Many Actions Save Many Lives

Senator Blunt with Missouri RESULTS volunteers

"Good luck finding anyone in Missouri who cares about global poverty!"

"Don't even bother with asking Senator Blunt for anything."

"You have no idea what you've moved into."

That's what friends and family told me when I moved to St. Louis two years ago. I'd been living in Chicago for over 10 years advocating on global poverty issues like polio vaccines, and girls' education. Because my former members of Congress (Senator Durbin, Senator Kirk, and Representative Jan Schakowksy) were leaders who understood the value of helping people lift themselves out of poverty for the benefit of everyone, Illinois was a great training ground for a nervous new activist. But when I moved to Missouri, a chorus of well-meaning negativity insisted I'd alone in my hopeless mission to sway legislators in my newly adopted state to save lives of children in extreme poverty.

So, why is it that last week Senator Blunt agreed to co-sign a global polio vaccine bill in just 24 hours with only one email request form me?

The short answer is: Because that request was one action on top of many different kinds of coordinated actions taken by many kinds of people.

After hearing quite enough about how I'd never get Senator Blunt to sign onto anything, I decided I would take all the best advice I'd learned from RESULTS, Shot@Life, Bread for the World, and the ONE Campaign to advocate using ALL our best practices, including:

• Seeking out and building relationships with like-minded organizations before I ever started advocating
• Enlisting community leaders to help me invite people to outreach events in order to find allies
• Offering actions of varying advocacy levels (one-click computer activism, handwriting paper letters, writing letters to the editor, face-to-face lobby visits, etc) to people of different demographics so everyone can play
• Building up personal relationships with congressional aides by visiting both in-district and DC office staff at least twice a year with plenty of phone calls and emails in between
• Using my mommy super-powers to hold letter-writing events for children and parents & get a lot of cute, attention-grabbing kid-letters to Congress
• Seeking out "grasstops" community leaders like clergy, doctors, and teachers to lend their voices

"GLAH!" I hear you say. "That sounds like a lot of work!" Yes, yes it is. But it's totally worth it. But don't take my word for it, listen to my daughters and their thoughts on why taking multiple actions is worth the effort. They would know. They've seen this work dozens of times on a number of issues...umm...maybe not the issue of songbirds in zoos, but just take a look and bear with her example:

Little Sister: "I think that it makes a bigger impact in the world. If you think that robins should be in zoos - I'm just making this up - but if you think that robins should be in zoos and you write a letter to Congress and just ship it out there. It's out there and senators might send you a letter back saying, 'I will watch this bill.'" 

Big Sister: "They do that every time, I get emails saying 'I will watch this bill...Dear Citizen, I will watch this bill' " 

Little Sister: "But if someone comes in and physically talks to them and then hands in a bunch of letters from kids and adults and everyone is posting it on media and everyone's agreeing with this. And you send letters, more letters and things from Girl Scout troops and meeting them in person. It's sort of going like...the senators and representatives might get in trouble if they DON'T." 

Big Sister: "Because people won't vote for them. And robins will be in zoos..."

Okay...robins and zoos aside...for the last six months, I've led efforts to contact the senator about vaccines. Adults and children wrote letters about global vaccines. We got several letters-to-the-editor and an op-ed printed in the local paper. We directed tweets and phone calls to them and sat down in multiple meetings with staff. We even invited Blunt to attend and make remarks at  foreign aid hearing with Bill Gates talking about vaccines! (He totally attended and here is a YouTube video of his remarks.) 

With all that time-consuming, unglamorous ground work done, I now have enough of a network and reputation to be effective and I've also found out that Senator Blunt was supportive of other kinds of global health funding all along (namely, HIV/AIDS programs). That means that when the Senate Resolution 108 to gather support for global polio vaccinations came around last week, Blunt's aides already knew:
1) I am a reputable person working with good organizations making a reasonable ask, and 
2) There is a good amount of constituent support for the issue. 
So, Senator Blunt could feel comfortable giving us an immediate yes on this bi-partisan bill. This is a big breakthrough for me to get 24 hour positive turnaround on a request!! 

I used all my tips and tricks to get Senator Blunt's attention, but what it comes down to is persistently using many actions to build relationships and trust. It's putting in early work to build relationships with congressional staff, so I have their ears when I have an important request.

Don't feel disheartened if you're also trying to get your senator to sign S. Res. 108 for support of polio programs and you don't yet have this relationship. View your current request as one more step in a chain of actions that will help you to get to know every congressional staffer as an individual person. You may get the breakthrough on this request or a future one, but every action builds on the last...especially if you are persistent and remember to build those personal relationships!

