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12/08/2021 07:30 AMDawn Carafeno and members of Moms Demand Action—CT Shoreline hope residents will help New Haven area kids and teens in crisis, by bringing unwrapped gifts and/or gift cards and monetary donations to the group’s Holiday Gift Drive on the Branford Green on Sunday, Dec. 12, from 1 to 3 p.m.
Just look for the folks in the red shirts—and don’t be surprised if you find more than moms at the table, says Dawn, who founded the shoreline group as part of the Connecticut chapter in 2018. Men are also welcome and are involved in the organization.
“I make them shirts that say ‘Man Enough to be a Mom,’” says Dawn, after seeing similar shirts proudly worn at national meetings. “We are mom-centric, but we are not mom-exclusive. We like grandmas and grandpas, dads, aunts, uncles, neighbors—anyone that wants to just get in the trenches with us and try to make this a better place.”
On Dec. 12, the group will have members staffing collection locations from 1 to 3 p.m. on town greens in Branford, Guilford, Madison, and East Haven as part of the second annual Moms Demand Action-CT Shoreline Holiday Gift Drive. For those who can’t stop by, pick-ups of donations can be arranged by sending an email to Moms4Shore@gmail.com. Additionally, Venmo donations are also accepted (search @Dawn-Carafeno).
All items collected on Dec. 12 will be provided to the CT Violence Intervention Program assisting New Haven area children in crisis, ages 17 and under.
“Last year, we ended up with over $600 in cash donations and over 650 gifts to donate to these kids who are living an absolute nightmare,” says Dawn. “They’ve all lost a family member to gun violence in New Haven County, or have been a witness to those atrocities; and sometimes, both. We are trying to bring a little cheer and a little normality, and a little bit of kindness and love and spirit and light to kids who are living things that we can’t even imagine.”
The Dec. 12 collection drive is also hoped to help raise awareness about the New Haven arm of the CT Violence Intervention Program; and provide a bit of a wake-up call about gun violence that’s taking place in close proximity to our shoreline hometowns, she says.
“The little ones who have lost their mom or their dad or their brother or cousin, and who saw this happen—it’s happening right in our backyard, in New Haven. I think a lot of people on our shoreline think of that as a whole other place,” Dawn says, adding, “It’s devastating to me that little kids are feeling unloved and unwanted and scared. When someone gets shot and killed in Hamden or New Haven, it barely makes the news anymore. My heart breaks for them, and then what becomes of those left behind, especially the children left behind?”
Support provided by the CT Violence Intervention Program is based on a mix of different evidence-based models, including Cure Violence, headquartered in Chicago, and Operation Cease Fire, which started in Boston, Dawn explains.
“It’s very unique. A lot of the interveners who work in this program are ex-offenders from the area that they serve. They go in and they defuse a situation before it becomes a really horrible outcome. As they put it, they interrupt the transmission of the disease of violence. And this particular arm [in New Haven] is just so laser-focused on where the problem is, really at the ground level. I’m proud to partner with it,” says Dawn.
As a national grassroots organization, Moms Demand Action is fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence, including passing stronger gun laws and working to close the loopholes that jeopardize people’s safety. Learn more at momsdemandaction.org. Efforts range from education on topics such as safe gun storage to working for change at the legislative level, with many members, including Dawn, traveling to state capitals to provide testimony.
Dawn says important federal legislation is needed, not just “state by state” actions alone.
“It seems so crazy that we have these invisible lines that guns do not respect,” she says.
Starting the Shoreline Group
Dawn moved to Guilford in with her husband, Michael Carafeno, and their young children in 2017. She started Moms Demand Action-CT Shoreline on Feb. 15, 2018, one day after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a student with a gun killed 17 people. Two weeks earlier, Ethan Song, 15, had been killed by a gun in Guilford, Dawn notes. The handgun had been improperly stored and was accidentally discharged at a friend’s home.
“I didn’t know his family; I was still new to Guilford, but I knew that this earth-shattering thing had happened in this little shoreline town,” says Dawn.
On the morning after the Parkland shooting, Dawn’s seven-year-old daughter refused to put on her shoes when getting dressed for school. Unbeknown to Dawn, she’d learned of the shootings from TV reports while dining out with a relative and her five-year-old brother the night before.
