» Get involved with your local chapter

A mixed metaphor, to be sure, but CREDO’s network of members and activists are not afraid to speak out and take action to help stop gun violence. Its network of long-distance and mobile phone members and credit card holders have long been active in helping to bring about change that makes our world a better — and safer — place to be.

“Our members regularly join forces with the Brady Campaign through activism, including most recently asking Starbucks to make their stores gun-free,’ says founding CREDO president, Michael Kieschnick.

This month, CREDO teamed up with the Brady Campaign and its California Brady Chapters to stop Starbucks from allowing guns in its stores. Radical gun enthusiasts had been parading into California restaurants and coffeehouses brazenly displaying handguns – and frightening customers, alarming police and thankfully, causing at least two restaurant chains, Peet’s Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen, to establish firm policies prohibiting firearms in their retail locations. Learn more...

But when we started urging Starbucks to adopt similar life-saving policies, the mega-coffee chain rebuffed our requests. Brady contacted its partners at CREDO to urge their members to sign a petition to Starbucks Chairman Howard Schulz. In just a few days, more than 25,000 petitions had been signed. Click here to add your name to our petition.

Last year, CREDO also joined with Brady on two key battles — opposing legislation to allow guns in national parks and wildlife refuges and urging the U.S. Senate to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

And as mentioned earlier, CREDO puts its money where its mouth is. One percent of every CREDO customer’s monthly phone charge, and 10 cents for every purchase with a Working Assets credit card, go to progressive nonprofits, like the Brady Center. Kieschnick is pleased with what CREDO and its members can do for organizations working for social change. "CREDO Mobile has raised over $65 million for progressive causes, including over $250,000 for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. And we're proud to give more than money."

In 2010, the Brady Center is again eligible to receive a portion of the donations raised from CREDO's members and customers. To cast your vote for donations to the Brady Center, please click here. The more votes, the more dollars, and the more lives we can work to save!

CREDO started out with a different orientation than most business. While most companies goes into business to make money, CREDO, then called Working Assets, went into business with a different sort of bottom line: make change.

Since then, with the help of members, activists and partners, like the Brady Center, they’ve been doing that — winning fair pay for all workers by successfully urging passage of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; getting Congress to expand the State Child Health Insurance Program to cover more kids; defeating attempts to pull Title X funding from reproductive healthcare clinics; and helping to pass the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which now protects over 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states from logging and development – to name a few of its accomplishments in 2009.

The Brady Center is deeply grateful to our friends at CREDO/ Working Assets for its support of our campaigns to make our communities safe – and keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people.

» Click here to add your voice to CREDO Action and help change the world

» Get involved with your local chapter

» Help Save Lives: Click here

“Raising Our Voices” is the name of recent fundraising events to benefit the Brady Campaign’s Million Mom March chapters in Duluth and the Twin Cities.  The events' proceeds went to support an electronic activist network that coordinates the advocacy efforts of not only the Million Mom March chapters in the state, but also Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, and other state-based groups working to stop gun violence.

“When we are organized, we can do something,” says Joan Peterson, President of the Northland Chapter and the Million Mom March Chapters’ national representative to the Board of Directors of the Brady Campaign.  Email activist campaigns have made all the difference in local advocates’ ability to build momentum to help pass strong gun laws – or defeat bad ones.

Minnesota’s gun violence prevention and other advocacy groups have pooled resources to pay for Democracy in Action, a web-based tool that makes possible an e-mail network and e-alerts to Congress.   Joan admits that working together through the e-mail network “has made us stronger as a group.  Since we are now using one state monthly e-mail and one state newsletter, we can call attention to issues as they come up in one voice.”

The fundraisers also helped cover the cost of Minnesota News Connection, a public radio program and news service.  Joan and other advocates have helped shape MNC coverage of the gun violence issue. Joan was interviewed about the Fort Hood shootings recently.  The story was picked up by local states and reached more than 700,000 listeners in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Fargo, North Dakota.

Minnesota’s united voices have also brought about major victories for common sense gun laws.  This past summer, e-mail campaigns among the Minnesota groups helped put pressure on Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar to vote against South Dakota Senator John Thune’s amendment on national concealed carry legislation.  At a reception for the area’s nonprofit organizations attended by Senator Franken, Joan did a bee-line for the Senator and thanked him personally for his vote.

