No Need to Riot...We Need to Organize!

Image: Cindy phonebanking from home

Image: Tweet from AJ B Bosamcmugu saying
"Well, hot girl summer just became riot girl summer."

Not so many months ago, I used to see a lot of posts from women saying things like, "If they overturn Roe, we riot!" When Roe Vs. Wade was overturned and dangerous abortion bans swiftly went into place, there was a lot of "We ride at dawn!" type memes. Indeed, there were protests! People like me stretched comfort levels and hit the streets. But gradually, the crowds dwindled even as the effects of abortion bans started affecting the lives of women across the country. I think most people just got frustrated and didn't know what to do anymore.

I'm personally glad the calls to riot were not literal, but am disappointed the protests fizzled out. We still need to capture our outrage and direct it toward change. What if there were a way we could harness all this energy we feel about abortion bans, gun violence, poverty, and inaction on climate change, that did NOT require massive protests or arrestable offenses? People who know me might think I'm about to say "advocate" or "vote," but no...right now, I'm telling you to ORGANIZE for elections.

My friends, we are smack in the middle of that special, magical time of year called Election Season, when we can actually affect who we will advocate to over the next few years. As a longtime advocate, I can tell you it's a heck of a lot easier to lobby someone who agrees with your basic values. 

Image: Cindy canvassing for gun sense 
candidates with Moms Demand volunteers

I'd also like to say with all kinds of redistricting going on around the country plus the shenanigans we've seen in the last years to discourage fair voting practices, it's not enough just to show up on Election Day and cast your own vote. Each of us needs to double, triple, or quintuple our influence by convincing others to turn out to volunteer sessions and polls. Like Georgia organizers did in the races for Senators Ossof and Warnock, we have to make up for votes that will be lost due to people not being aware that they are now in a different district or don't know the rules for valid absentee voting. For instance, absentee votes in Missouri must be notarized to be valid or they get tossed out! We're not just trying to win with all the votes that are cast, we need to win with all the votes that are counted.

No matter where you are, these are the kinds of things that always need doing in campaign offices:

• Canvassing neighborhoods handing out literature with your kids or your friends
• Phonebanking from the comfort of your home with tasty snacks and your favorite music
• Addressing postcards in an office with others or at home watching Netflix
• Distributing yard signs
• Throwing a house party fundraising event for a candidate you believe in

Image: Cindy and friend addressing postcards

You might also find that your local office appreciates other skills, like the time I volunteered for an office full of high-school and college-aged organizers. They all came to call me "Mom" as I brought them homemade, healthy food and fussed at them to take breaks. You can even use some of your advocacy skills like writing letters to the editor to tell your community why you support your favorite candidates!

Here's a fact that never gets talked about too much...volunteering for campaigns can be fun, too! You're bound to find other like-minded voters there, which can be a big deal if you live in a neighborhood where most people have different political views from you. Today, I went down to the Trudy Busch Valentine senate campaign office to address postcards to donors. I was happy to see a familiar volunteer who worked with me years ago for other candidates!

One last thing: When you start to think, "Gosh, I don't have the time this week," consider those volunteer hours to be a very low cost to secure your bodily autonomy. Think of them as a bargain price for protecting democracy. Isn't writing postcards or walking a local neighborhood with friends way more fun than gathering 1,000 people to drive to your nearest city center for yet another protest? Isn't it WAY more convenient than doing something that gets you arrested for your cause?

Image: Trudy Busch Valentine speaks to a
West County St. Louis audience

Don't know where to start? Begin by rounding up friends and bringing them to a campaign event. Be vocal, clap like crazy, and meet the candidates. Tell them what you hope they will do for you. Your enthusiasm will help build momentum among the crowd! Make sure you and your buds sign up on the ever-present volunteer forms and make a donation if you can. Any campaign worth its salt will contact you quickly with a list of more things you can do. 

