Episode 3 :: Shannon Watts

How your ‘flaws’ can be your superpower

Back to: The Green Room Podcast

(00:05):
Shannon: I could work seven days a week, 10 or 12 hours a day on the issue of gun violence and not burnout. Wow. I do think that I can credit my ADHD for that. Did I get anything else done in those 12 years, 11 years? Not really, because I can only focus on one thing at a time.

(00:28):
Courtney: Welcome to the Green Room, where we learn from some of the world’s most transformational advocates about how they flip the script. I’m your host, Courtney Martin. Today we get to sink into a totally fascinating conversation with advocate Shannon Watts. She is Ignatious and she is the profound founder of Moms Demand Action. She’s done everything from organizing to speaking to writing a book, and I got to tell you, she is one of those people that you encounter and just feel like you have met a true force of nature. Take a listen. I actually wondered if we could start with you as a little girl. I am watching you these clips of you being so profoundly articulate and you make it look as if it was very natural. So I was kind of imagining this little Shannon standing on a soapbox in elementary school advocating for a different lunchtime or something. Have you always been like this?

(01:27):
Shannon: I have always been pretty loquacious. I think if you looked at all my report cards from when I was younger, it would say talks too much in class, disturbs others. But I have very severe ADHD and have since as far back as I can remember, and I was diagnosed at age 14, but it was the eighties. And so there was this real stigma around stimulants and even having being neurodivergent. And so my parents did not have me treated medically and I really struggled. I was always a good communicator, I was a good writer. But because of my ADHD, I really struggled. I mean, I barely graduated from high school. I barely graduated from college, but I always loved to put thoughts together to make an argument. I was raised in Rochester, New York where for field trips we would go to the homes of activists. We of course went to Susan b Anthony’s house all the time. We would go where Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubmans stopped to speak when they were in town, and we were really just taught that people who stood up, who stood for something were to be revered and to be admired. And I just think it was those two things that even though I struggled, I knew I had the skill being a communicator with this desire or admiration to be like activists. And I think it’s those two things that came together as an

(03:10):
Adult.

Courtney: Wow, that is so fascinating. It also makes me wonder, do you now see your ADHD as an asset in your thought leadership or I’m sure it’s both a challenge and an asset. Will you talk about that a little bit?

(03:22):
Shannon: I look back at my childhood as a lot of suffering and a lot of struggle and a lot of resentment for trying to be forced into a system that did not work for me.

(03:31):
There was no way I was ever going to be successful in the mainstream academic system. And because I was a girl in the eighties, I was seen as problematic as a troublemaker, as not feminine, as not good, whereas the boys who were often hyperactive were just seen as normal masculine behavior that maybe needed a little restructuring or rerouting, but at the end of the day, they were just being boys. And I was considered problematic my entire life really until I went to college. And I think what happened was that my brain just solidified, right? I turned 25 and I started having some executive functioning. Now I know there is no one except maybe another woman with ADHD who was a mom who could have done what I have done for 11 years as a full-time volunteer, which is to wake up every single morning to get so enmeshed with the details of gun violence around the country every day, to tell those stories, stories that wouldn’t be seen by other people if I hadn’t made Twitter, my full-time job in addition to all my other work. It took such a huge amount of focus and determination that was absolutely my ADHD for 11 years. I could work seven days a week, 10 or 12 hours a day on the issue of gun violence and not burnout.

(05:02):
Courtney: Wow.

(05:03):
Shannon: I do think that I can credit my ADHD for that. Did I get anything else done in those 12 years, 11 years? Not really, because I can only focus on one thing at a time.

(05:16):
Courtney: Yeah, that’s

(05:18):
So interesting.

Shannon: Did I clean my house or make a single dinner? No, I did not. But I am grateful that that skill helped me create moms to man

(05:29):
Action.

Courtney: Wow, that is so interesting. It does make me think, I mean, you’re joking, but not about being able to accomplish other things. I’m guessing being this absorbed and this powerful of a thought leader has required you to have a team of backup like partners, aunties. Can you talk a little bit about the support that you’ve needed in order to do that kind of deep dive?

