social issues

A Letter to My Kids on the Anniversary of the Trump Presidency

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

It’s been a full year since Donald Trump became president. A full year since he stood on the National Mall and swore to “faithfully execute the office of President of the United States,” just as Barack Obama had done eight years before. Attending President Obama’s inauguration was one of the most patriotic moments of my life. Instead of attending Trump’s inauguration, I joined with half a million other women in the next day to raise our voices in protest.

Photo of a white woman in a red and gold Wonder Woman shirt and black sweatshirt looking at the camera in a selfie.

Needless to say, I entered Trump’s administration ready to fight. In my Instagram photo from that day, I’m wearing my Wonder Woman shirt, my smirk and stance challenging the camera.

But despite my attitude, I was worried. In fact, I had been worried since I blearily read the results the morning after the election. I was worried for you and even moreso for the many families less privileged than ours. As we’ve seen since then, my worries about the treatment of immigrants, LGBT folks, black people, and poor families were justified. Everything has been as bad as we expected. In some cases, it’s been worse.

And yet.

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Our Creative Alternative to the Thanksgiving Myth

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Our Creative Alternative to the Thanksgiving Myth (Photo: Table set with a variety of food for Thanksgiving)

“They’re not dressing up as Native Americans, are they?” I said, wrinkling my nose. After reading about how cultures aren’t costumes around Halloween and how the whitewashed version of the Thanksgiving story is painfully inaccurate, I hope that my son’s preschool isn’t re-enacting the famous version of the Thanksgiving narrative. Regardless of their curriculum, I know we won’t be repeating it in our household. So we have to come up with an alternative.

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How to Help the Environment While Making the Most of Your Time

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Do you want to do what you can to help the environment but can’t find the time? Here are eight ways you can do both!

How to Help the Environment While Making the Most of Your Time (Photo: A photo of a green tree in a field with a clock superimposed over it)

“I don’t have enough time!” I lament to my husband, as I stay up too late washing the dishes yet again. I’m certainly not alone in this cry, as anyone who raises small children knows. The days may be long, but it still feels as if there are never enough hours. But despite all that, our family still lives in as environmentally-friendly a manner as we can. As many “green” activities take more time than conventional ones – I’m looking at you, dish rags that we need to wash – how do we find the time to help the environment?

Some of it is reorganizing our priorities. But in many cases, I’ve found some shortcuts to save time and still help the environment.

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The Absolutely Best Ways to Donate to a Food Drive

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Want to give effectively to a food drive to a local food bank?

The Absolutely Best Ways to Donate to a Food Drive. We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So (Photo: Cans of food stacked in very large piles)

You rarely have the opportunity to decide how to spend your co-workers’ hard-earned money. But as the one responsible for running our yearly food drive, I wanted both them and the food bank to get the best bang for their buck. Just randomly picking out whatever I felt like at the grocery store wasn’t going to cut it. But how could I donate in the most effective way possible?

I’m not the only one who struggles with this question. Thanksgiving and Christmas are the “food drive holidays,” where everyone from churches to Boy Scouts troops are collecting cans to donate to food banks. Unfortunately, the donations to these drives aren’t as helpful as they could be because people just aren’t aware of the most effective ways to give.

Between my experiences running the food drives and reading up on the subject, I’ve found some really handy rules to guide your food drive giving.

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How to Prevent Raising An Entitled Kid

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

How to Prevent Raising an Entitled Kid. Want to raise a respectful kid who doesn't think they deserve everything? Try these seven things our family is doing! (Picture: Victorian illustration of a little girl asleep on the floor, clutching a box of chocolates with a dog next to her)

“Why did he think he was better than everyone else?” my four year old asked as we were reading the picture book Little Blue Truck. In the story, a huge construction truck comes barreling through a farm, proclaiming, “I’ve got important things to do!” As a consequence of his pride, he slides into a mud puddle and his huge tires get stuck. In the world of trucks, he’s a bit of an entitled brat.

Answering my son’s question was tough. Why do some people think they’re better than others? Why do some people think they deserve more or better than other people do? As challenging it is to answer these, they’re essential questions to figure out if we’re going to raise kids who respect and value other people. In other words, to prevent raising entitled kids.

