Long ago, I got involved with the parent teacher association at the community French immersion school my younger daughter attended, and learned a lot about the power of moms. It was women who attended the PTA meetings and did things like run the weekly hot dog lunches. They were multi-taskers who got things done.

It was a friendly, community-oriented school. The principal and vice-principal stood in the hallway each morning to greet students, and parents helped patrol the school yard at lunch time. We used part of our PTA fundraising (those hot dog lunches) to buy special pins the principal presented to celebrate students who had done good and constructive things.

We took part in the PTA because we believed that parents had a role to play in helping the school serve the community. Nobody ever wrote a news story about us, and because this was before Twitter, not a lot of people knew about what we did.

These days, people can post about what they are doing, usually with pictures. And for a while now, I have been following Moms Demand Action, which has been working to make their US communities safe from gun violence. And, having just read Shannon Watts’ book about the group, I recognize these moms. I met a lot of them in that PTA.