As of September 5, however, the group is back, with new goals and an updated strategy.
But don't worry, Governor Jared Polis: The organizers have decided to leave Colorado behind.
The group plans to keep working to ban guns, but says it will now take on the climate crisis, too, on the national stage. It is also dropping its white woman-focused strategy as it expands those horizons — with the ultimate hope of sending a quarter of a million people to Washington, D.C., in March 2024 to demand that President Joe Biden ban both guns and fossil fuels.
H4TK was created by Saira Rao — a former Colorado congressional candidate and co-author of White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better — back in March after a school shooting was reported in Nashville.
Rao, who is Indian American, became something of a shepherd for white women after her unsuccessful run against U.S. Representative Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary for Colorado's 1st Congressional District in 2018. She and Regina Jackson, who worked on Rao's campaign, began hosting dinner parties with groups of liberal white women in order to confront them about their implicit racism and complicity in white supremacy, she says.
That activity grew into a movement called Race2Dinner, with Rao and Jackson charging a few thousand dollars per guest for the dinners, which typically sold out. A documentary about the movement, Deconstructing Karen, was shown to a sold-out crowd at the Sie FilmCenter in March.
That activity grew into a movement called Race2Dinner, with Rao and Jackson charging a few thousand dollars per guest for the dinners, which typically sold out. A documentary about the movement, Deconstructing Karen, was shown to a sold-out crowd at the Sie FilmCenter in March.
Through H4TK, Rao — along with the group's other leader, Tina Strawn — hoped to organize a mass movement of white women under the leadership of women who aren't white to use the political influence granted to them by their sex and skin color to pressure state leaders into banning guns and buying them back.
The vision started as a state-by-state approach: First, thousands of white women would arrive on the lawn of the Colorado Capitol and request that Governor Polis sign an executive order enacting their demands.
Critics such as the gun-lobby group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners were skeptical of the goal, but RMGO Executive Director Taylor Rhodes admitted that "if they turn out 25,000, as they claim they're going to, maybe that changes things." Following its success, H4TK would move on to another state — and then another — until eventually the whole country was gun-free.
Despite the group's best efforts, H4TKs only managed to turn out hundreds, not thousands, of white women for their June 5 protests, and Polis did not ban guns. The movement has not held any more protests in any other states since.
Other than some social media posts, H4TKs has mostly been quiet.
"We've spent the last three months in a place of rest, repair and restructure," Strawn says. "Really it was a matter of the core leadership team — Saira, myself and the others that have been leading this work — just regrouping and preparing for what will happen next. We hosted a few what we call 'grievance sessions,' where we invited folks to come and basically give us feedback. ... We sent out both internal and external surveys to get folks' feedback about how they felt things went overall."
Stawn adds, "We received hundreds of responses back."
The main grievance people had was "communication," she says. The June 5 protest was meant to last from June 5 to June 7, but some people weren't clear on the start and end times of the second two days of the demonstrations, according to Strawn.
Additionally, the organizers asked only straight, non-disabled white women to show up as a matter of safety and getting their point across. Since things went well, everyone was invited on day two, though some people didn't get the message. "Communication was also unclear as it related to when Saira and I made the decision that we would show up and we would open it to the marginalized communities," Strawn notes.
After working through those issues, Here4TheKids leaders began planning their next move.
"There are two existential threats and crises that we are facing in terms of the future of not only our children and not only the nation, but all of humanity," Strawn says. "And those existential crises are two things: guns — as guns are the number-one killer of kids and teenagers in the United States — and also climate catastrophe. And so we are combining those two."
She adds, "We feel that we have run out of time to continue to listen to endless debates. We've run out of time to hope that legislators do anything to affect change with guns or with the climate crisis. And so we have created a two-pronged approach and a much larger-scale action."
That action will be carried out on March 9, 2024.
"We are asking 250,000 people to show up at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.," Strawn says. "We are going to the one person who has the power to affect both of these crises, and that is President Joe Biden."
Strawn acknowledges that it's a big goal — especially when only a fraction of the 25,000 white women they had hoped to bring to Denver on June 5 actually showed up. "No, we did not get 25,000 white women to show up in Denver. And, no, we did not succeed in having Governor Polis sign an executive order to ban guns," she says. "The way that we measured success is that we were able to mobilize people to take action, to move from inactivity and indifference to hope."
To meet its new goals, Here4TheKids is expanding from white women to everyone. "We fell short of that goal in Denver by just keeping the ask to a very specific demographic of cisgender, non-disabled white women, and we feel confident that by opening it up to everyone, that is automatically going to give us a much greater chance of hitting our goal," Strawn notes. She says that organizers will be running an aggressive social media campaign between now and March 9 to help promote everything.
As for dropping the state-by-state strategy, Strawn says it was a scheduling issue. "We don't feel like there is time," she says of visiting different states.
However, the group hopes to eventually organize regional rallies, along with the big one in D.C.
To help do this, H4TKs is also asking for donations.
"We are needing $3.5 million to make this happen," Strawn says. "When we look at how much it costs to ban abortions, it's in the billions. ... We recognize that to have these actions take place in about six months, it's going to take a lot of money. So we are currently reaching out to our supporters and asking them to partner with us — do anything from contributing $5 a month, $25 a month, whatever they can do."
While the group is dropping its focus on using white women to advance its cause, Strawn says its message will still be loud and clear.
"I think what's important is that we continue with our message that the reason we are in a state of emergency — where kids are dying at the hands of guns and our entire planet is overheating — is due to white supremacy, colonialism [and] capitalism," she concludes.
