Maria Hamilton, founder of Mothers for Justice United, speaks to the crowd.
“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts.”
These are the opening words of the “Appeal to Womanhood” penned by Julia Ward Howe in 1870. She dreamed of a special day, a “Mothers’ Day,” when women around the world would rise up and demand an end to killing.
MILLION MOMS MARCH, 2015
On Saturday, May 9, 2015, hundreds of mothers and others gathered for a Mothers’ Day weekend march on Washington to demand an end to the killing of their children by highly militarized police forces in the U.S.
Police abuse of power has been a headline-grabbing aspect of institutionalized racism in recent months and a galvanizing focus of the new anti-racism movement sweeping the nation from Ferguson to Baltimore.
“Mothers for Justice United” was the primary organizer of Saturday’s event. This action would have made Julia Ward Howe proud.
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
HOWE’S DREAM OF PEACE
In 1862, Howe, living in the shadow of her famous abolitionist-reformer husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, wrote a poem which, when set to a popular folk tune, became the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the semi-official song of the Union army during the Civil War. It made Julia famous overnight.
Almost ten years later, she was overcome by grief at the outbreak of another war — the Franco-Prussian war. The world seemed steeped in endless bloodshed. Convinced that there were better ways to solve conflicts, she called on the women of the world to “interfere in these matters.” This was strong stuff in the days before women had the right to vote or much say in their own destinies.
In 1870, she convened a meeting of leading activists in New York City. In her opening statement she said, “Patience and passivity are sometimes in place for women — not always … If women did not waste life in frivolity, men would not waste it in murder.” She hoped her call to action would “pierce through dirt and rags … through velvet and cashmere.”
Howe hoped to arrange a Woman’s Peace Congress. Instead, in 1873, she established a festival called “Mothers’ Day,” intending it to be an annual day for women’s advocacy for peace and justice. For several years, this Day was celebrated in Boston, New York, Edinburgh, London, Geneva, and, at least once, in Constantinople.
In 1876, women came to Philadelphia from France, Italy, England, and Germany. Multilingual Howe translated every speech into English on the spot. Exciting as this was, her Mothers’ Day never caught on in the general population.
ANNA JARVIS THREW HER SALAD ON THE FLOOR
Anna Jarvis (1864-1948) knew that her mother, Ann, was a remarkable woman. Of Ann’s eleven children, only four lived to adulthood. The others died in epidemics common in their West Virginia Appalachian community. This inspired Ann to organize Mothers Work Days in the 1858, to teach women new ideas about hygiene and better sanitation.
Ann Jarvis (left) and her appreciative daughter Anna (right)
During the Civil War, Ann urged women to assist both Confederate and Union wounded. After the war, she created a “Mothers Friendship Day” to bring people together in their bitterly divided region. She braved death threats to call for reconciliation. At one event she organized, a band played both “Dixie” and the “Star Spangled Banner” (a popular patriotic song, not yet the national anthem). Then, everyone stood and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”
After her courageous and visionary mother died, Anna wanted to honor her. She lobbied hard for a national “Mother’s Day.” With the approval of Congress, Mother’s Day was proclaimed official by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
Before you could say “M is for the Many things she gave me; O means only that she’s growing Old…” (from a song titled “Mother,” written in 1915 and loathed by mothers everywhere), the day became a sentimental success, especially for greeting card manufacturers and florists.
By 1920, Anna was deeply sorry she’d ever thought of Mothers’ Day. Hating its commercialization, she spent what money she had lobbying against it. She never married and was never a mother.
One day, so the story goes, Anna ate at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, which had been an early endorser of her Mother’s Day. In their Tea Room, they offered a “Mother’s Day Salad” on the menu. Anna ordered it, but, when it was served, she stood up, threw the salad to the floor, and walked out, leaving the money on the table. It was a futile gesture. Her holiday had taken hold, and she hated it. It is said that Anna Jarvis died blind, bitter, and broke.
