During this week before Mother’s Day – as celebrated in the US and a handful of other countries as a day to recognize mothers on the second Sunday in May, we reflect on the holiday, its origins and the opportunity we have to celebrate – and organize – with women for peace. Mother’s Day first took form in 1858, in Appalachia, according to the Zinn Project, to support improved health standards during a time of heightened illness and child mortality in the region.
More than a decade later, in 1870, the Civil War abolitionist and poet Julia Ward Howe published her famous Mother’s Peace Day Proclamation:
Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided 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 bosom of the 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 out 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 at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, he great and general interests of peace.
Groups of women have organized during May historically, and this year is no different.
Take a look at this Immigrant Mothers Day Campaign (#JusticeforDACAMoms), or read the story of Sri Lankan Peace Activist Visaka Dharmadasa, who rescued her son from captivity in the jungle, these mothers (Madre de la Candaleria) who work to find and expose those involved in the disappearance of people in Colombia, the Mothers of Congo, who work for peace and justice in the DRC, or the courageous women from Philadelphia with Mothers in Charge, calling for an end to senseless violence, or the women associated with Peace is Loud.
We are humbled by how many courageous mothers are working for peace around the world.
To read more about the history of Mother’s Peace Day, we direct you to the Zinn Project.
