Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility - Join the National Movement!

Join the Launch March 17th at 3pm ET and join Grandmothers for Gun  Responsibility - just go to:  https://thegrandmothers.org/launch 

Margaret Heldring never imagined spending her retirement organizing to end gun violence. Yet following the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, Margaret - a retired psychologist - found herself leading what would become Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility—a movement that's redefining both how we approach gun safety and what it means to be an older woman activist in America today.

Sarah J. Dean, Advisory Council member, shares the organization's journey from a local Washington State group to a national movement launching with 400 attendees, and the way they are changing the narrative around the role of grandmothers, and the issue of gun responsibility.

The wisdom of their approach is striking.  The shift in perspective that comes with age is compelling, and the issue is undeniably urgent - you won't want to miss this conversation! 

Whether you're a grandmother yourself, someone concerned about gun violence, or interested in how older women's voices can transform social movements, this conversation is for you!  As Sarah beautifully states, "We have the right and responsibility to tell our stories and interpret who we are ourselves, rather than letting stereotypes interpret who we are."

Ready to challenge assumptions about both gun safety and grandmothers and become inspired and involved? Visit the website (and attend the launch!) to learn how you can get involved with this groundbreaking movement. https://thegrandmothers.org/

Transcript

Introduction to Wisdom at Work

Speaker 1 0:00

I'm Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work, older women, elder women and grandmothers on the move, the podcast that kicks old stereotypes to the curb. Come, meet these creative, outrageous, authentic, adventurous, irreverent and powerful disruptors and influencers older women and grandmothers from the living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life the living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life. Hi everyone, it's Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work Older Women, elder Women and Grandmothers on the Move podcast.

Speaker 1 0:34

And today I have a really special conversation with a group that I've been involved with Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility in the United States, and I have with us Margaret Heldring, who's the CEO of Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility, and Sarah Dean, who is on the Advisory Council and in a very exciting moment for the organization, which is really launching nationally and I'll give you information about that, how you can tune in and how you can be part of that launch but I thought in this moment it would be really wonderful and important actually to have a conversation with Margaret and Sarah about the group, its aspirations, what it's been doing over the years and how it's come to this moment and where is it going. We'll start with you, margaret, as the founder and CEO of the organization, to introduce yourself. Welcome to Wisdom at Work.

Speaker 2 1:21

Thank you, ilana, thank you and hello to you. And Sarah, hello to you as well. This is such an opportunity to spend this time with both of you and talk about grandmothers and, ilana, I really want to just open by saying how much I and we admire you and appreciate you for your global support and inspiration about the role of grandmothers in all different kinds of societies. It has been enormously motivating to me personally to know you and to know about your work. So, yes, I am Margaret Heldrain. I am the grandmother of two teenage boys in Seattle, washington.

Speaker 2 2:01

I am, by profession, a retired psychologist, but since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December of 2012, I have been full-time and even full-time plus focused on gun violence and how we can prevent it and how we can cope with the trauma it creates in all different communities. So, grandmothers Against Gun Violence that was a group I founded and worked with Sarah and many other really strong, wonderful grandmothers. It is now a Washington State-based group. It's going to stay focused on Washington, and it became clear to me over the years that grandmothers can make an enormous difference in how things go in different societies, and it also became clear that there are potentially thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers and older people around the United States yearning to do something about this dreadful problem of gun violence.

Speaker 2 3:02

We were lucky in Washington state to have an organization, but most states do not have an organization and I and the board and you all on the advisory council are putting that together and we're really thrilled to be able to provide a home base and to bring the experienced, wise voice of older people into the gun violence prevention movement. So that is where we are and, as you noted, we have our official launch coming right up and, to our great pleasure and satisfaction, we'll probably have about 400 people attending the virtual launch and I think that we could say that we live in a time of a new recognition of older voices. I personally am deeply engaged in this work. It is not something I ever imagined for myself. I had, I think, kind of sweet thoughts about a quiet retirement, but that isn't what's happened and I'm grateful for that. So thank you.

