Happy Mother's Day!

This holiday has been commercialized, but the US holiday started as a day to work for peace.  It was started by Julia Ward Howe in 1870 as the Mother's Day for Peace, and was related to the bloodshed of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War (followed by the establishment of the Paris Commune, which was bloodily put down by the bourgeois French government, with the consent of the victorious German army).  Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, from Wikipedia, is below.  In 1914, a few years before the US entered WWI, President Woodrow Wilson made Mother's Day a national holiday honoring the mothers of lost soldiers.  A few years later one of the original proponents of Mother's Day came out against it over commercialism.  Several American holidays were started with progressive sentiments, or are still progressive, just forgotten in their country of origin, like International Workers' Day (May Day) and International Women's Day, which is every March 8th.         

The Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided 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 the 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 at 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.