Reclaiming Mother's Day for Peace

Did you know Mother’s Day was originally meant to be about peace?

 

Established by Julia Ward Howe in 1870, Mother’s Day was originally intended to organize women for peace and disarmament after the Civil War. This year, Ploughshares Fund is bringing the holiday back to its roots with its Roses for Peace campaign, offering organic roses in honor of mothers as a way to raise funds to support women’s leadership for a nuclear free world.

 

We’ve come a long way since the aftermath of the Civil War. Women vote in great numbers and there are women at every level of policy making. Threats to peace, however, are still numerous. Nuclear weapons pose one of the greatest threats to America’s national security and to peace around the world. There are still over 22,000 nuclear weapons in the world: that’s two for every Starbucks in the United States. Use of any one of these weapons by accident or by terrorists would cause grave political, environmental and social harm far outweighing the recent Fukushima disaster.

 

Ploughshares Fund’s Mother’s Day Campaign honors and builds women’s leadership on peace and disarmament, helping to avert the threat posed by these nuclear weapons. Through our Roses for Peace program, we offer to send mothers organic roses for Mother’s Day in honor of their work for peace. Roses sent not only raise money for women’s work in policy; they honor mothers all over the country who believe in, teach and work for peace. 

 

In addition, the Roses for Peace campaign draws on the passion for peace of several leading philanthropists, women who are championing the cause of peace and disarmament and supporting women’s leadership. These leading women, our Julia’s Circle, come from all corners of the country and all walks of life, but share the same dream: to eliminate nuclear weapons and create a safer world for all of us to live in.