Speaker 1 4:02

Thanks, Margaret, and thank you for your kind words. I've been equally inspired by all of the people who flocked to the issue and to the community around Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility and Sarah. I'd love to hear from you before we dive into the substance of the issues. It's lovely to have you here. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 4:20

Well, thank you for inviting me. I got started actually with Margie and with the Grandmothers Against Gun Violence. My friend was at our church where the meetings were being held, and the meetings consisted of mainly all women that were of the white nature and there weren't any Black grandmothers that were involved in that group. And so she went down to find out what was going on. That's Winona Holland's hang. And after she found out what was going on, she thought well, this issue of gun violence directly affects our community and it affects our community daily in different parts of the country. You're always hearing about a shooting, whether it's one-on-one crime, domestic violence, gang violence, suicide, all types of different things that really, really affect our community. And so she immediately joined the grandmothers and as the grandmothers progressed and they were able to do some different things, I was hired on to help publicize Grandmothers Against Gun Violence and to get the information out to more communities of color so that the communities of color who are affected by gun violence would be able to have a voice in the gun violence issue. And so in working with Margaret, I discovered that she really had this passion that was so strong, and we started having articles and information about things that were happening in different parts of the country and I knew that this launch was going to happen. I didn't know when, but I knew that we were on the verge of moving to a national level, and part of it is.

Speaker 3 6:03

I wore my Grandmothers Against Gun Violence button and when I go places, I'm a regional president of the National Council of Negro Women Rocky Mountain Regional Coalition, which is encompassing six different states, and so when we have our conventions and our conferences and things like that, I have my NCNW pin on. We have our conventions and our conferences and things like that. I have my NCNW pin on, but I have my Grandmothers Against Gun Violence pin on and I would inevitably be asked is there one in my city? How do we get involved in that? So I'm really excited for the launch because there are people all over the country that are suffering and also passionate about what can we do to save our children and our grandchildren and our great grandchildren and to stop this violence that's going on. That is really so very unnecessary and unpredictable in ways that you can protect yourself, because you just don't know where it's going to pop up. So I'm very excited to be asked to be on the advisory council and to do whatever it is that I can do to spread the word.

Speaker 1 7:10

Thanks so much for that, sarah, and I'm glad that you've raised the importance of the disproportionate impact and how important it is for this not to be all one, demographic exclusively, because it really is an issue that touches everybody.

Speaker 1 7:25

Graphic exclusively, because it really is an issue that touches everybody. One of the things that has really impressed itself upon me when I'm in the meetings for Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility is that there are different ages of grandmothers and different ages of women who are in the room, and there are grandfathers too, and it's interracial. There's a real representation around the screen whenever there's a meeting. And I just wonder and I ask the two of you this, because I'm not from this country and so I don't have the same history here that the two of you do but it seems to me to be a particular strength and an important part of building a movement of grandmothers who can role model when there is an extraordinarily pressing and important issue, that you can come together in this way. But I'm sure it's. You know it's not without challenges. I wonder what that's meant to you and what kind of work that takes and what that means, what the importance of it is going forward nationally.

Speaker 3 8:15

Well, I think that, for my part, the importance is that no one is left behind. The importance is that all of these issues are so prevalent throughout our society, especially right now, that if we focus only on a mass shooting or only on domestic violence or only on suicide, we're missing the picture, because the problem is gun responsibility. Missing the picture because the problem is gun responsibility. The problem is not taking away everybody's gun, the problem is not locking everybody up, the problem is not one fold, it's twofold and threefold and fourfold, and so we need every voice in order for people to have representation and feel that there's an opportunity for them to do anything in order to stop this and in order to keep from opening the paper and finding out that a 14-year-old has been killed at school, or that someone was walking home and a stray bullet hit them, or someone was in their apartment and the bullet went through the ceiling and killed someone, and so there are so many instances.

Diversity and Representation in Activism

Speaker 3 9:31

People are getting numb to it. It's happening every day. One minute you're hearing about it, let's say, sandy Hook and then it happens again and again, and again. And so we have to look at the social part of the crimes, the economic part of the crimes, the racial part of the crimes. It's not just a monolithic one subject, it's a huge subject that touches everyone. You hear all the time, oh this doesn't happen in my neighborhood, and then it happens. So if it happens in your neighborhood on one day, it could happen in Johnny Sue's neighborhood on another day. And if we don't keep our eye on the overall issue of guns and the proliferation of guns and the lack of responsibility where the gun control issues are and the safety issues are, then we're going to keep opening the newspaper and hearing these tragic stories.