Now, if you didn't already know, this blog is one of several written by Shot@Life champions for Advocate 2 Vaccinate, a coast-to-coast challenge for global vaccination that coincides with World Immunization Week (April 24-30). I am pleased to be joining several of them in a blog relay. Here’s the lineup, so you can check out what my fellow mom-advocates have to say about global vaccines this week!

Friday, April 24: Jennifer DeFranco with Let the Relay Begin…S@L, A2V, and Me! 

Friday, April 24: Nicole Morgan with Want to be a Super Hero?

Saturday, April 25: Nicolette Springer with Advocate to Vaccinate: You Can Be a Champion! 

April 26 – Pam Brown Margolis with It’s World Immunization Week! Let’s Keep My Little Readers Healthy #vaccineswork #WIW15 and ME!

April 27 – Cindy Levin with Many Actions Save Many Lives

April 28 – Anne Parris of Not a SuperMom

April 29 – Ilina Ewen of Dirt and Noise

April 30 – Andrea Bates of Good Girl Gone Redneck

Mother's Day Gift Picks 2015

Mother's Day is coming up and if you're like me, you may be casting about looking for ideas. Here are a few of my favorites of the moment right now that will keep you away from aimlessly wandering a commercial shopping mall and help you find a gift that will also lift someone out of poverty or do some other good for the world!

Photo Credit: World Moms Blog

"Clean Birth" Mother's Day Card

What's more adorable than a card that has the sub-text, "Hey, mom, I'm really glad we both survived the birthing process!" ? When you choose a $20 card in a customized, hand-stamped bag, four moms and 4 babies receive infection-preventing birth supplies to help save both their lives. CleanBirth.org supplies these simple kits and training for nurses in remote areas in Laos where becoming a mother can be a dangerous activity. See the World Moms Blog post about the Clean Birth Mother's Day campaign for more details.

Photo credit: Purpose Jewelry

Necklaces from PurposeJewelry.org
"Purpose" jewelry is handcrafted by survivors of modern-day slavery. This organization is linked with International Sanctuary, a non-profit that provides holistic care for young women rescued from sex trafficking. 100% of the proceeds from this jewelry benefit the employment of survivors. My favorite designs are "Journey," "Unity," and "Infinity." There are also lovely packaged Mother's Day sets available with the Unity design necklace.

Photo credit: FashionAble

Red + White "Game Day" Scarf from FashionABLE

Ok, I know that I put the Game Day scarf on my Christmas recommendations last year, but this bears repeating for three reasons.

1. I did not receive one for Christmas (ahem)
2. FashionABLE is about creating sustainable businesses for women in Africa to lift themselves from poverty with dignity
3. There are so many colors that a stylish mom-activist can buy it to match the branded color of her issue or organization. I would like one in RESULTS red and white!

California Organic Flowers

You just can't go wrong with flowers...unless the flowers you give mom are ripe with the smell of human rights violations! Eek! These beauties are good for the environment and are cared for on a small farm where workers earn a fair wage before mom gets her hands on them. You might have to order them a little more ahead of time than calling the local florist the day before Mother's Day, but you'll be assured that you're not oppressing other mothers while paying homage to your own mom.









"Game of Thrones" Pottery Mugs...or any artisan pottery, really...

My favorite Ash and Griffen plate

If Mom is a Game of Thrones fan and fancies herself a Stark wolf, a Lannister lion, a Baratheon stag, or even a Mormont Bear, then the women of Ash & Griffin Pottery can hook you up! They have all sorts of mugs hearkening of earlier or fantasy times...all of a very decent coffee holding size. Actually, these ladies make all kinds of beautiful and whimsical things. But this suggestion isn't just about them. I urge everyone to consider buying from local artisans who make their living through their art. Chances are that most of the the people who make art for the love of it in your community aren't rolling in the dough. I strongly believe that handcrafted art is a benefit to our society as a whole and I feel like people shouldn't have to live in poverty to make beautiful things. So, find an artist your mother would like and make them both happy this year! (Photo credits: Ash & Griffin)

Not enough ideas? Maybe we don't share tastes? Well, take a look at Busy Mommy's post about 150+ Companies with Fair Trade, Buy One Give One Products or Who Donate a Portion of Proceeds. Surely you can find something in there! I can't vouch for those products I haven't used, but at least these companies are doing good and saving your mother from a receiving a blender for all the hard work she put into raising you!