Image: Cindy and Cori Bush with 
a copy of "From Changing Diapers 
to Changing the World"

St Louis folks, I invite you to join me Sunday, October 2nd at the opening of the Webster Groves field office for Trudy Busch Valentine and Saturday, October 8 for a rally and voter registration drive with Congresswoman Cori Bush. Trudy is our pro-choice, gun sense candidate for Missouri's U.S. Senate seat this year. Rep. Cori Bush is a champion for reproductive rights, gun sense policy, and climate justice policies. I'll be there with friends and clapping like crazy! See below for details on upcoming campaign events for these two Missouri candidates.

Trudy Busch Valentine Field Office Opening

Sunday, Oct 2, 2022

12-1:30PM

7817 Big Bend Blvd

Webster Groves, MO 63119

Register to attend: https://mobilize.us/s/sspMkG

Roe the Vote with Cori Bush- STL County

Saturday, Oct 8, 2022

10AM-12PM

Location private, register to find out

Register at this link to attend

Roe the Vote with Cori Bush- St Charles

Saturday, Oct 8, 2022

1-3 PM

Location private, register to find out

Register at this link to attend

Roe the Vote with Cori Bush- STL City

Monday, Oct 10, 2022

5-7 PM

Location private, register to find out

Register at this link to attend

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Activist Profile: Laura Frisch of Moms Demand Action

Image: Laura Frish (photo by Laura Frisch)

The following is an excerpt from my book, "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started." In addition to stories and quotes from mom-advocates, my book features six mothers in particular whose stories highlight different aspects of advocacy. Laura Frisch, a volunteer for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is one of those powerful women. In this section, I invite everyone to consider how to be more inclusive and build stronger communities.

PROFILE: LAURA FRISCH

BUILDING COMMUNITY

Although I have known Laura Frisch for more than fifteen years, I remain amazed at how she uses every opportunity to exponentially group efforts for good and to build up the community around her in positive ways. Frankly, I both admire and fear her abilities because she pushes the boundaries of my own comfort zone. Knowing Laura has made me a bolder organizer.

As a mom of young children, Laura skillfully created a fun and welcoming community for her friends and neighbors; she carried those skills into her local schools and later into troubled Chicago neighborhoods. Now she works to foster a nationwide community that can create a safer place for all. 

When we were both raising little ones in Morton Grove, Illinois, Laura’s house was a swirling epicenter of neighborhood activity. Two kids and four dogs made for a bustling home on the quietest of days, and her door was always open to welcome friends and their kids for anything from an impromptu backyard picnic to a messy tie-dye T-shirt session. 

To Laura, anything worth doing with two friends was worth doing with ten friends! She was so comfortable in the chaos that her first instinct was always to ask, “How can we include more people? How do we make this open and accessible for everyone?” This tendency was both a challenge and an inspiration to an introvert like me, who generally wanted to keep things comfortable and cozy for myself. Yet I knew that whenever I wanted to rally the Morton Grove community, Laura was the secret ingredient for cooking up any of my schemes. 

For example, I once thought it would be good to replace the school’s annual wrapping paper fundraiser with a walkathon so our kids could do something healthy instead of generating more disposable waste. I laid my idea at Laura’s feet. Before I knew it, we had a school day set aside for a walkathon and a volunteer committee of parents scurrying to find sponsors, collect donations, and judge a T-shirt design contest. 

Laura didn’t stop there. She arranged for a school for students with emotional or physical challenges to participate in our walkathon and to share in the proceeds, too. That school had significant financial needs but no parent organization to raise money. Laura took my idea and made it bigger. More inclusive. More accessible. I moved away from Illinois in 2013, but I kept in touch with Laura, and I wasn’t surprised when she became involved with a nationwide advocacy group in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Laura, who had been teaching a park district preschool class on the day of the shooting, said, “It was like Pearl Harbor Day. I distinctly remember I was working in one of those little one-room schoolhouses. No protection there. I thought about how I’ve had incidents where divorced parents tried to pick up kids without authority and I had to call the police.” In those times of conflict, it had only been Laura and two helpers caring for fifteen preschoolers. No security backup. 

