Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam was inspired to run for office in North Carolina after three of her friends were killed by a neighbor in 2015.
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Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam was inspired to run for office in North Carolina after three of her friends were killed by a neighbor in 2015.
Image of Melissa Sue Gerrits / Getty
Earlier this year, gun control group Everytown launched a new program to train its volunteers to run for office. More than 100 people are participating Need a seat This year.
Among them are Mia Livas Porter, who is running for a California Congressional seat, and her brother, Junior, who took his own life with a gun after battling mental illness. She said that for years she felt helpless – but that changed when she joined Moms Demand Action, an offshoot of Everytown.
“I feel empowered to use my voice like a survivor. And I’ve seen how it can make legislative change,” said Livas Porter.
2021 has been an extremely deadly year for gun violence, with more than 42,000 people killed in the United States to date, according to Non-profit gun violence archive. In big cities and small towns, in grocery stores, schools and homes, people’s lives have been cut short by gunfire. And like Livas Porter, some people whose lives have been changed by gun violence are stepping up to run for public office.
“Running for election can be very isolating. So for me it was like coming home to share this experience with fellow moms and Everytown volunteers and some of the survivors and so on. it really brought me back to my base,” said Livas Porter.
Training and mentoring
Participants in the Request a Seat program are trained in the basics of running a campaign, building and delivering messages, and raising funds. They also receive guidance and advice from current elected officials, including Georgia Representative Lucy McBath, herself a former Mothers Needs Action volunteer.
“I’m a mother, but I’m a mother on duty. I don’t want anyone else in this country to have to endure the pain, suffering and tragic loss we have to endure. ,” said McBath, who became an activist after her son, Jordan, was shot dead in 2012.
Congressman Lucy McBath, D-Ga., became an activist after her son Jordan was shot dead in 2012.
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Congressman Lucy McBath, D-Ga., became an activist after her son Jordan was shot dead in 2012.
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Six years later, when a gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland Fla., it spurred McBath to run for Congress. She was first elected to her suburban Atlanta seat in 2018.
“If we win, then I’ll do everything in my power in Washington to raise this issue in a way that no one in Congress can turn their backs on the countless deaths in this country every day.” “McBath said. “I know why I’m there.”
Everytown, of which Moms Demand Action is an affiliate, spent about $55 million in the 2020 election.
“Many legislators have not been able to address this crisis for a long time,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Mothers Needs Action. “We really want to replace those people with candidates who have a proven track record of standing up in the gun lobby, standing up for gun safety and winning.”
Although Democrats hold a slim majority in both houses of Congress, even gun control proposals with bipartisan support among voters, like universal background checks and red flag laws, do not. gain traction.
“This country has a huge gun culture problem,” said Maxwell Frost, who is running for an Orlando-area seat in Congress.
‘Victim-centered, victim-led and sensitive to inmates’
Frost became active in the anti-gun violence movement while in high school, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead.
He served as national director of March For Our Lives, a group led by student survivors of the Parkland shootings, and says lawmakers need to look at the country’s gun violence problem. in a new way.
“You think, what do we need to do to end gun violence? Universal background checks, assault weapons bans and these are important. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to fight like hell. for these things once I’m a member of Congress. But this is what the NRA is believing in and we’re just making three of the same policy points and hoping they’ll pass.”
Kina Collins, a longtime gun violence activist, says policymakers aren’t saying enough about the conditions that lead to gun violence. She is challenging Democratic Representative Danny Davis in a county that includes parts of Chicago.
“Shooters in these communities are born not wanting to be shooters. Society makes them shooters and circumstances make them shooters,” she said. “And so how are we investing in prevention instead of response?”
Collins says she’s running for Congress, because she believes the movement to end gun violence must be “victim-centered, survivor-led, and offender-sensitive.”
“And some people say, ‘What does it mean to be insensitive to offenders?’ That means in places like Chicago, where we experience gun violence every day, the shooters live right next to the victims,” she said. “And my whole job is to make sure that I’m bringing an alternate approach to the conversation and hitting the root cause of these problems, which is poverty and the many other problems that lead to this problem. violence and lack of guns daily access to health care.”
A different kind of violence inspired Nida Allam to run for office.
In 2015, Her three friends were killed by a neighbor at their apartment complex in Chapel Hill, NC. The victims were all young Muslim students.
While it is not charged as such, the victim’s family and friends described it as a hateful crime. For Allam, it was a catalyst – and made her think.
“And that’s really what makes me so angry and frustrated because, you know, Muslim life doesn’t seem to be valued or important,” she said. “I started looking at, what kind of protection does our state really have against these types of attacks?”
She began urging her state legislature to pass a hate crime prevention law “so that we can really report and document these types of threats accurately, so that no one else has to.” lose a child”. She ran for Durham County commissioner and won, and is currently running for Congress.
“That’s where my organizing really started to take off, and look, what do other elected officials say about Muslims?” Allam said. “We are constantly being fired and stalked, and that contributes to the violence against us.”
Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, says that gun violence survivors bring something unique to their campaigns.
“Gun violence survivors have put their pain into action, whether it’s being active or running for office,” she said. “They really forced others to face human numbers of gun violence.”
