By Elea Mihou

The spirit of today's Hallmark Mothers' Day has changed drastically from Julia Ward Howe’s vision of Mothers' Day and motherhood as a uniting force for peace. Writing in 1870 after witnessing the brutality of the Civil War, Howe called for a meeting of mothers from North and South to stand together in a refusal to allow their sons commit violence for any reason. This Mother’s Day CodePink Women for Peace called attention to the original purpose of Mother’s Day by holding a Peace Walk from Front Park to the Peace Bridge.

Attendants read Julia Ward Howe’s poem and celebrated motherhood and women’s role in teaching nonviolence to their sons and daughters. Participants also signed letters to local congresswomen and men requesting that they observe the spirit of Mother’s Day by voting against funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, acknowledging the unimaginable suffering of mothers in both countries.

CodePink Women for Peace hope that the words of Julia Ward Howe can continue to be an inspiration to all, and that the true spirit of Mother’s day be restored.

Mothers’ Day Proclamation
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 bosom 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 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 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.