History of Mother's Day: Mother's Day for Peace!

Did you know that Mother's Day began as a Mother's Day for Peace? Read Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclomation here:
Arise, Then, All Women Who Have Hearts! | Common Dreams
This article points out that Americans spend $14 billion on flowers, chocolates, and trinkets for Mother's Day. Oh, capitalism. The Common Dreams article by Abby Zimet provides some alternative ideas of where to put your money--organizations that help mothers around the world. More on that here: www.mothersdaymovement.org.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe published the Mother's Day Proclamation, a manifesto against the the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Julia Ward Howe believed that women have a responsibility to shape our societies at the political level. Her manifesto called for an international congress of women:

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.


Here is a beautiful prayer calling on the spirit of Julia Ward Howe in this time of war.  
...Mother Julia, remind us
that every life has inherent worth,
that each person had a mother somewhere.
Help us to use this moment for self-reflection,
that we might grow and evolve...


Left is a photograph of Jane Addams and another woman upholding Julia Ward Howe's vision of Mother's Day for Peace.

Here is an article from National Geographic on Anna Jarvis, Julia Ward Howe, and the history of mother's day.


This tradition still carries on in some communities. Yesterday in Dorchester, Massachusetts, thousands joined in the Mother's Day Walk for Peace.

CodePink calls for the U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan (here is their petition to the president) and provide their modern interpretation of Julia Ward Howe's proclamation.

Another Mother for Peace was founded in 1967 in opposition to the Vietnam War. Here is their proclomation, A Pax Materna:

I join with my sisters in every land

In the Pax Materna--

A permanent declaration of peace

That transcends our ideological differences.

In the nuclear shadow, war is obsolete.

I will no longer suffer it in silence

Nor sustain it by complicity.

They shall not send my son

To fight another mother's son.

For now, forever, there is no mother

Who is enemy to another mother.

 Gloria Steinem, Vanessa Williams, Felicity Huffman, Fatma Saleh, Alfre Woodard, Ashraf Salimian, Christine Lahti and Mother's Day for Peace talk about the origin of Mother's Day by Julia Ward Howe as a protest against war. www.mothersdayforpeace.com

Disarm, Disarm! 

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