The genesis of Mother's Day in the U.S.A. began when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community and fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace.
As mothers bear the loss of human life more acutely than anyone else, in 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote the first Mother's Day Proclamation, from which I excerpt:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
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. 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 21st century, patriarchal 'civilization' persists in the insanity of violence for violence and Caesar today can be understood as the Government Industrial Military Security/Surveillance Complex, which could collapse when enough of we the people rose up and confronted our 'leaders' and demanded they change course from state sponsored violence to dialoguing with our 'enemy' and to seek justice as the way to peace.
We the people in America are responsible for most all of the world's manufacturing, use of, and exporting of weapons of all degrees of destruction which terrorize every innocent caught in the crossfire.
In 1999, the UN dedicated the first decade of the 21st century to Create a Culture of Nonviolence for All Children of The World.
America abstained from voting on the 1999 initiative bu the United Nations to dedicate a Decade of Creating a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World. I also learned that America is on the record in the UN as stating:"We cannot support this initiative as it will make it harder for us to wage war."
The hearts and minds that require the most transformation are the ones that hold the most power; but power never gives any away without a fierce battle. Forty years ago, John Lennon noted,"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends...I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it."
On July 4, 1776, our founding father's upheld that,"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights [and] that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men [and women], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it." -The Declaration of Independence
In December 2005, I attended Holy Land Trust's Celebrating Nonviolent Solidarity Conference in the Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory.
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