(05:57):
Shannon: Yes. Every single time I’ve hired anyone, I’ve said, I will need you to be my left brain. And I can tell right away when someone else has ADHD, and that’s fine, that’s great. I know they’re going to be creative, but they’re not going to be helpful to me unless we are creating together. What I need is someone who knows that I’m not going to be able to go back and find the email they sent me six months ago who knows that each day is a new day. We got to start all over again with all the tasks that are going to be required of me, who kind of walks me through and creates the structure that I will need in order to be successful. And so I was very lucky that at Moms Demand Action, I was able to hire a chief of staff. I had an assistant, I had a communications rep, and then the entire team generally who understood the way I worked and in my personal life, I have often had to rely on virtual assistants who also served as my left brain. I just wrote a whole book and I needed an editing coach, and that was my plea. It was like, who can help me create this book but also be my left brain? I can do the creative part, but I need someone to keep me on task.

(07:10):
So it is a privilege to be able to do those things, to be able to afford some of those things, but I know what I need in order to be successful, and that’s people who think differently than I do.

(07:22):
Courtney: I love that. Will you tell us a little bit about the book? Can you talk about it yet? What is

(07:26):
It about?

Shannon: Yes. Well, so I’ll tell you the story really quickly, which is I created this whole outline and I took it to my friend Glennon Doyle’s house, and I said, this is what I’m going to write. And she’s like, this is really boring. I don’t like it. Let’s start over. And we spent the next two days recreating it. She’s like, you’re such a fiery personality. The metaphor has to be fire.

(07:50):
And what the book ended up being was how I saw women come alive when they joined Moms Man Action. Many of them middle aged, many of them having spent a life fulfilling shoulds and obligations and really not pursuing their own desires. And that could be anything from deciding to finally have a hard conversation with a parent or asking for a divorce or starting your own organization or getting a different job. I have seen it run the gamut, but it really is about how do you take the spark inside you and turn it into a flame? How do you live on fire?

(08:30):
Courtney: Wow.

(08:31):
Shannon: And I think women deserve that and the world needs that. The world needs that. So that’s what the book ended up being

(08:39):
About.

Courtney: Congratulations. That’s so exciting. I’m very, very excited to read that and thank goodness for good friends who will tell you the truth about your foreign book outline. Right? A hundred percent. Tell me a little bit about different mediums for you, because Twitter obviously has been a place that you’ve had a profound impact or what was formerly known as Twitter, and then you have the book form, you’ve made massive impact in op-eds. How do you think about your sweet spot in terms of thought leadership or is it like all of these are tools in your toolbox and you’re at a daily basis saying when you were in your CEO position, which one of these tools do I need in this moment?

(09:18):
Shannon: Well, I think the other interesting thing is not only do I have ADHD, but I am an extreme introvert. I was also terrified of public speaking when I started Mom’s Demand Action. And so you quickly learn how to adjust and look, this is part of the job, so if you’re not going to quit and you’re going to move forward, then you’re going to have to figure this out. Public speaking came to me after just practicing it over and over again, and eventually I could stand in front of a crowd of 10,000 people and my heart would barely speed up now, which is astounding to me.

(09:49):
Courtney: And that was just exposure therapy, you just did it so many times or did you have a breakthrough kind of coaching experience or how did that It

(09:56):
Shannon: Was absolutely exposure therapy. I can remember the very first speaking event I had. It was the coldest day I’ve ever experienced in Washington dc. It was a month after the Sandy Hook School shooting, and my hands were shaking so badly in the green room because I was so terrified of having to go just read. I wasn’t even speaking extemporaneously. I was reading remarks and my hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t keep coffee in my cup. It was sloshing out because I was so terrified. And I think I sort of gave that speech and then ran off the stage and the speaking request kept coming much to my dismay and just I think if you do it 20 times, your brain just stops telling you this is something you should be terrified of. And someone said to me, these people are here because they want to hear from you. They’re not here to criticize you. They’re here to really want to be inspired by you. And that shifted things a little bit in my mind too, but the introversion doesn’t go away. I think some of it is sensory, but I think you can, you don’t have to be an extrovert to be a leader. You can be someone who has all of these different neurodivergent traits and if you know how to manage them, I think it can help you be successful.

(11:16):
Courtney: Yeah, I’m really hearing that both your self-awareness and your ability to articulate it to others and surround yourself with people who compliment where you have challenges. What about introversion with Twitter? Does that not suck your energy because it’s not

(11:32):
Visceral?

Shannon: I love being behind a screen.

(11:34):
Courtney: Yeah, okay.

(11:35):
Shannon: I can be my most provocative self when I am online, which is part of the downside of being online too. We talk about that a lot, the anonymity and feeling sort of emboldened. I feel emboldened to say what’s true, at least to me, particularly about gun violence and to show feelings of anger and rage and look, those are feelings that come across very clearly on social media, and I think that they engender a response. I’m trying to use it for good.