It has also made the difference in coordinating efforts quickly.  The day that Todd Palin, husband of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, showed up at a local gun store, Joan pulled together a group of protesters real fast through emails to multiple listservs.

“People came with signs. ‘Hunters for Obama’ were there, and then, it turned out so was National Rifle Association President Wayne Lapierre!”  Joan did a television interview on the spot – with the rallied supporters behind her – and presented her contrasting view on the gun issue.

Joan witnessed the power of many voices when she went to Washington, DC in 2000 for the Million Mom March. “The march gave us a vehicle to talk about gun violence, to raise awareness about it.” Joan, whose sister was shot to death, recalls the T-shirts and signs commemorating loved ones.  “There are a lot of us,” she remembers realizing that day.  Joan met Mary Streufert, founding co-president of the Northland Chapter, at the march.  Pictures of their loved ones were right next to each other.

The Northland Chapter is in Minnesota’s District 8, one of the Brady Campaign’s targeted districts to build long-term political support for common sense gun laws.  The focus now is on H.R. 2324 and S. 843, the House and Senate bills to close the gun show loophole.  Representative Jim Oberstar, a Democrat with a B+-rating from the NRA, holds the seat, and according to Joan’s conversations with him and his aides, the Congressman is open to learning more about legislative solutions to gun violence.  Joan knows that the voices of victims and “gun guys” can be especially effective.

“We make sure they hear from victims and gun owners in the district.  We’ve also forged relationships with our Mayors in Duluth, Minneapolis, and St Paul, as well as with law enforcement.  And we let our legislators hear from us – from gun violence prevention groups and from other area organizations.  We let them know that all of us are watching them and holding them accountable.”

To unite your voice urging Congress to close the gun show loophole:

» Click here to email your U.S. Representative

» Help Save Lives: Click here

Mindy Finkelstein was in the right place at the right time – playing capture the flag on a sunny morning with five and six year old campers at the North Valley Jewish Community Center’s summer camp.  On their way to the arts and crafts, though, it all went wrong.

That’s when Mindy was shot … along with three campers … by a self-proclaimed new-Nazi, out on parole and clinically insane.  He got his weapon, a semi-automatic weapon, at a gun show.

“In an instant my campers went from running across the back grassy field to asking me if I had paint all over me.  It was blood,” Mindy remembers.  “It has been ten years and I can still remember every detail of that day and the feelings I had as a result.”

Mindy’s shooter was out on parole from the state of Washington.  He crossed the state line into California, and he was criminally insane. He even tried to lock himself in a mental hospital and was denied entrance.  He was so ill that, from what Mindy was told, the Aryan Nation kicked him out for being “a threat to their cause.”  Yet, he was able to walk into a gun show and legally purchase his murder weapon.

“My opinion on gun legislation is simple,” Mindy explains. “It’s narrowed down to common sense and personal safety. 

“Everyone makes the comparison that you have to have a license to drive a car but not to own a gun. For me it’s even less complicated than that. A car’s sole intent is to help get people from place to place.  A sole purpose of a gun is to kill. So, making it harder to get a gun should be obvious.”  Her shooter took advantage of the loophole in the sale of guns at gun shows.  Private sellers at gun shows are not required to conduct Brady background checks on purchasers.  “Bufford Furrow bought the gun he used against me without a background check or waiting period.”

Mindy became involved with the Brady Campaign after she spoke to nearly a million people at the Million Mom March in 2000.  The tenth anniversary of the March is next year.  Mindy works with the San Fernando Chapter of the Brady Campaign, and recently organized the Victory over Violence 5K and 10K walk-a-thons to benefit the local Women against Gun Violence group.  And she is a frequent speaker for schools, churches and congregrations, and civic groups, speaking out about gun violence and for common sense gun laws.

“At a recent Brady event, I met the father of one of the Virginia Tech victims who told me that I have a responsibility to speak for his daughter so that she could also lend her silenced voice to the cause. This is a responsibility that I don’t take lightly… and never will.  I can’t bring back or replace the victims of gun violence in any way but what I can do is use my face and voice to show the truth behind gun violence. That’s why I continue to work with Brady to strengthen our country’s gun laws – especially to close the gun show loophole that threatened the life of me and my campers’ – and today still puts our communities at risk.”

