"Here 4 the Kids" Smells Like A Very 2023 Racial Ablution Grift

Call me cynical, but maybe Saira Rao isn’t the right person to address gun violence

“Hundreds of White women gather at Colorado Capitol after plea from women of color to use their ‘privilege’ to demand action on gun violence,” goes the CNN headline from last week.

The “plea” in question comes from Here 4 the Kids, a brand-new advocacy organization founded after the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville in March. The top two people listed on its Leadership page are Saira Rao, famous for convincing liberal white women to pay handsomely to host dinners in which they are confronted over their ostensible racism (see this New York magazine article or this Helen Lewis interview), and Tina Strawn, “an anti-racism facilitator, racial and social justice advocate, author, and pleasure activist” whose website touts her “3-day immersive, anti-racism experiences.” In addition to the CNN coverage, the effort got mostly glowing coverage from ABC (which noted some celebrity endorsements) and NBC, though the latter noted that “Organizers had hoped for 25,000 protesters on site Monday, but by 8 a.m., there were closer to 1,500.”

Here 4 the Kids ostensibly exists to end gun violence against children, but if you go to the About page and cut through the fluff and prog-speak, you will see that it is very hard to understand exactly what the organization is or does, save for one very specific demand: Rao, Strawn, and her colleagues want white women to protest the fact that Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor, a Democrat, hasn’t signed an executive order Here 4 the Kids authored. White women in particular need to do this protesting because they “are least likely to be brutalized by the police” — the theory being, apparently, that if non-white women peacefully protest in front of the State Capitol in Denver, they risk being physically assaulted by law enforcement, whereas white women will be left alone.