Speaker 2 10:27

Yes, well said Sarah. I love this question, ilana, because while we began this in early 2013 to hopefully contribute to the prevention of gun violence, we discovered a couple things in the first years that I had not anticipated, that have been sources of great value, richness, excitement. One is just the capacities of older women and helping our society understand time to lose the stereotypes about older women. There is a new older woman on the scene. Maybe she's actually been here forever, but now we're going to ask you to recognize her differently. For example, in our early days, we were often called by our nicknames grannies, grandmas, me-mas, oh-mas and while those are terms of endearment to us personally, we insisted upon being identified and called grandmothers. So to watch this required revision of who are older women in our society taking place is very exciting, and we do feel like we are a pebble in that pond that we are helping to create.

Speaker 2 11:38

That, on another level of just the great discovery was, as Sarah has said so eloquently, and you too, the disproportionate impact of gun violence is on communities of color. It would be just unacceptable to undertake this work without all of us together looking for possible remedies or prevention strategies, or when we undertake awareness raising or education. We need all our voices in this campaign together and I have loved that and, as you also noted, ilana, it's a chance to model what a contemporary community should look like. We should not be fragmented into a demographic group. We are together in this world, we are together in this society, we are together in our struggles and it is really heartwarming and brings much more strength and vigor to the movement when we are together, all different demographic groups learning about each other, developing familiarity, trust, communication. I mean I, as I told you, quite adore Sarah. I did not know her 10 years ago. So those are some of the, on the personal level, the rewards that come up, as well as the requirement level to do this in a way that represents all voices.

Speaker 1 12:59

Yeah, I appreciate that so much from both of you, and it takes work right, A real intentionality around. What is that going to look like? And so I'm interested in that because really, you're building a movement, a movement of grandmothers across the country who are working on gun responsibility and trying to insist on really fundamentally life-saving work. How are you thinking about it?

Speaker 2 13:21

First of all, I find the aspiration, the goal to build a movement, as you generously say, ilana, to be a combination of thrilling and daunting, requiring, yes, a lot of hard work. I personally, I dream big, I set big goals, but I build slowly and intentionally. When we've had our first meeting, for example, I think there were five or six people there. That did not bother me at all. I knew, if we had a culture of respect, kindness, openness, inclusiveness, welcome and a genuine mission, that it was going to happen.

Speaker 2 14:00

So I approach building a movement very much like building a team, building a community Welcome, you matter, your voice is good, your experience is real and valuable and enriching. I hope very much that I always extend respect and appreciation to people and I trust to people and I trust, I trust that if you're genuine, authentic, live those values, walk your talk of those values, people acquire a sense of safety and connection and confidence and it happens. And the other side of that equation, of course, is the need is so significant that it's this good convergence, there's a real need. I want to do something. These are good people.

Speaker 1 14:48

Beautiful, thank you. Do you want to add anything?

Speaker 3 14:52

I do, and I think that word that Margie uses of and I hope it's okay, I say Margie more than I say Margie Sure but I think that the word authentic is really important because we have to meet people where they are and some people are at a different space than where we may be, and so if you haven't been affected by gun violence in your family life, you may have a different perspective. If you've been affected by gun violence, you may have a stronger thought process. And for me, being involved I'm a storyteller I want the word to get out, I want information, I want people to know how feelings are affected, how lives are affected, not just the act of a gun being in someone's possession, but how they feel about their possession of that gun and what the dangers could happen from that gun and the understanding of safety with that gun and responsibility with that gun. And so I think that in telling this story, it's so sensitive and if you hear a certain tone or a certain way that people tell their story and you're not able to interpret where they are and have a conversation with them, you start off lost already, and that's been the problem, I think, with the proliferation of guns in our society.

Speaker 3 16:25

It's not that people are against guns or they want to take your guns away.

Speaker 3 16:30

It's not that people say I need this and I need it ready because of such and such.

Speaker 3 16:35

It's how that story is told and how people react to that story, and so my involvement is not experience with the gun violence, but the stories of the people who have that experience and getting those stories out so that people understand the results, the impact, the consequences that there may be.