“She had these brand-new shoes with flashing lights in them. She would not put them on. I finally just stopped her and said, ‘What is going on? You have to get dressed for school,’” Dawn recalls. “And she said, ‘Mommy, we have to get really, really small and really, really quiet in the bathroom to hide from the guy with the gun. If I wear these shoes to school, he will find us and he will kill me and my friends.’
“Something in my brain at that moment just kind of broke. I just looked at her and thought, ‘This is a little baby girl afraid to put on flashing shoes for the fear of being shot in school. This is where we are as a country; and I’m not having it,’” she adds. “And so that was the day I went online to see what I could do...and that’s the day that I started Moms Demand Action for the CT Shoreline.”
Dawn had gone online expecting to find a local group to join, and was surprised she couldn’t find one.
“It was shocking, considering this whole organization is birthed out of the shooting in Newtown. I just figured it was everywhere, at least in Connecticut,” says Dawn of the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, which left 28 people dead, including 20 elementary school students.
When Dawn put out some Facebook feelers about starting the group, she immediately struck a nerve with other area residents who wanted to “do something” in the wake of the Parkland shootings, she says.
“The fact that I started this group immediately on the heels of the shooting in Parkland; the wave of people who wanted to be involved was enormous,” says Dawn, speaking with The Sound just days after a 15-year-old student shot and killed four high school students at school in Oxford, Michigan on Nov. 30.
“These mass shootings in schools are such headline grabbers and people what to do something, but then it dies down,” says Dawn. “School violence and shootings are horrific and they should take your attention, but they are less than one percent of what’s happening with gun violence.”
In the years since starting the group, through data, evidence, and information supplied by the national organization, Dawn has learned much more about gun violence and its many forms. She notes 67 percent of gun violence deaths in America are from suicide, while other frequent acts can be attributed to gun violence include domestic violence, and even accidental shootings by children who get their hands on a firearm, among other incidents.
“Those things are happening far more frequently than mass school shootings, but we focus on mass school shootings because it’s awful,” says Dawn.
Making Change
Since becoming the leader of the shoreline group, Dawn’s taken part in many gun violence vigils and rallies. She’s traveled to cities such as Bridgeport to stand vigil with moms at the scene of their child’s death. On Nov. 29, Dawn joined a rally outside Madison’s Board of Education meeting protesting a potential early return to school of an expelled male student who had sent gun-threat text messages to a female student. On Dec. 3, the family was notified the male student would instead remain out of school for the duration of the expulsion period. Dawn, who is also a friend of the threatened student’s family, was glad to hear the outcome.
“I do feel like we made a difference, and I think we all have to keep doing that,” she says.
While she understands the frustration, more than most, of the ongoing fallout from gun violence, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s very frustrating to have to keep repeating ourselves over and over again. But I do feel like there has been change. I think, as an organization, Moms Demand [Action] has shown up, in red shirts, in every corner of this country. We’re in all 50 states, and people know who we are. Even a few years ago, when we would try to speak to legislators about any kind of gun reform, they would not talk to us,” says Dawn. “And now, since Parkland especially, they seek us out.”
Interestingly, Dawn, herself, is a past 17-year member of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
“Frankly I never really liked guns very much; it was just part of my life. I grew up in the Midwest and the south. It was part of who we were,” says Dawn. “My ex-husband and I were very supportive of the NRA and what we thought they stood for, but I started to slip away from that. I had some questions about what was going on and some of the actions being taken by people who claimed to be NRA members.”
Dawn also shares that a son from her first marriage, who is 26 and lives in another state, legally owns guns. One of the most important things Dawn feels should be shared about Moms Demand Action is that the organization isn’t looking to make guns disappear from the face of the earth. What the organization is seeking is accountability and responsibility.
“If you want to own these materials that can and will cause death, you have to have some accountability and responsibility,” she says. “You have to safely store them. You have to make sure that they are not in the hands of someone who is dangerous...There are steps you can take to temporarily remove firearms from somebody who’s going through a really hard time,” such as in situations where a person is at risk for suicide.
“As a society, we can do something to restrict the accessibility of firearms to people who shouldn’t have them,” says Dawn.
Moms Demand Action–CT Shoreline welcomes more volunteer members; email Moms4Shore@gmail.com to learn more.