White Women With Here4TheKids Stage Sit-In at Colorado Capitol for Gun Ban

They arrived at the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on June 5, just before sunrise. Within hours, Saira Rao’s horde of white women had grown to one thousand strong — with the intention of using the power and privilege given to them by the color of their skin and gender to demand that Governor Jared Polis sign an executive order banning guns.

The event marked the culmination of two months of organizing by leaders of the Here4TheKids movement, which is run by women of color and believes in using white female activists to protest and demonstrate in ways that would typically be ignored when carried out by minorities, the group says.

Rao, a former Colorado congressional candidate and co-author of White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better,…