Speaker 3 16:59

And so I think that when we work on something like this, it takes voices, and voices that have an impact on what we can do about this problem, because the final goal is not anything except to make our lives safer and the lives of our children and grandchildren safer. And we have a voice because, marty say we were the protesters in the 60s and we were the people who were talking about all of these different issues at that time. But we still have causes and we still see things that should be changed and we still see things that could be improved on or corrected or eliminated in order to make us that people are heard and that stories are told and that grandmothers do care. And that's our nature and that's our personality, but we also are not afraid to get out there and fight for what's right.

Redefining the Grandmother Identity

Speaker 2 18:01

So true, Sarah. If I can jump in for a second, Ilana, when you reference the 60s, I love that and it occurs to me I've been thinking about this the past couple weeks for some reason that you know, we were young in the 1960s and we were out there marching, and we were out there taking on civil rights and the Vietnam War and the early rumblings of the women's movement, because we were looking at the future we were entering. We were looking at the world we wanted to go into. Now, at this point in life, at this stage, I think many of us are looking at the world we want to leave behind. What can we do individually and collectively to make sure we leave behind the best possible world for those children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, future generations? So it's a slightly different, or maybe it's a significantly different perspective on it, but the drive is the same thing the active search for safety, as you say, Sarah, and for me, a world of harmony and peace. I just think about those two things, and I also, if I could just quickly tell a little story, Sarah uses the word sensitivity. I love that word.

Speaker 2 19:15

You know, women in the United States are now the number one purchasers of guns. At first when I learned that. It was a shock and it was upsetting. And what is this about? And are women getting intentionally marketed for this? Is there some narrative that's? And the answer is yes, but there's also. I was at our state capitol ready to testify on a piece of legislation and the testifier before me was a woman representing the NRA, the National Rifle Association, and the gun rights people, and she spoke about her fear as a single mother living alone with her children and she needed a sense of protection and she wanted her gun. And I thought, oh gosh, I can believe that, I get that. I don't want a gun, but I can certainly understand that impulse. So somehow trying to find each other from these different policy and maybe even political perspectives to say you know what, I get it, I get it, but can we come together around safety and responsibility? It was just a really powerful moment for me personally, hearing a story that increased my empathy for a different point of view.

Speaker 1 20:26

I really love that and appreciate so much what both of you are saying.

Speaker 1 20:30

And can we just go back to what you were saying, margaret, about taking the moniker of grandmother, the mantle, and the title of grandmother as an important positioning so that you may not be a biological grandmother and you may be your grandmother-in-waiting, or you may have children in your life who are not your grandchildren but are related to you in other ways or that you're involved with, but infusing the title of grandmother, the meaning of grandmother, as I've heard many different phrases vanguards of the future, guardians of wisdom, keepers of knowledge, storytellers, not just transmitting the past but being a part of the contemporary movements and being a part of the contemporary reality in a vigorous way, and so I wanted to hear a little bit more about that.

Speaker 1 21:15

How and this is something that I think about a lot how grandmothers and older women can help. Open conversations can help and I think I said this earlier sort of role model in a different context but can help to open a conversation, to invite people into a different kind of conversation. It helps perhaps to have an unexpected group of women say we need to enter this conversation and we want to reframe it and we want to have a conversation that invites everyone in, so that we can actually solve an intractable problem.

Speaker 3 21:48

Well, I think that, again, the reframing of grandmothers is very important because, as I became a grandmother, I used to get real irritated when you'd see, like a commercial, and they had a granny, and she's on a walker and she's bent over, she doesn't have her teeth in and her hair is all crazy. And even now you know, you'll see these little stereotypes that say, oh, this is not your grandmother's furniture, or this is not your grandmother's hairdo, and so there's these little comments, and I probably made some of those up myself when I was younger. I don't know, I hope I didn't, but I may have. And so I think that the reframing is not so much reframing is that grandmothers have always been pretty vital. It's just that we are the ones who say you know, go bake your cookies and stay in the kitchen and whatever grandmothers are supposed to knit. And so I think that what we've done is that knitting is great, baking cookies are great. So is a protest and a march if we need to. So is going to the legislature and participating in a legislative session and telling what we feel and how we feel.

