The Radical History of Mother's Day

NationOfChange.org via Laura Murphy, Wisdom Quarterly "Fight war, not wars" 

There’s a good number of us who question holidays like Mother’s Day in which we spend more time feeding money into a system that exploits our love for our mothers than actually celebrating them.

It is like any other holiday in America in that its complete commercialization has stripped away much of its genuine meaning and history. Mother’s Day is unique in its completely radical and totally feminist, albeit forgotten, history.

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation.

Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, Howe’s proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in striving for an end to all wars.

She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons. More

• Women Say NO to War (CodePinkLA.org)