The thought of what could happen if an armed person came with the intent to harm her or her class prompted her to join the Facebook group of Shannon Watts, an Indiana stay-at-home mom who felt compelled to take action after the Sandy Hook massacre. Shannon started a nationwide discussion among mothers about how Americans could and should do more to reduce gun violence. This impromptu group went viral and eventually became Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. It’s now a widespread grassroots movement of Americans who are fighting for public safety measures to reduce gun violence. Members advocate for stronger gun laws and work to close loopholes that jeopardize public safety. They also work in their own communities and with business leaders to encourage a culture of responsible gun ownership. 

Image: Missouri Moms Demand Action advocates
at 2020 lobby day in Jefferson City, MO
Photo by Becky Morgan

Nowadays, Moms Demand Action is an advocacy juggernaut that inspires seas of supporters in read T-shirts to descend upon state legislatures to promote "gun sense" legislation. The organization has at least one chapter in every state and over eight million supporters. But Laura was there in the early days when Moms Demand Action consisted of small pockets of moms around the country who were simply trying to start conversations about gun safety.

“We were a total ragtag little team of people who started out saying, ‘Let’s talk about it at our PTO meetings’ and turned it into ‘Let’s find out how to lobby,’” she recalled. At the time, she had no idea how big the movement would become or that she would bring the Moms Demand organization to the whole North Shore area of Chicago. 

In addition to Laura, several Moms Demand members lived in Chicago or its suburbs, and one of them learned a mother had been killed while protecting her child from a drive-by shooting. So, a couple of nearby members went to sit in solidarity with neighbors on the Englewood corner where that mother had been shot. Laura believes it’s important to know that Moms Demand volunteers went with a spirit of partnership to places where allies were already working against gun violence, rather than simply showing up after a shooting for a photo op. “It’s more like, when there was a group there already, they’d say, ‘Come and help,’ and we’d show up to support each other.” 

In Englewood, what began as a small vigil on a corner started by Tamar Manasseh of MASK, Mothers and Men Against Senseless Killings, soon blossomed into a regular event the community could count on for safety. The gatherings went like this: Take char- coal and food for seventy-five people to a local park. Bring along a local Lutheran pastor, Islamic leaders, and Jewish congregants. Get together and talk to people in a block-party setting. Feed everyone. The atmosphere was energizing and loving. On these block party nights, kids in the neighborhood knew this would be a safe spot where they could get something to eat, which was important because many of the kids were food insecure. Laura would set up a face-painting table, something she often did for events at her synagogue and the Morton Grove Farmers’ Market. Her face painting gave kids a chance to sit down with a safe adult for one-on-one time, helping them build positive memories of being a kid. 

Moms Demand volunteers in Chicago continue to work with local groups organizing these kinds of gatherings to provide whatever is needed. They strive to make these areas feel safer and to help children escape the fear they carry with them. Members also listen to kids tell stories of the people they have lost. 

Laura’s role with Moms Demand Action grew as the organization addressed more state and national initiatives, including speaking to legislators and supporting a campaign to spread safety awareness among gun owners. But she still makes time to go back to that same Englewood gathering, which never stopped trying to make that corner a safe place to be. Even though MASK runs the event on its own, Laura still goes twice a year, bringing more people with her each time. 

“It’s hot and there’s very little shade,” Laura admitted. “It’s a schlep down there, but we go back every year. Every single time I’m thinking, ‘This is affecting people in a positive way,’ so I keep going.” 

When she reflected upon how the organization has expanded from the eclectic group of volunteers who gathered in the early days, Laura said, “Moms Demand was the sorority everyone could join. Of course, it’s serious business. Many people joined because they lost a child or loved one to gun violence, so it wasn’t all fun with sisters. But everyone was welcome.” 

Baking this kind of inclusiveness into the organization’s culture has helped it grow and gain power. With a problem as widespread as gun violence, it’s important to get all kinds of allies on board to create and run safety campaigns and encourage the election of gun-sense candidates. They may have started as a bunch of moms, but those moms knew they needed to enlist the help of dads, kids, hunters, gun-toting grandmas, members of Congress, and even conservative news pundits. 

