twitter because he said Americans don't have the will to fix this issue. Can you imagine any other issue that killed 100 Americans a day and people would be fatalistic about it? Just frustrating, that and people who snore.
Jennifer Tracy: Top two. If you could push a button and it would make everyone in the world 7% happier but it would also place a worldwide ban on all hairstyling products, would you push it?
Shannon Watts: Does that include Velcro rollers? As long as I can have Velcro rollers, because that's not really a hairstyling product, that's a tool.
Jennifer Tracy: I really think I just fell in love with you fully. That was the best ever.
Shannon Watts: I do Velcro rollers every day of my life since the '80s when they had the spongy ones.
Jennifer Tracy: Really?
Shannon Watts: Now, I use ... They're really important. I'm going to feel bad for that whole 7% of the population if that's considered a product.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, it's everyone in the world would be 7% ... Just 7% though.
Shannon Watts: If you're going to take my Velcro rollers away, that's an absolutely not.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, and what you're doing, the percentage is going to be way higher with the progress you're already making in my opinion.
Shannon Watts: They'll be alive. They'll be alive or just happy.
Jennifer Tracy: Right, and probably feel a lot safer just in general.
Shannon Watts: They'll have full hair. We'll all have full hair, volume.
Jennifer Tracy: Super power choice, invisibility, ability to fly, or super strength?
Shannon Watts: I love invisibility. That would be so fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Would you rather have ... This is a weird question, I lose some people on this one but I got to be a little weird ...
Shannon Watts: I'm putting all my focus on it.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay. Would you rather have six fingers on both hands or a bellybutton that looks like foreskin?
Shannon Watts: Six fingers, that's deserving.
Jennifer Tracy: See?
Shannon Watts: Does anyone answer differently?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Shannon Watts: Oh god.
Jennifer Tracy: I didn't ask you the other weird question so I'll tell you.
Shannon Watts: I won't even ask how you came up with that.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm weird. I like to be weird. It's called the MILF podcast. I have to be a little edgy. What was the name of your first pet?
Shannon Watts: Little Kitty, not very original. That was her name when we got her at the pound.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, but you must have been a child.
Shannon Watts: I was, yeah, and then Little Kitty met a very tragic demise but she's my first pet.
Jennifer Tracy: Shannon, you're amazing. What you're doing is amazing.
Shannon Watts: Thank you.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm so inspired by you and I just have so much respect for you. Thank you for coming onto the show.
Shannon Watts: Well, it's an honor to be here and to meet you.
Jennifer Tracy: Same. Thank you so much for listening, guys. I really hope you enjoyed my conversation with Shannon Watts. Join me next week for a fresh episode of MILF podcast and don't forget to head on over to clutchgifts.com and use your special exclusive MILF discount with the code MILF15. I love you guys. Keep going. See you next time.