Quick Take
Emma Tipping survived a 2019 mass shooting, but suffered long-term trauma that still affects her. Her healing journey led her to the Santa Cruz Feminist Society. The group read Project 2025 together and initially, the promises to “protect children” resonated with her. But she quickly saw its true aim: using nostalgic rhetoric to roll back civil rights and ignore threats of gun violence. Here, she calls for genuine protection of children through human rights and modern solutions — not regressive, misleading agendas.
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In 2019, I was working at a California food festival when a teenager opened fire.
As soon as I heard the fast rat-a-tat of his gun, I thought, “I’m in a mass shooting,” like I’d been expecting it my whole 30-plus years. I dropped what I was holding and ran barefoot across thorny fields, scaled a fence and waded through a creek until I found shelter in a stranger’s home.
Two children and a young man were murdered that day. One child died helping her grandmother. Another — a 6-year-old — was shot in his mother’s arms after she pulled him out of a bouncy house.
I spent the following hours in shock. The house I took shelter in had baby photos lining the hallway. The rows of bread roll arms and heavy cheeks made me think of my own kids. The weeks of healing after childbirth, when I could barely walk, let alone run. The fragility of human bodies.
How could our country let this keep happening? Standing barefoot in that hallway, I cried.
It took years to begin healing.
I struggled with fear in public places, panicked at school pickups, and stepped down from our school’s parent group. I got pregnant with our third baby, but found it emotionally harder than the first two. In the safety of our home, I would cradle my infant and visualize him being shot in my arms. I struggled to bond.
The hardest part of my recovery from the trauma has been watching shooting after shooting unfold and how expected it always feels. Each time a new one breaks the news, it feels like being stabbed in the heart, over and over, with no way to make it stop.
That desperation led me to a meeting of the Santa Cruz Feminist Society in March. I needed to turn grief into action. I was angry that I survived something horrific only to watch my country reelect the party that has repeatedly refused to legislate for gun safety. I already knew that as an American, my right to safety isn’t guaranteed.
And now, even more rights are on the line. I needed to stand up for my kids, my values, myself.
I didn’t expect to find a full printed copy of Project 2025 on the coffee table.
I’d heard about Project 2025, but hadn’t read it. I was busy — kids, business, life. And I knew enough about its authors, the Heritage Foundation, to assume I wouldn’t like it. Still, I was shocked by its sheer size. When I picked it up, I needed both hands.
We were asked to read Promise #1: “Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”
My first reaction surprised me. It wasn’t anger. It was: Yeah, I want to protect kids. I didn’t want to critique it. I wanted to defend it.
At first, the text of Promise #1 sounded familiar and even agreeable. It criticized the impact of pornography and social media, something I worry about, too. There was this line:
“TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter … are specifically designed to create the digital dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue.”
Yes, I thought. This resonates. Technology has outpaced our politics. Our kids deserve better protections.
But as we read on, the mask slipped. It became clear that Promise #1 wasn’t offering new solutions to new problems. It was using emotional language and vague nostalgia to sell a return to a social order that stripped many of us of our rights.
One woman asked, “What do they mean by ‘restore’ the family?”
Do they mean a time when marital rape was legal? When same-sex couples couldn’t marry? What year, exactly, are we returning to?
Another paragraph calls on “the next conservative President” to literally delete words from federal vocabulary: sexual orientation, gender, gender equity, reproductive health. It defines pornography to include transgender content distributed by librarians. In other words, they want to outlaw stories about young people exploring their identities and remove the very language I believe we need to understand our lives.
What does this actually protect?
Promise #1 never asks why so many children are born outside of marriage or what support systems are lacking. It doesn’t suggest that we make sure all American kids have access to food or health care. And it doesn’t mention one word about protecting kids from gun violence. Instead, it relies on sentimentality, omission and moral panic to justify its actual goals.
After weeks of reflection, this is what I think the goal of Promise #1 actually is:
“Dismantle hard-won rights, reestablish white male dominance, and raise children to see this as the natural order.”
They say “protect our children,” but they mean from critical thinking, not school shooters.
They say “family cohesion,” but they don’t mean building trust and equality. They mean pushing women back into the home and trapping us there.
They say “restore the family,” but they mean reinstate a hierarchy that never worked for most of us.
This is not the promise American families are hoping for. To me, it sounds like more of a threat.
The lie at the center of Project 2025 is that we can solve our problems by going backward. It’s seductive, offering comfort in chaos. But society isn’t failing, it’s evolving. And our culture and our laws must evolve with it.
Six years ago, I learned the terrible price we pay for failing to find actual solutions to new problems. Taking away women’s reproductive rights wouldn’t have saved those kids. Eliminating single parenthood, banning words or locking up librarians wouldn’t, either.
Families don’t have time for false promises. We need real ones.
On behalf of the Santa Cruz Feminist Society, I propose this promise: We will protect our children’s rights. No child, regardless of gender or identity, should be forced into marriage, parenthood or silence. Every child should be free to explore who they are, and live safely and fully.
Whether on a street corner, in a bouncy house, or on the White House steps, we promise to protect children from actual harm. And yes, let’s affirm that family is central to American life. But let’s affirm that it is also the center of human rights in America. A place where the dignity and full humanity of every member is upheld.
That’s a promise worth keeping.
Emma Tipping lives in Santa Cruz with her husband and children. She runs a small business as a children’s book illustrator and arts educator, and is a member of the Santa Cruz Feminist Society. If you would like to join the Feminist Society, you can email her at emmatippingillo@gmail.com. She dedicates this piece to Stephen, Keyla and Trevor. #GilroyStrong