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News release

Moms Urge Members of Congress to Work and Sit Together

January 25, 2011
Gun Control

Lisa Lederer, 202-371-1996

MomsRising.org Delivers Email Petitions Asking Democrats and Republicans to Live Up to the Expectations of Nine-Year-Old Tucson Shooting Victim
On January 12, President Obama urged the nation to live up to the expectations of Christina Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl who was one of the victims of the Tucson shooting. In the wake of the tragedy, a call for increased civility in public discourse rang out and some members of Congress took it to heart.
 
Many Senators and Representatives have pledged to sit next to their colleagues from across the aisle tonight during the State of the Union Address, as a show of civility. MomsRising.org, an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization for moms and everyone who has a mom applauded this move, initially proposed by Senator Mark Udall and Third Way, a think-tank that creates and advances moderate policy and political ideas.
 
Yesterday afternoon, the organization delivered petitions to federal lawmakers encouraging them break with tradition and join their colleagues in the mixed seating party. Nearly 10,000 moms, dads and others who want to see Congress work together on the serious issues facing our nation signed the petitions.
 
We hope that this small gesture of sitting together will help to foster a new sense of cooperation and unity, said MomsRising Executive Director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Every child deserves to live in a country where civil discourse is the rule, not the exception. Where people can work together across the separations of party lines and ideology to do what’s best for the country. Where having a "D" or an "R" -- or for that matter an "I" -- after your name, doesn’t mean that you can’t cooperate effectively with others. As moms, we know that the world is a better place when you play nice.
 

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MomsRising.org is an on-the-ground and online grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to increase family economic security, decrease discrimination against women and moms, and to build a nation where businesses and families can thrive. Established in 2006, MomsRising and its members are organizing and speaking out to improve public policy and to change the national dialogue on issues that are critically important to America’s families, including criminal justice reform, immigration policy reform, and gun safety. MomsRising is working for paid family and medical leave, affordable, high quality childcare and early learning, and for an end to the wage and hiring discrimination which penalizes women — particularly moms and women of color — and so many others. MomsRising advocates for access to healthy food for all kids, health care for all, earned sick days, and breastfeeding rights so that all children can have a healthy start. MomsRising maintains a Spanish language website: MamásConPoder.org. Sign up online at www.MomsRising.org — and follow us on our blog, and on Twitter and Facebook.