Anti-gun march 'looking for good moms'
April 12 2000 at 11:01AM
Short Hills, New Jersey - It took an unforgettable image of young children escaping a racist gunman to transform Donna Dees-Thomases from a wealthy suburban mother into a grassroots activist.
The image was from August 10, when a white supremacist opened fire on a Jewish Community Centre in Granada Hills, California.
Dees-Thomases was flipping channels when she saw the video of children the same age as her daughters crossing the street hand-in-hand with police officers.
"These were my kids crossing the street," Dees-Thomases said. "My kids go to a JCC. Anybody could walk in. It was just crazy."
One week later, Dees-Thomases registered a website, and launched the Million Mom March campaign. The grassroots effort is expected to become the nation's largest gun control demonstration to date.
The Mother's Day rally on May 14 is expected to draw 100 000 people to the National Mall in Washington, DC. Other demonstrations are scheduled in 20 cities nationwide, including Tulsa, Oklahoma, Los Angeles, Denver and Portland, Oregon.
The group is pressing congress for stricter gun control legislation, including measures to require all handgun owners to be licensed and registered, require built-in child safety locks and limit handgun purchases to one a month.
"Mothers are certainly an important voice in this debate, and they are a voice that has not been very strong until this point," said Shannon Frattaroli, researcher at the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University.
"We have yet to see really a grass roots movement in this area, and maybe that's what is needed in order to change voting behaviour."
National Rifle Association (NRA) spokesperson Bill Powers said the organisation was unconcerned about the appeal of the May 14 rally.
"It is one of the great freedoms of America to express oneself politically," he said. The NRA is a powerful lobbying group representing gun owners and opposes most gun control legislation.
Prior to the Granda Hills shooting, Dees-Thomases considered herself rather apolitical. Today, her cluttered basement office in this wealthy suburban community is adorned by bright pink posters and T-shirts reading, "We're looking for a few good moms."
Dees-Thomases, a part-time publicist for David Letterman's late-night talk show, chose the name Million Mom March to borrow on the success of the Million Man March rally for black empowerment in Washington in 1995, and the subsequent Million Youth March.
The campaign has grown - mostly by word of mouth - to at least 500 mothers working out of their homes and out of an office in Washington, DC.
Organisers have recruited marchers by calling parent-teacher groups, churches, synagogues and women's groups for support, Dees-Thomases said.
"It is a true instinct of mothers protecting their children," she said. "I think it is totally primitive."
The group also has received a $300 000 (about R1,98-million) grant from the Funders' Collective for Gun Violence Prevention, part of the nonprofit Open Society Institute established by billionaire George Soros. It also sells T-shirts for $25, the same price as an annual NRA membership.
"This is just common sense. These are handguns," she said. "This is just stuff that should have been done 25 years ago."
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