Not long after my 2019 conversation with Laura, conservative CNN host S. E. Cupp—nationally known as an outspoken supporter of the National Rifle Association (NRA)—announced on air that she had dropped her NRA membership in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. In an impassioned speech, she spoke in favor of legislative measures that Moms Demand advocates had promoted for years: universal background checks, bans on the sale of large drums of ammunition, and measures to prevent domestic abusers from having access to guns. Just four years earlier, Cupp had appeared in an advertisement as a self-proclaimed “NRA mom” who urged others to join the NRA. I don’t know whether Cupp will join Moms Demand, but I think she would find that sorority accepting of her. 

Building movements and organizing volunteers is hard. It can be messy when a lot of different personalities and viewpoints clash. But changing the world takes a wide diversity of voices and personalities, and we don’t always get to pick and choose who shows up to help. Laura understands that if we work only with people who look like us, shop like us, worship like us, and play like us, then we are not going to change much of anything at all. Her solution is to welcome everybody. 

When I asked what drives her sense of inclusivity, Laura denied suggestions that it came from her religion or early role models. Instead, she said, “I was lonely as a kid. I’m never going to make someone not be included. I’ve stood in those shoes and I’m not going to make anyone else stand in them.” 

Most of us have felt lonely and left out at times in our lives. Let’s channel those feelings as Laura does to make others feel more comfortable as we work together. Building inclusive movements is the greatest gift we can share to take powerful actions and help more people. 

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Global Food Systems: Seed to Plate and Everything In-Between

Image: Cynthia with a copy of her book "From Changing
Diapers to Changing the World" at Capitol Hill in DC

Today, I’m back on Capitol Hill with CARE talking about...drumroll please...food security! Although I often lobby Congress about nutrition, usually I’m talking about child nutrition in the first 1000 days of life. That is definitely part of food security, but it’s just one tiny aspect of the great big issue.

Image: Toddler eating carrots off a plate

What is Food Security?

Food security is all about strengthening food systems to help the world weather all kinds of crises. Food systems encompass everything from seed to plate and ALL that happens in between. 

The main legislation that authorizes the U.S. to do its part in protecting global food systems is called the Global Food Security Act (GFSA). In 2016, it put our Feed the Future program - which addressed root causes of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition - into law. That successful program lifted approximately 23.4 million people above the poverty line with its innovations! Yet it will expire soon and must be renewed by 2023. 

Image: Panelists at 2022 CARE conference talk about the 
importance of the Global Food Security Act

The Global Food Security Act focuses on long term sustainability and resilience of food systems. We have seen in the last two years how disruptions in food supply from disease or war can globally affect food access for the vulnerable and food price increases for everyone. Emergency food helps people eat now. Strengthening food systems helps build long term resilience for all kinds of future emergencies. 

Build a Better GFSA

We are at a real crisis point with food security. More people in the world were already food insecure even before COVID-19 and war in the Ukraine started. We need to build up food systems, so we won't be so vulnerable to these kinds of shocks as well as things we can't even yet imagine. 

How does CARE want to make the next Global Food Security Act even better? As always, we know that putting women and girls at the center will improve policies. CARE believes the next GFSA should include:

• More support for savings groups that help women and girls involved in agriculture become more independent

• More support for small-scale farmers, particularly women, giving them better access to markets, credits, tools, fertilizer, and other assets

• Better integration of nutrition into food systems programming, including elevating women as household decision-makers on nutrition. 

How Can YOU Help? 

Call your representative this week and say, “My name is ______ and I’m your constituent living in _____. A new Global Food Security Action will be introduced soon by Representatives Betty McCollum and Chris Smith. I am asking you to be an original co-sponsor to support food systems and help make our world more resilient to disasters like disease, climate disasters, and war. Thank you.”

Image: Cynthia with Congresswoman Cori Bush