(12:09):
Courtney: You talk about being sort of emboldened behind the screen and in your home to home, but that’s not to be confused with safety because you have been targeted by the NRA. You have really been unsafe in a lot of moments, or at least that seems is my perception. I’m wondering how you feel about being the target of massive people with guns, massive organizations and people with guns, which is the exact thing you’re fighting against. How have you coped with that?

(12:38):
Shannon: I would say it’s two things. One is I am ignatius by nature as we talked about when I was younger. I love a good argument. If someone wants to argue with me, I will answer that bell. And so social media is a good format for that. Again, I try to keep some of those instincts in check because you don’t need to always answer every fight that someone calls you to.

(13:01):
So when I started Moms Demand Action, I knew I was going to be the tip of the spear because I started to get that blow back immediately called the police to my home because I was getting all these threats. The officer said to me, well, that’s what you get when you mess with the Second Amendment. So I knew right out of the gate that online and in real life, I wasn’t going to really be protected, and that was okay with me. I’m not saying there haven’t been times when the threats have been overwhelming because there have been times when the NRA decides to go after you and use really graphic, sexualized, frightening language. I don’t necessarily worry about my own safety. I worry about that of my kids. I think if my family had ever expressed fear, then I would’ve stopped. They never did. In fact, there were times I was afraid my husband was like, you’re fine. You’re going to be okay. You got this. I’m not sure it was my Buddhism as much as it was this feeling like if I lose my kids, I have nothing left to lose. If I lose my kids to gun violence, I will regret not having done this.

(14:12):
Courtney: We sort of launched into so many interesting investigations that I didn’t ask. One of the core questions I wanted to make sure that listeners heard, which is your journey into this in the first place. I know in some ways you were sort of an unlikely person to take this on in the way that you have. Who were you when this journey started and how did it start?

(14:34):
Shannon: So I had a corporate career in communications. I’d worked at public relations agencies and Fortune 100 companies, and again, I think my ADHD helped me really excel in a crisis. So a company had a crisis. They called me because I could go into overdrive and focus on it 24 hours a day for a week until this crisis was solved. And so by the time I decided to step back from my career, I had just gotten married for the second time I was divorced and I got married and my husband and I were blending our family of five. I have three kids and he has two. I thought my kids are elementary through college right now. I’m going to take a break for five years and get everybody situated and make sure everybody’s doing okay, and then I’ll go back to work. It was the very end of that five years.

(15:31):
In fact, it was December of 2012 that the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut happened at Sandy Hook School. And I mean, my world was just rocked. I could not believe that 20 children and six educators were slaughtered in an elementary school, and I was actually training to be a yoga teacher, which is hysterical to me now because I do not have the temperament to be a yoga teacher. And the day after the Sandy Hook School shooting, I had a yoga teacher training class, and I was in it, and I couldn’t believe people around me were doing cat cows. How are we stretching after a mass murder and no one is talking about it. And at a break, I just rolled up all my yoga equipment and I went home. And that’s when I opened my laptop on my kitchen counter and I started a Facebook page, which at the time I called 1 million Moms for Gun Control, not realizing that 1 million moms was an anti LGBT group that had gotten Ella DeGeneres removed as the spokeswoman for JC Penny and not realizing that gun control was really abo and phrase outside the beltway or in the beltway in Indiana, we called it gun control.

(16:43):
And so we did change our name eventually two months later. But that Facebook page was, there were so many moms in this country who had the same idea I did that day. Now I want to be clear, a lot of white suburban moms who were afraid their kids weren’t safe in their school. That’s what I was,

(17:03):
Courtney: Right.

(17:05):
Shannon: And I’ve learned so much over the last decade, which is mass shootings and school shootings are about 1% of the gun violence in this country. But that is what got so many women off the sidelines. And when they saw my Facebook page, they said, this is what I’m looking for.

(17:20):
Courtney: It really brings up for me this important tension between beginner’s mind stepping into a gap when you feel it in a very organic, visceral way, versus being thoughtful and studying and understanding who else is in the movement and what’s the missing piece of this, and how might my gifts align with that missing piece. This is this beautiful moment of just spontaneous, I am going to make this page, but I’m guessing you have a lot of reverence for the thoughtfulness of understanding a movement. So how do you think about those two things together?

