Kindness is Action: Gun Violence in America | Author & Activist Tina Strawn

Kaitlin sits down with Tina Strawn: joy and liberation advocate, activist, author or Are We Free Yet? The Black Queer Guide to Divorcing America and the owner, creator, and host of the Speaking of Racism podcast.They discuss the number one killer of children in America: guns. Tina explains the movement she is helping lead: Here 4 The Kids and its mission of pushing for gun buyback legislation.Full Transcript QUOTES"The reality is that hundreds of years after this document and the Second Amendment guns are now the number one killer of kids in all of America. And at the point where the thing that was protected by the Second Amendment, being a gun, is the thing that is now responsible for killing more of our kids in this country than anything else. It's time for that amendment to be changed.""This is an opportunity for white women, to put their bodies and their privilege and their power on the line in fight against the system. This is a fight, not only against white supremacy and anti-blackness, this is a fight against the patriarchy. This is a fight against capitalism and it's time for white women to step up and do this work.""So this is another level of people's personal anti-racism journeys. And what does that mean to you to show up to fight white supremacy? This is that taking action. This is that moving beyond listening and learning which many folks, many white folks, have been doing for several years now. So now here's the application of what have you been listening to. Who have you been listening to, what have you been learning? And are you ready to show up for this moment right now in Denver to stand against white supremacy and anti-blackness.""We're asking for 25,000 white women, white accomplices, our white friends, white moms to show up at the Capitol in Denver Colorado on June 5th at 5am to demand that Colorado, Governor Jared Polis sign an executive order to ban all guns and buy them back and we stay until he does. That's it.""Guns are the number one killer of kids.""We ask people to show up obviously from all across Colorado. But from all across the country, we're asking us to get their flights, get in their cars. Bring the homies everybody. We're going to Denver, We're gonna sit our asses. We're not moving until Governor Polis signs executive order""Ideally Governor Polis knows that we’re coming, knows what the demand is, and signs, this executive order to ban guns and buy them back before we even get there.""Who's gonna be that first governor who's gonna lead and say 'I am going to be the outlier', I'm going to be the pioneer of this because I have the imagination to see into the future and I want to be on the right side of history. So let me be the Governor that goes down in history, as the Governor who signed the executive order to ban guns, the very first one, this has never happened before.""It’s we can and we have and we will it's it is this having this bigger imagination and taking ourselves out of this you know, small and and narrow-mindedness of asking for less than what we really want. And what we really want are all the guns gone.""This movement being a movement of kindness that's because it's centered in justice. That's because it's centered in what's right and what's true and that's, that's the kindness in this."Connect with us on social media:'Kindness Is' Podcast InstagramKind Cotton InstagramKind Cotton TikTok