Speaker 3 23:00

And I love for the grandmothers the new names, like I think I was watching one of the housewife shows and she said I'm not a grandma, I'm a glam mom because I'm glamorous and I think it's kind of fun. Like when I had my grandchildren, I told them that I wanted to be called Grand Madre, because I thought that sounded really good and my daughter calls me Madre when she's in a good mood, and so I thought, okay, I'm going to be Grand Madre. And so my granddaughter was very good at it, calling me Grand Madre. My grandson came and he said Granny you know, those were his words and I adore hearing him say that and so we can be activists as private citizens, as people who care about this country. And the grandmothers in Washington state have really got a great name.

Speaker 3 24:01

I can talk to our city council, people are now governor, they know who the grandmothers are, because we're not just there to be grannies, we're there to be grannies with a voice and with a story and with something that cares.

Speaker 3 24:17

The other part of it is that because we are caring people, because that stereotype of grandmothers being loving and nurturing and kind and good, people listen to that and I've seen, you know, the toughest gangbanger melt at the sight of his grandmother. I've seen someone in church just give their grandchild a look when they're acting up and immediately they want to please their grandmother. And I think that we can take that word of who we are and we can make it whatever we want it to be, because the respect level is there and we need to keep that respect level and use it in a way that helps people to listen and get the story out. No one's going to dispute that story, because everyone has a grandmother or an auntie or a big mama or someone who was instrumental and kind in their life and they don't want to disappoint, and so our voice needs to be heard, along with the voices that are, voices that we would prefer not to hear. So well put, margaret.

Speaker 2 25:28

Yeah, really nice Sarah. I was thinking, listening to Sarah, that along with all the archetypal qualities or characteristics of grandmother that exists, I think globally, there is also a shift that has occurred when you get to this age, where ambition is not about the self so much, not about building my resume or getting that next job. The ambition is more wrapped up in this legacy notion ambition about the other. And so there's this optimal confluence of grandmother and all the innate characteristics assigned to that and the shift that takes place, where those energies, those qualities, those drives, those impulses go out for the other more than for the self, and so I think that's one reason why the grandmother thing works so well, yeah it works so well.

Speaker 1 26:23

I've seen that over and over again. I really can attest to that, and I think part of the shift too that's been very instructive to me I've learned so much from so many grandmothers and older women activists is also the shedding of the self-consciousness and the worry about what people think and even sometimes what your adult children think, or I've heard grandmothers say to me I used to worry so much that I'd say the wrong thing or that I would compromise myself, but I just don't care anymore. My kids are grown up and my grandchildren are actually. I want them to see how you can participate in the human family. There's a sort of freedom of self that I see in a lot of older women. Think about what does it mean as an older woman to be engaged in the project of improving the human condition and not just about transferring power or transferring support or standing with and behind and supporting young people Great question.

Speaker 2 27:15

Okay for me to jump in, sarah.

Speaker 3 27:17

Go ahead.

Speaker 2 27:20

Okay, I just think that is such a wonderful question, and the words that you were using, ilana, that jumped out for me had to do with purposefulness. Maybe that wasn't a word, but that's the was that they served their purpose. You know, that was great, you did a great job. Now you know, but the yearning and even, I would say, need to experience purposefulness doesn't go away internally. It was an external mandate, not an internal condition, and so I think you're exactly right that ideally and I think it's beginning to happen there's a new blending, a new integration, a new synthesis of the nurturer, caregiver, grandmother, there to transmit, there to be a role model, but also a woman or a man who still feels vital, purposeful, intentional, has acquired a heck of a lot of experience and wants to continue to have that expression of it, and I think that was a required dormancy for generations before us, but now it's an invitation to wakefulness and I think that's really an exciting dynamic that's underway.

Speaker 3 28:52

I guess I remember someone telling me a story of a tradition where the king raised the family and then his oldest son at the time that the head of the group got old, he walked him up to a volcano and pushed him in and then he became the leader of the group. And so this went on for years and you know, years, generations and generations, and finally one generation walked his dad the young man walked his dad up to the top of the volcano and then it was time for him to push him in, and the father was prepared for that. And the son said I'm not going to push you, we're going to go back down the mountain together and we're going to live together and we're going to rule together. And when you pass away, naturally or however it happens, it won't be because I pushed you into a volcano. And that story does always stuck with me.