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10 Easy Tips to Go Green that Make a Big Difference

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10 Easy Tips to Go Green that Make a Big Difference. Overwhelmed by the list of possible things to do to be more green? Check out these tips that give you the biggest bang for your time and energy. (Photos: Wind turbine in a grassy field, cloth diaper with owls on it on a table, basket of vegetables, ceiling fan)

As I scroll through the to-do list on my phone (yes, it’s that long), I breathe out a big, honking sigh. “Check to see if there’s anything else we can do from the energy audit” has been on there for more than a year. For God’s sake, that to-do item is older than my younger son. While I’m still not giving up on my dream of installing more insulation, I do like quick-hit, easy tips to go green.

In addition to drawing on my own knowledge, I asked some fellow green bloggers for their best tips to go green. Here are some ways you can get the biggest bang for the least time and effort:

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Why White Parents Must Confront White Supremacy

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Why White Parents Must Confront White Supremacy (Photo: Sign saying "The answer to whether we'd have marched in the civil rights era is whether we're marching in this civil rights era")

Content warning: Racism, racially-based violence

When I was a teenager in the late 1990s, I thought I was born in the wrong time. In my mind, I should have been coming of age in the 1960s, the height of the Civil Rights era. I imagined myself as a fierce crusader for the rights of others, on the front lines of the marches and sit-ins to confront white supremacy.

Dear Lord, I was a fool.

Admittedly, that’s pretty common among teenagers. But this was a special kind of foolishness. One that seems especially relevant in this rather terrible time in our nation’s history. Almost fifty years after Martin Luther King’s death, a white supremacist in Charlottesville plowed a car into a group of anti-racist protestors. He killed one person and injured 19 others.

To me, this incident highlights how ignorant I was back then. It also illustrates how common my views still are. My naivety illustrates everything about why white parents need to talk to their kids about white supremacy. (By which I don’t mean just Nazis, but the cultural aspect of valuing white people and culture above all others.)

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How to Introduce Kids to Political Activism

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

Are your kids interested in world events and want to know more about political activism? Or are you getting more involved and want to explain why to your kids? Here’s how to introduce kids to political activism in an age-appropriate way. 

How to Introduce Kids to Political Activism. With all of the talk of activism, what's the best way to introduce the ideas to children? (Photo: Two kids walking next to each other; one has a sign on her back that reads 'We march for our wild and wonderful world.')

As I pinned a poster to the back of my friend’s jacket, I wondered how I was going to explain to my three-year-old where I was going that Saturday morning. From the couch, he was watching me and my two friends pile on every piece of warm clothing we could find.

“Mommy is going to let the people in charge know that we need to respect all people,” I told my son (nicknamed Sprout) that morning, the day of Women’s March. While I had been to my fair share of marches, it was the first I had gone to since he was born. As he was part of my reason for going, I thought he should know why.

Explaining what’s going on is even more important if you’re bringing your kids along to a political event. In the case of the People’s Climate March, I knew that I had a responsibility to explain to Sprout why we were bringing him and his younger brother along.

From explaining why I’ve missed dinner to testify to our City Council to marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, here’s what I’ve learned about introducing kids to activism:

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Green Moms Profile: Julie on Veganism

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 9 Comments

Green Moms Profile_ Julie on Veganism.png

Welcome to Earth Month! This month, I’m profiling a number of “green moms” who purposely live in a sustainable way.

For our third Green Mom Profile, welcome Julie. She’s in Germantown, MD, a suburb of Washington D.C. just north of where I am. She has two kids, who are one and five years old. She’s a mentor for Vegan Outreach, a group who is dedicated to reducing suffering through the promotion of a vegan diet.

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Guest Post: This is the Least I Can Do

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

IMG_5387.jpg

Privilege is a word tossed around a lot these days, often in the phrase “Check your…” But even though the words are new, the idea is something I’ve known about for a long time. My mom emphasized how I was lucky to have what I had. Sure, my parents and I worked hard, but what we had wasn’t through hard work alone. I hope to pass that knowledge onto my kids.

Knowing how damn lucky and I my kids are motivates so much of my activism. I got the chance to write about it for Mamalode recently, in a piece called My Privilege Protects Me and My Sons From So Much – This is the Least I Can Do.

Here’s the first two paragraphs:

“President Obama, I know you have two daughters. I know you love them. But I want you to know that I don’t know if I’ll have kids. That’s because I don’t know if they’ll have clean water to drink,” said Eryn Wise, a 26-year-old organizer of the movement against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. As she stared out at the crowd gathered in front of the White House, I gasped just a little. Of course, I know this is a calculation women make every day – whether the world they would bring their child into is good enough. And too often, that answer is no. But to hear a young woman say it in person made me breathe in just a little more sharply.

That’s because it’s a question I’ve never had to face.

Read the rest at Mamalode!