(17:57):
Shannon: Well, first of all, this organization was like lightning in a bottle. If you said, go create this same grassroots movement for this issue or another one, I couldn’t do it. I don’t think anyone could do it. But I didn’t know what I didn’t know,

(18:16):
And I didn’t know that there were other movements out there trying to do the same thing. I didn’t know that there was a group called Million Mom March that had tried something similar after Columbine. I didn’t know anything about gun violence. I didn’t know anything about the legislative process. I didn’t know anything about activism. I just knew I was a really pissed off mom and that I wasn’t going to live this way, that I felt I had to do something. And I certainly didn’t think I’m about to start the largest women led nonprofit in the nation. I did not think that. I just thought, let’s try something. And what inspired me in large part was Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And so I called the CEO of Mad was I think it was a weekend, and she was working the hotline for Mad. It was just such a coincidence, and she helped me, okay, you need to organize like this and this is how you could do it. And we ended up hiring her five years later to be the director of Moms Demand Action. But it was just all of these things that just kept happening, that just kept propelling it and propelling it and propelling it.

(19:22):
And I would say when you talk about beginner’s mind, and how I realized that I was being very myopic about mass shootings or school shootings was when someone introduced me to Lucy McBath. So Lucy McBath son, Jordan Davis was shot and killed just weeks before the Sandy Hook School shooting black teen sitting in his car in a gas station. He was with a bunch of friends. The music in their car was loud, A white man told them to turn it down. They got in an argument, and this white man opens fire killing Jordan, instantly 17-year-old kid. By the time I was connected to Lucy, it was less than six months since her son had been shot and killed. And her father was an NAACP leader in Illinois when she was growing up. But she just immediately turned to activism. She wanted to prevent other families, particularly black and brown families from experiencing the same pain.

(20:21):
And I can remember asking Lucy to be the spokesperson of Mom’s Man action. And she came to me eventually, I would say six months in maybe we were in existence for a year at that point. She said, I really appreciate the platform. I’m getting to speak to so many different people, but they’re all white. And if moms domain action is going to succeed and evolve and be relevant, you’re going to have to widen the aperture of what you’re focused on. It can’t just be school shootings. And we really took that to heart. And suddenly mass shootings, school shootings became a very small portion of our policy focus, and that is in large part because of Lucy, who is now a congresswoman in Georgia.

(21:07):
Courtney: So I guess I’m just really curious to hear you talk about how did you feel like you were able to leverage and channel white motherhood in a way that was that lightning in a bottle? And in what ways have you tried to push away from the kind of tropes of white motherhood or the ways that white mothers think that they’re supposed to operate in the world?

(21:28):
Shannon: Well, I actually think Jessica Valenti, the feminist author, has really interesting insight into this. She talks a lot about the fact that if you need a permit, ask a white woman. She believes the system still works and she knows how to pull all the strings to make things happen. And that is 100% true. There are different things that white women can bring to the table that are helpful. I think the issue becomes when white women aren’t willing to listen, right? So more white led organizations that focus only on an assault weapons ban, which is myopic. We don’t need more of those organizations. The vast majority of people who are killed by gun violence in this country are black people, mostly black men and black boys, and most of it with handguns in city centers, that is what we ended up doing as an organization. So it was not white women focused on their white children or families or communities. It was white women working shoulder to shoulder with black and brown women to say, okay, we need to be here to help you too. I think that is how you get to a place of holistic solutions to pretty much any issue that plays a country, but particularly gun violence.

(22:43):
Courtney: And how do you get white mothers there? What is the bridge between the woman who shows up totally freaked out about her kids, mostly white elementary school, having a school shooter, and then become someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with black and brown moms?

(22:58):
Shannon: Well, it’s really interesting. So when we poll our volunteers, we ask, why do you come and why do you stay? It’s easy to get volunteers in the door after a horrific shooting tragedy. It’s difficult to get them to stay. And they tell us two things. One is we’re winning. They feel like we’re winning, so it’s worth their time. Two is they find their people. It becomes much bigger than gun violence or bigger than activism. It becomes their community of people they couldn’t live without. And so once you create that foundation and then you start to educate and you start to train these women and you start to introduce them into communities that maybe are just 20 minutes away that they didn’t know were struggling or suffering, and then you create relationships with those women, it completely changes people’s thought processes. Right? And look, if you aren’t interested in holistic solutions to gun violence and you come to Moms in action, that’s not your thing. For the most part, we’re talking about progressive women who want to live the values and principles of being a progressive, and sometimes they just need to be reminded that it isn’t just about them and it isn’t just about their privilege of seeing beyond

(24:10):
It.