» Click here to email your U.S. Representative to close the gun show loophole

» Help Save Lives: Click here

Ten years ago, Heidi Yewman sat at Dave Sanders’ funeral and vowed to help reduce gun violence.  Dave was the faculty member killed at the mass shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.  Dave was also Heidi’s basketball coach when she attended Columbine.  Her vow turned into action when she led a contingent from Oregon to the 2000 Million Mom March in Washington, D.C., and then, returned home to become President of the Vancouver, Washington Million Mom March Chapter, which she has led ever since.

Heidi is also regional coordinator and spokesperson for The Asking Saves Kids Campaign, which encourages parents to ask if guns are safely stored at places where their children play or visit.  Heidi’s involvement with the ASK Campaign started when she discovered her two small children playing in a room at a friend’s house where two loaded handguns were stored in the night stand.
As one of the region’s most outspoken and visible advocates for gun violence prevention, Heidi has delivered more than 50 presentations on the impact of gun violence to more than 1,000 parents, teachers, and healthcare providers.  Heidi has also held numerous press conferences, vigils, and media events; participated in safety fairs and conferences; placed more than 20 news articles and six opinion articles in The Oregonian, The Columbian, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and in Portland Parents Magazine; was featured in ten broadcast news stories about various gun issues.

Heidi’s recently published book, Beyond the Bullet, is a series of interviews with individuals whose lives were “blown apart by the pull of a trigger,” including two teachers and one parent from Columbine. They discuss the anguish, fear, confusion, and grief caused by suicide, homicide, and unintentional shootings. Heidi found that although the individual circumstances are different, the stories reveal what the survivors hold in common—the strength of the human spirit and its ability to survive.  Heidi will be speaking at the memorial for Columbine High School students and faculty on April 20, 2009 in Denver.

Heidi lives in Vancouver with her husband, 14-year-old daughter, and eleven-year-old son.  Heidi is proud of all that she has accomplished as a high-profile advocate and MMM Chapter leader, but also recognizes how much more there is to do.”

» Click here to email your U.S. Representative to close the gun show loophole

» Help Save Lives: Click here

After pitching in all summer, they now are urging friends and families to Become a Brady fan on Facebook.  The interns are joining campus-based efforts, such as Students for Gun Free Schools, which worked with Brady activists and allies to defeat guns on campus legislation in eleven states this year.  And each has been active in meeting with their own members of Congress this summer to discuss sensible gun violence prevention legislation – including urging their Senators to vote against national concealed carry legislation.

What drew the interns to Brady?  The startling facts about gun violence.  Guns kill more than 32 individuals every day in the United States, but in cities like Philadelphia where Michael, an intern for Brady’s Legal Action Project, calls home, more than 300 gun deaths occur in a year.  “At a certain point,” he says, “Enough is enough.”  He plans to practice law immediately after school and assist Brady through pro bono work.

Growing up, the interns lived through the country’s most violent shootings in schools and on college campuses.  Even in light of the incidents of gun violence they’ve witnessed, they recognize how difficult it is to move political leaders to act.   Peter, a college student in Georgia and another Legal Action Project intern, acknowledged, “I thought we had a much easier task in front of us.  Much of the violence can be prevented . . . but recently Congress has been unwilling to do that.  I now understand how hard Brady and its activists have to work simply to enact sensible gun laws.”

Astrid, a graduate student in law and public health, has a similar view. “I thought that law makers were more in tune with public sentiment on gun control.  I am acutely aware of the uphill battle facing Brady and other gun violence prevention groups, and I am, frankly, baffled by how legislators let themselves be bullied by the NRA and fail to stop the gun lobby’s dangerous bills.”

Anne, an intern with Brady’s research department, admits that she did not know much about the country’s gun laws before starting the internship.  “After learning about the lack of gun regulation in America, it made me angry.”  Her experience, she claims, is similar to other young people’s.  “Once they learn how few gun laws there are on the books, they will want to do something about it and push for stronger legislation to protect communities.”

The Brady Campaign and Brady Center are grateful to Amy, Chloe, Colin, Peter, Michael, Astrid, Caroline, Anne, Kerian, Kaylie, and Gillian for their energy, commitment, and good work to keeping our communities safe.

» Click here to email your U.S. Representative to close the gun show loophole