Page 185 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Political Organizations
entitled “Marching Mums Take Aim at the Gun Lobby” also appeared as
far away as the Sydney Morning Herald. 154 On television, the march won
an announcement on CBS This Morning and an appearance by a par-
ticipant on the Rosie O’Donnell Show. The fact that Dees-Thomases was
herself a media professional helped a great deal, with experience as a part-
time publicist for the David Letterman show, former employee of CBS
News,andformerstafferofSenatorRussellLong.Hersister-in-law,Susan
Thomases, was also a veteran political campaigner. In the media frame
that Dees-Thomases successfully sought, her lack of prior experience in
gun control policy played to her advantage. The story of a political novice
(if not a media novice) organizing volunteer women around the country
made for great copy. As funding grew, the media campaign eventually
culminated in televised ads featuring actresses Susan Sarandon, Whoopi
Goldberg, and others.
By the time of the march, organizers claimed its web site had re-
ceived about 5 million visits as a result of this publicity, and by May, the
web site listed eighty-one sponsors and endorsements from 105 national
organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the League of
Women Voters, the National PTA, the NAACP, and Handgun Control. 155
The Million Mom March was endorsed by fifty-two national religious
organizations and hundreds of state organizations, as well as President
Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. An organization of con-
siderable dimensions politically had been built in the span of months in
a way that no one involved in gun control policy could have predicted. Its
supporters were an ad hoc coalition, and its internal structure reflective
of no existing organization.
The march attracted for the most part only muted opposition, since its
premise – mothers protecting children – was difficult to attack directly.
The NRA was critical of the march, but for the most part kept a low
profile and went so far as to decline to comment on it for an article in
the New York Times in October 1999. With its own members, the NRA
relies on very aggressive rhetoric and has been aptly characterized by one
scholar as “polemical, ideological, and zealous.” 156 But its typical crisis-
and threat-based appeals were clearly not right for a mothers’ group.
Only as the march drew near did the NRA launch a soft countercampaign

154
Mark Riley, “Marching Mums Take Aim at the Gun Lobby,” Sydney Morning Herald,
March 15, 2000, http://www.smh.com.au.
155
Mary Leigh Blek, Memo to Million Mom Marchers, Million Mom March, May 19,
2000, http://www.millionmommarch.com.
156
Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control, p. 113.
168