WOMEN RECLAIM THE DAY
Here’s a brief sampling of actions showing how women have attempted to reclaim Mother’s Day as a day of action for peace and justice.
~ 1987, lesbians in Seattle held a Mother’s Day demonstration to call attention to custody battles fought by lesbian mothers
~ 1981, 700 women in Washington, D.C. marched through the rain, protesting the Reagan administration’s increased military budget.
~ 1987, Clergy and Laity Concerned, an interfaith peace and justice organization, proclaimed a Mother’s Day of Mourning in response to the US-sponsored war against Nicaragua.
~ 1992, The Church of Gethsemane in Brooklyn (Presbyterian U.S.A.) began a yearly Mother’s Day public awareness campaign on behalf of “women in prison, children in crisis,” providing congregations across the country with origami flowers and bookmarks, suggested prayers, and informational readings.
~ 2000, Million Mom March in Washington, D.C. drew 750,000 people to promote gun control legislation
~ 2015, Million Mom March was organized to protest police violence.
TO GO DEEPER
“After Baltimore, A Call to Reclaim Mother’s Day” by Valerie Bell, 4/28/15 in Foreign Policy In Focus,
“The Radical History of Mother’s Day” by Matthew Paul, 5/11/14, The Daily Beast.
“Anna Jarvis Was Sorry She Ever Invented Mother’s Day” by Joel Oliphint, May 8, 2015, BuzzFeed.
“A Tale of Two Days: Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day” in This River of Courage: Generations of Women’s Resistance and Action by Pam McAllister (New Society Publishers, 1991).
Mother’s Day for Peace by bravenewfoundation (2:50) Introduced by Gloria Steinem, famous women read Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation” — Alfre Woodard, Vanessa Williams, Ashraf salimian, and others.
Julia’s Voice Documentary: Take Back Mothers Day (Part 1) [9:09 mins]
They called it the “Dirty War.” After the military coup in 1976, people deemed to be “subversives” began to disappear. They disappeared if they raised their fists, raised their voices, raised their eyebrows. They disappeared if they sang freedom songs; joined a union; worked to alleviate poverty, hunger, illiteracy; were seen with the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The mothers sought information. They waited in barren corridors at the Ministry of the Interior in Buenos Aires, only to be told to go home.
After that, the women decided to go to the Plaza on Thursday afternoons when it was crowded. Because it was illegal for more than three people to stand together in a public place, the women walked slowly around and around the Plaza. They had been “walking in circles” anyway, at government offices. Now, they would walk in circles on behalf of their children. Their numbers grew, and they became known as “the Mothers of the Plaza”.
The government reaction was severe. Many protesters were arrested. American and British journalists who tried to interview the Mothers were harassed or detained. Still, the women came. They were no longer looking for their individual sons or daughters: they were seeking each others’ children as well.
Little did the military regime know that, in churches around Buenos Aires, the Mothers continued to gather. They entered dark sanctuaries, as women do in cities all over the world every day. Some lit candles, then found a place in the pews to pray.
It must have been a great surprise to the military regime when, seemingly out of nowhere, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo stepped out of the darkened churches in May 1979, determined to formalize their organization. Within several years, their official membership numbered in the thousands.
The women returned to the Plaza. They wore flat shoes and white scarves embroidered with the names or initials of the relatives they were seeking.
This is a story without an ending. The women endured tear gas, nightsticks, arrest, and torture, but something had changed. The Mothers were determined that they’d never again retreat into silence and shadows.
In July 2005, the body of Azucena Villaflor was finally identified, along with the bodies of several other founding members of the Mothers of the Plaza. Forensic experts confirmed that they were victims of the junta’s “death flights” and had been flung from a military plane into the ocean or gulf. Villaflor’s remains were cremated. At the 25th Annual Resistance March of the Mothers, in December of 2005, her ashes were buried in the center of the Plaza de Mayo, to remain forever as a symbol of courage.
