Using White Privilege to Ban Guns (yesmagazine.org)

Their biggest challenge is going to be keeping this going,” says former Montana State Rep. Franke Wilmer while sitting on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on Monday, June 3. It was the first day of what became a three-day sit-in for gun control supported by Here 4 the Kids, which bills itself as “a movement of unexplored and unprecedented action led by Black, Brown, [and] Indigenous women with a team of white women working behind the scenes to end gun violence in the United States.” A few thousand people, predominantly white women, settled on the lawn, the steps, and the parking lot of the Capitol building. They brought homemade signs, folding chairs, snacks, and enough supplies to last a 12-hour day.

Saira Rao, cofounder of Here 4 the Kids, also helps lead a project called Race2Dinner, which launched a series of dinners in 2019 where Rao and co-organizer Regina Jackson facilitated conversations forcing white women to confront their relationship to white supremacy. Those dinners became the basis of the documentary film Deconstructing Karen. Those conversations also inform the racial dynamic at play in Here 4 the Kids’s strategy: women of color guiding white women to use their racial privilege to win social justice.

More specifically, the idea of activating white women came from her work with Race2Dinner. “I’ve always known that white women hold the power,” says Rao, calling them “the most powerful demographic in this country.” She says, “There’s a reason advertisers chase white women between the ages of 25 and 55. … Statistically, white women are the most privileged in that they’re the least likely to be harmed by police ever.” So, she concludes, “white women have the most power and privilege.” Rao believes that since white kids are dying, it was time that white women stepped in to help the fight against guns.

Rao collaborated with a Black activist named Tina Strawn to launch Here 4 the Kids. Strawn, who provided the plan for the sit-in, spends her days steeped in civil rights history in Alabama—giving tours of the area around Selma and Montgomery.

“I think that there is a disconnect in America,” Strawn says, “where we do not fully balance that we have not fully overcome… That we’re still overcoming… That we’re still in the fight” against white supremacy.