Spelling Out P-R-I-V-I-L-E-G-E

Ever since the death of young African-American Mike Brown and the subsequent rioting in Ferguson this summer, I've been struggling here in St. Louis to find a way to talk to my kids about race privilege and economic privilege in a way they can truly understand. You see, as I talked about in my World Mom's Blog post - #Ferguson is Closer Than We Think - we are geographically only about a half hour drive from the city of Ferguson, but in a practical sense, my kids live in a different reality than the kids going to school there. Unexpectedly, I think I've stumbled upon the perfect illustration for their comprehension level: the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

2015 MO/IL Regional Spelling Bee finalists await 

their next challenge.

Each year across the USA, approximately 10 million children participate in a school spelling bee sponsored by their local paper and sanctioned by the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The winners of the school bee generally participate in a regional bee. The regional bee for our area in 2015 involved 250 children who were whittled down to 32 via a written spelling test. Those 32 competed in an oral spelling bee and our winner will continue onto Washington DC to represent our area among almost 300 students competing for the #1 rank, which will come with fame and fortune. (I think $40,000 is pretty much "fortune" for most middle school-aged kids)

At first blush, it seems like spelling is an even playing field. After all, no one is excluded from participating and either you spell the words right or you don't. The kids all start with the same spelling list to memorize at the school level and everyone can have access to the official Scripp's spelling bee dictionary (Webster's 3rd Edition Unabridged) from which the regional words are pulled. But it doesn't take too much thought or imagination to realize it's not an even playing field at all. Can a child of a racial minority who lives in poverty win the bee? Of course. Would a child of such a background have a much tougher time? Definitely.

I was happy I could coach and accompany my daughter all the way through to our regional spelling bee level. As she dreamed of what it might be like to hold the trophy, I did what a good coach would do...thought about the probabilities of her getting there and what kind of preparation would help her get to her goal. I bought her a dictionary. We researched together to find helpful spelling lists. We spent hours looking up pronunciations and drilling words. I bought her a few resource books and signed her up for an online training tool. We had fun together with her new project, but the more time, energy, and dollars I sunk into it, the more I suspected that some other competitors might not be having the same experience. 

Sure, it seems like everyone has the same resources - a dictionary, the internet, and word lists from Scripps - but here is the reality:

• I've given my kid access to a dictionary and a computer at home, so she doesn't have to be limited in the hours she can study at a school or public library
• I'm a work-from-home mom with a very flexible work schedule. I have time to learn about spelling coaching and train with her in the evenings
• I hold a master's degree and am currently a writer. I love words. I know how to study. Because my PhD parents gave me the gift of a great education, I have the skills to show her how to study well and love words, too.
• My child has been surrounded by books since birth and has always gone to schools where she has been challenged by loving teachers who do their jobs well.
• My child has been surrounded by other students who like to learn, too. She has never been made fun of by other students for seeming too "brainy"

My suspicions of inequality were confirmed when I chatted with a teacher at our Saturday regional semi-finals who was very kind and supportive of my nervous first-time participant. In our pre-competition chit-chat, I discovered she was chaperoning a busload of students from the Ferguson-Florissant school district. For goodness sake, in addition to the chronic hunger and other poverty issues they have to deal with all the time, those kids didn't even get to start school until 2 weeks after we did because of the violence in their community! I told the teacher that I hoped her students did well and I truly meant it. I would love for her district to be in the paper for something positive.

I'm not the first one to discover a microcosm of privilege in the world of the Scripps Bee. The issue is evident in two movies about the Scripps Bee: Akeelah and the Bee and Spellbound. In the fictional Akeelah and the Bee, the main character is an African American girl who overcomes a crumbling family support system, a failed school, taunting from other students, and lack of resources to follow her spelling dreams. Spellbound is a documentary without Akeelah's Hollywood happy ending where the filmmakers follow the triumphs and disappointments of eight teenagers from different backgrounds. Family culture, support, and economic status play a big part in this true-life drama.

So...it's not fair. Life isn't fair. Should we walk away from it or can we make it at least more fair? What should my daughter and I take away from this? Economic and race privilege is a thorny systematic issue that can't be solved by one person and her kid. But as for me, I'm not one to do nothing just because I can't do everything. 

Here's my plan. In the short term, I'm going to keep fighting for programs that benefit low-income Americans like SNAP (food stamp) and school lunch funding...because if a student is hungry, she can't develop and focus properly nor learn to her fullest potential. In the long term, I'm going to figure out - with my own daughter as a guinea pig - how to be a good spelling coach. As we make up our cards and resources, I'm going to figure out how to do this, so I can become a good tutor and coach to some kids who don't have anyone to do that for them. 

I can't to everything, but I can do some things...especially the things I'm good at...so that's what I intend to do.