Mother's Day, Peace and Society

I began to write a Mother's Day post focused on the need for peace in the world with references to what is commonly known as the Mother's Day Proclaimation by Julia Ward Howe. I started to think about my own mother who died in 2010. But also swirling around in my mind are the politics of the day. I started thinking about the mess with the health care debate, social security, medicare and medicaid, which brought me to another thought about my mother and something she once told me.

My mother lived in a little place called Garden City Idaho.

“Garden City is nearly surrounded by Boise but retains a separate municipal government. Garden City was named for gardens raised by Chinese immigrants who lived in the area. The name of the city's only main street, Chinden Boulevard, is a portmanteau of the words "China" and "garden." In the second decade of the 21st century, it became a haven for artists' studios due to its cheap rents and eclectic ambiance.” Source Wikipedia

She lived in a trailer court near the Boise River. Also living there where lots of feral cats. My mother fed a number of them every day and they were, in my mind, quite a bother. They lived under and around the trailer except one really scraggly white one with one eye and matted and patchy fur which she allowed in the house. She contacted the city many times about them with no help. She contacted the Idaho Humane Society based in Boise but they said they had no jurisdiction in Garden City even though they had tried to take over the animal control duties for them for years. So my mother was basically stuck.

Which brings me to what she said to me that has always echoed in my mind since.

I said something like, “Mom, why do you do this. They smell and crap everywhere and besides you can barely afford it?”

She said,

“After the depression I told myself that I would never allow

any person or animal go hungry as long as I am alive.”

This brought me back around to the politics of today and thought of what life was like during the great depression and the New Deal.

"The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority.

The Republicans were split, with conservatives opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth, and liberals accepting some of it and promising to make it more efficient. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal Coalition that dominated most presidential elections into the 1960s, while the opposing conservative coalition largely controlled Congress from 1939 to 1964. By 1936 the term "liberal" typically was used for supporters of the New Deal, and "conservative" for its opponents." Wikipedia

I am a liberal. So was my mother. It is clear to me that the New Deal, brought to us by liberals, puts us on the right side of history. And the conservative Republicans are still fighting against these liberal values. Which brings me back to thoughts of peace.

In closing. Julia Ward Howe called on mother's to stand up against war with the “conviction that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.” In war it is women and children who suffer the most. Like Howe I ask everyone to think about this on Mother's Day and every day. Please work for peace not war. Join the Idaho Peace Coalition or any of the many peace organization in the country. Also please visit Kether Muse Peace Resources.