Courtney: It also strikes me that one of the things you must be such a genius at is communicating against learned helplessness. I do feel like gun violence is one of these places where people do have a profound sense of apathy of just like if Sandy Hook didn’t do it, nothing will. But also around race, I feel like race and equity, there’s this sense of I deeply care about this as a white woman, but I’ve read all the books. I’ve tried to be a good person. I just have learned helplessness. I don’t know what else to do. And these things are running parallel in the work that you’re doing. What can you teach us about countering learned helplessness?

(24:50):
Shannon: I mean, I have to say I don’t have a lot of patience for it. And I think this is where I think everyone has a go-to emotion. For some people it might be loneliness. For some people, it might be optimism. Mine is anger, always my go-to emotions, always anger. And there is nothing that will make me block you more quickly on Twitter than if you say nothing has happened since Sandy Hook. Because I think cynicism is laziness. It’s an excuse for not acting. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and say, nothing’s happened, and nothing ever will. So therefore, I’m going to just sit in my McMansion and pretend like everything is fine. It’s easy to complain. It’s harder to be an activist. It’s hard to show up and sit in a Senate gallery at your State House for 12 hours simply for the purpose of wearing your red T-shirt and making a difference by keeping eyeballs on a lawmaker. It’s hard work, but I think it goes back to this idea of you have the privilege to do the hard work, especially as a white woman. Maybe you don’t work and so you have extra time on your hands. Maybe you can afford to get childcare while you volunteer. Those are the people who should be doing the heavy lifting.

(26:02):
Courtney: Quit your yoga teacher training and get your ass immediately to the Senate. Or do both. Do both. Do both. Do both. Do both. That’s fine. When you look back, what are the things you invested in, in terms of your communications that had the most impact? And is there anything that you look back and you’re like, I should not have invested my energy in that particular, whether it was a form of thought leadership or a particular kind of invitation that you were sure was going to unlock a lot of membership and it just didn’t.

(26:30):
Shannon: I think I have focused mostly more than anyone else in the organization on branding and communications and what we learned early on. People always say, why did you pick red? And I just want to be clear, we had red long before Donald Trump did because we put a bunch of shirts on sale in our online store, and that’s what most moms bought were the red shirts, and they really pop right when you show up. And so red became our color. And I’ve had volunteers tell me, I feel like I’m putting on my superhero cape every time I put that shirt on. So I think investing in the brand was really, really crucial. We have moms who get tattoos that have our logo or our name or one of our sayings. So anything that felt made volunteers feel empowered was incredibly worthwhile. I think real time communications is important. I was always frustrated. We didn’t have anybody on staff on weekends. Lots of gun violence happens on the weekends, and I ended up filling in that gap for 11 years. So I think I was always willing to try different things. I’m trying to think of stuff that failed. And so maybe it’s our mantra, one of our mantras is losing forward, and it’s this idea that even if you lose, you have gained knowledge to win the next time. So maybe I absorb that so thoroughly that nothing feels like a failure.

Courtney: I love

(27:54):
That. That’s a great way to fail forward. What are you feeling most ignatious about today?

(28:03):
Shannon: A couple things. Obviously, reproductive rights. The other thing I’m really passionate about is menopause care. An entire generation of women are mothers we’re robbed of the ability to go on hormone replacement therapy because of faulty scientific data,

(28:21):
Which some of that misinformation exists even today. It’s very difficult to get HRT. I think that’s changing, but I think that is sort of an important conversation that women need to be having. And then I guess what I learned ultimately is that even though I spent 11 years working on gun violence, that isn’t my lifelong passion. It is definitely a fire I started in my life, but my lifelong passion is summoning the audacity of women and just helping them feel empowered to work on issues and to know that they have that inside them. And to not sit on the sidelines because everybody has a unique set of values and abilities and desires. And if you tap into those, you’re unstoppable at any age.

(29:10):
Courtney: I love it. You are unstoppable. I would. I’ll follow you anywhere for sure. Thanks to Shannon for this conversation and for her continued fierceness. You can follow her@shannonwatts.org to order her book, track, her newsletter, and just generally be motivated as hell. If you learn something from listening to this episode, we want to hear about it. Send us an email at Green room@freshspeakers.com. And if you like what you heard today, please give us a rating and review and tell a friend. Green Room is an independent production of fresh speakers produced by me, Courtney Martin, along with Vanessa Valenti, Casey Molina and Allison Cook. Learn more about our work@freshspeakers.com. Ali Bauman is our editor. The Green Room is possible. Thanks to the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I’m Courtney Martin. Thanks for listening.