"Million Mom March" Video: Blueprint for Social Organizing
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
Last year's "Million Mom March," organized in 75 locations on Mother's Day in the U.S. to build public support for stronger laws governing private gun use, was overwhelmingly successful by all accounts. The official 40-minute video of the event that attracted over 800,000 supporters, is a basic blueprint of how a social movement to prevent death and disability of children and young people was assembled in a matter of months.
What began as a one-time event to promote "Sensible Gun Laws, Safe Kids," by a small group of mothers who had lost their children to gun violence has mushroomed into a national, grassroots, 230 chapter-based organization of mothers and others working to improve U.S. gun laws. (Details: www.millionmommarch.org)
The video intersperses the testimony of mothers of all races with well-known mothers and daughters whose children, husbands and fathers were killed or disabled by gun violence: Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy; Sarah Brady whose husband Jim Brady, a presidential press secretary, was brain-injured in the 1981 attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan; and Courtney Love, widow of Curt Cobain, the singer who committed suicide with a shotgun provided to him by an acquaintance. Other outstanding speakers about the increasing gun violence among young people in the schools and in the streets include: Senator Max Cleland who spoke about how hard he had worked to forget the violence he witnessed in Vietnam only to find it seeping into everyday life at home; Dr. Michelle Ervin, a trauma center doctor in Washington, D.C., who described her job as telling parents their children are dead or permanently disabled and Dr. Antonia Novello, a former Surgeon General, who reminded the crowd that, "Statistics don't bleed but the children we represent do."
Many of the thousands of mothers who showed up from around the country and abroad carried posters or large photographs of children who had been killed or seriously disabled by gun violence. Some parents stressed how the wide availability of guns had contributed to the rising suicide rate among teens. Several made the point that this was the first event where they could both pay tribute to those they had lost and do something significant to make sense of their seemingly senseless experiences. This seemed to be the crucible of the rapidly building movement----there are thousands and thousands of people who, having survived their personal tragedy, are now looking for a way to contribute to serious, national efforts to reduce gun violence.
Another impassioned segment of the program was a small group of leaders of the main religions practiced in the U.S. An eloquent rabbi challenges the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association in particular, that would have us believe that violence in the mass media not lax gun laws is what is worsening the situation. He cited research in Canada, Germany and Japan where children and youths watch an equal amount of televised or filmed violence as do their peers in the U.S., but do not then go out and commit gun violence. The main difference is the restricted availability of guns in those countries.
Overall, this is a very well produced film, providing a balance among the vignettes about the participants, glimpses of the strategies behind the march, and solid information on the rise in U.S. gun violence and the political forces mitigating against solutions. The video is now available for $19.95 on the organization's website. Comprehensive information is available on the website such as international comparisons of types and rates of violence perpetrated, and details about many events planned by MMM for this year.
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