Moms Against the War

By Theresa McCormick

Sunday, May 11, 2008, was Mother’s Day. To commemorate the event in the spirit of the original Mother’s Day—which was aimed at ending all war--the Westside Unitarian Universalist (UU) Congregation staged a march from the building at 40th Ave SW to the West Seattle Junction, where the marchers met up with West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice members who regularly hold a peace vigil from Noon to 1 PM each Sunday. About 30 UU members, including Rev. Peg Morgan, joined the march, which was one of the biggest and liveliest peace gatherings at the Junction in recent years.

This event—Moms Against the War—was a way to demonstrate to our West Seattle community that mothers want to be honored on this day with peace. It is a reminder that women have been marching for peace since at least 1870, when Mother’s Day was founded by Julia Ward Howe. Howe, a Unitarian, wrote a famous “Mother’s Day Proclamation” calling for peace. My favorite lines from that proclamation are:

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
(A copy of the proclamation is available at http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm)

This Mother’s Day march was extra special because about 10 children joined in. At the end of the vigil, we observed five minutes of silence and then, we sang several verses of Holly Near’s famous peace song, “We are a Gentle Angry People.”

Theresa McCormick is a member of the Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation and the West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice. She is professor emeritus of Multicultural and Women’s Studies at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where she taught for twenty years.

Photos below by Steve Shay. Used with permission of the West Seattle Herald