Circle of Love Over Death
On museum visits, we view chipped vases decorated with images of women bearing water jars. In Sunday school, we learn about the woman-at-the-well.
(April, 2015) Last week’s World Water Forum was basically non-news, but social media was flush with photos of Siabatoa Sanneh, the strong and imaginative 43-year-old from Gambia who used the Paris Marathon to generate publicity about the water crisis.
(April, 2015) Women from the town of Sopore stood in the middle of Chanakhana Road earlier this month and threw earthenware pots to the dry ground. The clay shattered and traffic stopped. What good are pots, when there’s no water to fill them?
(February, 2015) Hundreds of women, some carrying babies, blocked traffic for seven hours to protest the water shortage in Loitokitok.
(February, 2015) Several women broke through security and invaded the hotel where organizers were planning the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, objecting primarily to the new golf course and luxury apartments being erected in the city.
(August, 2001) Women in rural Sirt endured months of inadequate water supply, forcing them to wait in long lines at a fountain. Fed up, they declared, “No water, no sex” and called for a Bedroom Boycott. The men soon petitioned the local governor for assistance and got the 27-year-old water system repaired. This successful action inspired two films. (Movie still: “Absurdistan” — see YouTube clip below.) 
(January, 2014) Although Nigeria is one of the world’s major oil producers, the Niger Delta, where the oil is found, remains poor and undeveloped. Women in Bayelsa State blamed Shell. The oil company had not kept its promises to provide clean drinking water for the local population, replace a faulty generator, and renovate a school.
Lady Godiva was creative and compassionate. You gotta give her that. She may not, however, have been real. Or, she may have been real but her ride wasn’t. In any case, the legend lingers.
Only one man gave in to curiosity. “Peeping Tom” was struck blind for taking advantage of Godiva’s courage, compassion and vulnerability.
Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was at odds with patriarchy from the start. As a child with an eye for the practical, she vowed to learn Hebrew and Greek so she could determine if the Bible passages which seemed to grant men power over women had been properly translated.
After dress reform advocate Libby Miller introduced Turkish style pantaloons (later dubbed “Bloomers”), Stone began wearing the outfit and, in an even more daring move, cut her hair short. She seemed fearless in the face of public scorn and endured ridicule on the lecture circuit, but eventually found the cause too distracting.
Inspired by Henry David Thoreau who had spent a night in jail twelve years earlier for refusing to pay taxes in opposition to the US war with Mexico, Stone and Blackwell returned their bill for property taxes, unpaid. They sent along an explanation — that taxation without representation was a violation of American principles.
The world didn’t make sense to 32-year-old Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914). On the one hand, she was considered a French citizen, expected to obey the laws of her country and pay property taxes. As a woman, however, she was denied the right to vote. She began plotting a way to unhinge the unfair system.
Auclert was an energetic organizer, activist, and writer. She’d been drawn to Paris, eager to fight for women’s suffrage. She had no parents or spouse. She wrote,
In 1881, Auclert co-founded a newspaper, La Citoyenne [Female Citizen], with Antonin Levrier. She also organized petition drives, demonstrations, and boycotts. She traveled to England to meet with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and British suffragists. In 1885, although it was not legal, she ran for elected office, a symbolic gesture she repeated in 1910.
In 1908, she was arrested for symbolically smashing a ballot box during municipal elections in Paris, which she denounced as “unisexual suffrage.”
Hubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette
Kusunose Kita (1836-1920), a 45-year-old widow, resented her situation. After her husband’s death, she assumed his property tax responsibilities, but was denied his political rights. In September, 1878, to make a point, she attempted to vote in a local election. After she was turned away, she wrote a bold letter to government authorities. It read in part:
The new ideas of justice made sense to other progressive thinkers as well, especially in Kōchi Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku, the birthplace of Japan’s human rights movement in the Meiji period. There, both men and women worked outside of the home to make ends meet. A mother’s movement helped establish numerous daycare centers. Kōchi is sometimes called the “Kingdom of Nursery Schools.”