Speaker 3 29:50

I heard it before I was a grandmother, before I was probably even a mother, and I thought, wow, you know what kind of knowledge was pushed into that volcano? Because of a tradition that made no sense. And so, as grandmothers, I feel we have that same story. What use is there to say that we're of no use at all when we have all this so-called knowledge and wisdom and stories that we can tell and that we can share, and I think it's been fortunate in communities.

Speaker 3 30:25

My daughter just came back from Ghana and I didn't go because I felt that, oh, how am I going to go and get around? And you know there's going to be a lot of walking and moving and who's going to pick my bags up and who's going to do this. And she told me she said you, mom, you would not believe the honor that they show their elders here. You would have had to do nothing, I wouldn't have had to help you, they would not have let you carry anything, and so it's how society sees. You is not always the way you are, and we have the right and the responsibility and the opportunity to tell our stories and to interpret who we are ourselves, rather than letting any stereotype interpret who we are.

Shifting Focus to State and Local Action

Speaker 1 31:13

I love those stories, thank you, sarah and they're really instructive. And I want to come back through that lens then and this conversation sort of come back to the issue of gun violence and gun responsibility. What are you thinking will happen? What are you hoping will happen? What are you intending to make happen? What are the grandmothers bringing to the issue?

Speaker 2 31:31

That's a really critical question and it's a question for which the answer has shifted in this country just recently because of the current political conditions when we first began to think about national grandmothers seriously as Sarah noted earlier, it's been kind of a thought for quite a while. But when we first began to think about it seriously, the expectation was that the United States Congress was going to get serious about this and there was even the possibility that we might have a great political alignment between the White House, the Congress and really be able to get some things done that hadn't been able to get done, for example, a renewal of the assault weapons ban bill, a law requiring safe storage of guns and ammunition, with penalties if that was not abided, by Creating a greater sense of what we call sensitive places, places where guns are not permitted, libraries, voting places, parks, places where, in particular, children and young people gathered. So we wanted to pull together this national voice that would be ready, on alert, to advocate for these wonderful bills that were going to sail through Congress and get signed by a president. Well, you know, that is not the situation Now. We will talk about what's bad and we will raise our voice in opposition, and when there is something good, such as a safe storage bill that was reintroduced last week, we will say this is good.

Speaker 2 33:14

But what we've done is shift our focus to paying more attention to state and local activity. And I like to say to people, as I'm beginning to Zoom with people in different states around the country you are the experts, you are the local experts. How can we support you? For example, we're going to do some work in Maine pretty soon and they've got a great team in place. They've got an initiative on the ballot this fall and we're going to rally up some grandparents there to help them to be in community with them. So now the aspiration is also again with the reality that, at least right now, traditional legislative pathways are closed off, traditional legal pathways are in jeopardy.

Speaker 2 34:05

We have to look to innovative approaches, and that is culture change and that is taking a look at what are the norms and the assumptions and traditions around guns in America, what are the prevailing narratives and how can we work to amend those. So, for example, this notion that having a gun in the home makes you safer. The research indicates it's exactly the opposite. So we want to retaining our empathy, retaining our sensitivity, say wait a minute, everybody. Let's look at this differently, you know. Let's take a fresh look at some of the ideas we have about guns in this country. So, grandmothers again, as maybe with perspectives different than a 20-year-old or a 40-year-old, I think that we are well positioned to raise this, because if we get a lot of grief or pushback back to the earlier comment, who cares? You know, it's important to raise it. It's important that somebody put out time for a fresh look United States at guns, and that's what we're working on right now. What should those fresh looks look like and how do we best deliver them?

Speaker 3 35:21

Sarah, and I think that that's the key to this group.

Speaker 3 35:26

The key to this group is making inroads in the violence that has happened in our country, but it's also changing the narrative.

Speaker 3 35:37

And I think that the narrative is best changed almost by grandmothers, because a lot of the arguments that are there kind of float away when you put the reasoning and understanding and compassion that the grandmothers have for human life and for the future.

