Reclaiming Mother's Day!

As many of you know, Mother’s Day was proclaimed by Julia Ward Howe in 1870 as a call for women to promote “the great and general interests of peace”. Her proclamation is included below.

This Mother’s Day— Sunday May 8 --we are responding to her call for a “General Congress of Women” with an event at the state capitol in Sacramento. I hope that you will be there to reclaim this day and share your thoughts about how we can move forward toward Peace.


SUN MAY 8, 2005 4:00 P.M.

Call for a GENERAL CONGRESS of WOMEN



We continue to honor the origins of Mother’s Day as we gather in front of the Vietnam War Memorial on the capitol grounds in Sacramento Sunday May 8th to declare “All we want for Mother’s Day is the troops home from Iraq NOW”. We know that all too soon there will be yet another war memorial – we need to make this our very final one!



We’re calling on mothers, daughters, grandmothers to join CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Mother Speak, and other groups and individuals as we embrace Julia Ward Howe’s direction to first “bewail & commemorate the dead” and then call for a “General Congress of Women without limit of nationality” to promote the “great & general interests of peace”.



Start: 4:00 p.m. at Vietnam War Memorial, Capitol Grounds, Sacramento State Capitol

Finish: 6:00p.m. with Circles for Peace


We ask women to bring our ideas for future actions for peace and to end war - such as the call to return our National Guard - and share with each other as we continue to build a strong, active women’s movement for peace & justice.



http://www.bayareacodepink.org

WEAR YOUR PINK, BRING YOUR MUSIC MAKER!




Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

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.