Early in the morning of March 18, 1871, the housewives of Paris set out on their usual errands to buy bread and milk and stepped into the pages of history. They opened their doors to find that soldiers from Versailles had occupied Paris during the night. Word spread quickly, as more and more women came out of their houses. Soon, a crowd of over 1,000 stood gaping at the young soldiers.
No one knows how it happened that the women found themselves speaking with one voice that day. They approached the soldiers from Versailles asking, “Will you fire on us? Will you fire on your brother Parisians? On our husbands? Our children?”
She continued to teach, speak, and fight against injustice for the rest of her life, was arrested and jailed several more times. When she died in 1905, thousands mourned throughout France and the world.
According to one legend, International Women’s Day commemorates a March 8 demonstration in 1857, when women garment workers on New York City’s Lower East Side took to the streets to protest their deplorable working conditions. Problem is, there is no record of such a protest on that date.
Socialists in the U.S. were not as rare in the early 1900s as they are today. Eugene Debs, leader of the Socialist Party, received 900,000 votes when he ran for president in 1912. “I am for Socialism because I am for humanity,” he said. “We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough.”
The day was named, the slogan chosen, but a date was never specified. Consequently, from 1911 to 1918, International Woman’s Day was celebrated on different days throughout the world.
The International Woman’s Day protest that changed the world occurred that year in Russia. Women had planned a day of speech-making and leafletting (March 8 by Western reckoning on the Gregorian calendar, February 23 on the Julian calendar used in Russia at the time). The spirit of the day carried them beyond these simple plans.
Whether you call it the Ladies’ Room or the Loo, the Potty or the Powder Room, access to toilets is — worldwide — a woman’s issue.
Around the world, women and girls head for streams, trees, fields, or bushes in the dim light of dawn and dusk, and, on top of all the inconvenience and unpleasantness that implies, risk sexual attack every time they have to pee. In India, an estimated 620 million people have one option: “open defecation” — answering the call of nature, quite literally, in nature. More people in India have cell phones than indoor toilets.
Rape happens everywhere, but last year (May, 2014) two teenaged cousins in rural northern India, desiring nothing more than to relieve themselves before going to bed, went out and never came back. They were gang-raped, then strung up in a mango tree where neighbors found their bodies the next morning. Rape is common, but hanging dead girls’ bodies from mango trees is not. This crime shocked the nation and sparked protests across India, raising awareness about sexual assault and the basic need for easy access to safe toilets and privacy for women and girls.
In October, 2014, protesters marched to the Kenyan Ministry of Health offices from the impoverished “informal settlement” known as Mukuru on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. They’d had enough of “flying toilets.”
The Mukuru protesters, mostly women, waved signs and sang songs in the streets of Nairobi’s financial district, deliberately slowing traffic to protest the government’s slow action in providing sanitation facilities. Once at the Health Ministry office building, the women staged a sit-in. They wore headbands printed with the Swahili word for “togetherness.”
Soweto: In June, 2014, police used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters in this Johannesburg neighborhood, when they blocked a major road in Soweto and pulled down their pants to show their scorn. They’d inherited the “bucket system” from the apartheid (white rule) era. Although apartheid was officially discontinued in 1994, the people of Soweto are still using buckets for toilets, and they’ve had enough.
After being forced to “hold it” one time too many, Li Tingting, a university student, led a nonviolent action dubbed, “Occupy Men’s Toilets” in February, 2012, demanding more public toilets for women.
On November 19, 2014, “World Toilet Day” (yes, there really is a World Toilet Day, and, having researched this blog essay, I now understand why), Li and two dozen students and engineers petitioned the government, specifically calling for 2 women’s toilets for every 1 for men. They posted photos online of women holding signs that read “2:1.” When Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympics Games, they’d used a ratio of 4-to-1 for the tourists.