Speaker 3 35:58

And so this organization is vital. We thought at one time well, at least I naively thought at one time that we wouldn't need grandmothers for gun responsibility because everyone would listen and everyone would understand and all this craziness would stop and the world would just be a happy place. And that was very naive of me, because everyone doesn't think the same way. But the narrative can be changed in order to move people to a reasonable and responsible thought process, and I think that is the value and the beauty of what Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility will leave in their legacy is that we can change the narrative, we can open eyes, we can have people listen in a reasonable way and I think that we can impress the importance of this intergenerational movement in a way that maybe all of our young people cannot. We should print that up and share it.

Speaker 1 37:07

It's so hopeful, sarah, I can't thank you enough for that, because we need that, and it kind of makes you feel like grandmothers, as the arbiters of sanity. You know, not just on the horizon, but it's right here with you and with the group. I just appreciate this conversation so much. Just a closing in terms of okay, so Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility is up and running. I have a vision of a moment, not long from now, where there's a Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility group in every community, every state and everyone's communicating with each other and making space for each other. And I'd love to hear from both of you what does the world look like, what do our lives look like, when Grandmother's Forgotten Responsibility has prevailed?

Changing the Narrative on Gun Safety

Speaker 3 37:50

The way we'd love for it to look would be no gun violence at all, but realistically, the way that it will look is that we've opened conversation. We've reached people. Some people may help change our minds in some ways. We may change minds in another way, but the overall focus and the overall look is that people will be welcome to come into this space, express themselves, tell how they're feeling and we can work towards a more responsible way to handle the issue of guns in our country. What we want is safety and what we want is responsibility, and what we want is for people to feel welcome to come into this space and talk about their feelings, their experiences, their activities and what we can do to make each world that each person is living in, whatever their circumstances, their racial, ethnicity or whatever there is that's going on that they have a voice, and then we can use that voice to affect change, and the change that we affect can make this world a much better place.

Speaker 2 39:11

I could not possibly say it better than Sarah just said it. What I would really love to do is echo all her words and just add a little personal note, which is I come at this in part from a Quaker heritage. I belong to a friends meeting and I very much strive to live by some of the principles, and one is nonviolence. If we can contribute to not only the actual decline of incidents of violence in this country but a new attitude about neighborliness, fellowship, sisterhood, kindness, civility, a norm of empathy and not aggression, I would be, as I practically am thinking about this, tearful, tearful with gratitude Hard not to be, because it's about life itself and how much we value it.

Speaker 1 40:11

If there's a grandmother or somebody who'd like to be involved, even if they aren't a grandmother but they don't see themselves in it, I speak to a lot of grandmothers who say, oh, I've never been an activist, I'm not an activist or I wouldn't know where to begin. It's not really my thing. I just love to hear from you because I hear this a lot from grandmothers who know they have more to give, they're interested and they're engaged, but they can't see themselves in the group. What would you say to them?

Speaker 2 40:36

Wow. That's really important to think about and be intentional about. I would say that was certainly the case in Washington State. We had very seasoned activists and then we had people who were brand new to this and found their footing pretty quickly and found a great deal of support and enjoyment in being in community. So I would say, if you're thinking about this at all, even if you feel shy or you're uncertain, please go to that website. In the comment section, Just go ahead and say I'm kind of new to this and we'll come find you, We'll be there for you.

Speaker 3 41:12

I would agree with that, and I think that there's a lot of grandmothers that are out there like that. I imagine there are a lot of people who have different things that they are holding in that are related to gun violence, and you don't have to be on the forefront like some of our spokespeople will be, but you do have a place, and so everyone is welcome in order to really help move the movement forward.

Speaker 1 41:42

Well, thank you both. So so much for today. I'm going to make sure that all of the information is on the website for the podcast. You'll find all of the information about the launch, about the group, how to contact the group. Thank you so much, margaret and Sarah, for all that you do, for all the opportunities you're providing and for the world that you're helping to create for all of us.

Speaker 2 42:00

Thank you, thank you to you too, for all of us, thank you. Thank you to you too.

Speaker 1 42:08

Thanks for listening. I'm Ilana Lansford-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work older women, elder women and grandmothers on the move. To find out more about me or the podcast, you can go to wisdomatworkpodcastcom formerly grandmothers on the move, and you can find the podcast at all your favorite places to listen to them. Tune inPodcastcom Formerly Grandmothers on the Move, and you can find the podcast at all your favorite places to listen to them. Tune in next week. Thanks and bye-bye for now.