Mother’s Day
I think a yearly reminder of the original intent of Mother’s Day is always a good thing. A reminder that as women and mothers we can work together for peace, justice, and equality.
Mother’s Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
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 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.
And this video (ht: Josh) I think makes a fantastic point about how we raise our kids determining the world they will create. What things do we tell them are important and significant in this world? Do we encourage them towards peace, justice, and equality? Or do we give such things lip service while really conveying to them that money and power are the really important things in life?
Happy Mother’s Day
Julie Clawson
Topics: Politics, Social Justice, Holidays, History, Gender Issues, Culture |
May 10th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
The video is devastating.
I can end the planet in a holocaust. in a holocaust. in a holocaust. in a holocaust. in a holocaust. in a holocaust.
It made me weep. It’s easy for me to sit here and weep. I’m not directly experiencing the holocaust toward the cause of which I have been a party.
My father, beyond doubt, killed beautiful little children in Vietnam 30 years ago. And then he came home, and took steps to make sure that I got enough food to eat, and love and education to get by on, and perhaps even excel. My father helped repair aircraft, beyond doubt, which were used to saturate the vietnamese countryside with agent orange. And the Laotian countryside with unexploded ordance. And now those others–the ones who are now 33–my age–I mean the ones who didn’t get killed–
I have brothers and sisters over there who having escaped being killed by my father, and our fathers, now live with excruciating deformities as a result of their mom’s being exposed to agent orange during their gestation. Or else they are missing a leg, or an arm, or have other defomrities because they found a piece of unexploded ordnance left by my father–our fathers.
I can end the planet in a holocaust. in a holocaust. in a holocaust. in a holocaust.
My weeping is grotesque. Lying here with all my limbs, and no deformities, and 1st world medicine to provide every comfort for my dying mother. Grotesque.