Mothers’ Power in U.S. Protests Echoes a Global Tradition

In the United States, there is a long tradition of Black women claiming their identities as mothers when protesting against police shootings, lynchings, and mass incarceration. But, like the Tamil activists in Sri Lanka, they have tended to be viewed through the narrow lens of their own grief and fear for their children. White women have typically been taken far more seriously by white audiences as representing mothers generally — another case of bias on display.

Ann Gregory, a lawyer and mother of two who joined the wall of moms in Portland on Sunday, said they had hoped to serve as a buffer between other demonstrators and law enforcement.

“We realize that we’re a bunch of white women, and we do have privilege,” she said. “We were hoping to use that to protect the protesters.”

“We don’t need silent victims, we need loud witnesses.”

Instead, the women got a crash course in the grievances that had set off the protests in the first place.

Ms. Barnum, new to such activism, said she was surprised when other demonstrators warned her group that they could be in danger.

“The news said that if you give the police officer a reason to fear for their life, a reasonable fear, they could hurt you,” she said. “But if you didn’t give them a reason then they wouldn’t hurt you.”

The moms, she reasoned, would be peaceful and give the officers no cause for alarm, so had no reason to worry.