Mother's Day Proclamation

by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Arise, then... women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether your baptism be that 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.

Why do I feel it necessary for the feminine to be empowered for a peaceful world? Because I believe that power of the masculine and power of the feminine need to be in balance for a peaceful world, and any place where one overpowers the other is not a peaceful place. And in many places on this planet, the power of the feminine is drastically overpowered by the masculine.

This is why I believe that fundamentalism in any religion will never seek peaceful ways between human beings but will, instead, always be promoting a power-over structure. Always operating in the undercurrent of power-over structures is a great fear. If one must promote one's self as more powerful than another, deep inside lies a fear that, really, one is not.

Perhaps this is the fear that is running the United States' government at this time.

Cherie

(Howe's Mother Day Proclamation excerpt taken from Code Pink Alert for Peace