Join us for a Celebration
Mother’s Day For Peace Picnic
2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Sunday May 13, 2007
Wade Oval
University Circle
Cleveland, Ohio
Free and Open to the Public

Food, Flowers, and Rhythm
Free Flowering Plants for the First 33 Mothers to Arrive
All are Invited to Bring Small Acoustical Rhythm Instruments

Co-Sponsors:
NEO American Friends Service Committee;
The Cleveland Food Co-op.
Cleveland Peace Action

In case of rain meet at 10916 Magnolia, Peace House, Cleveland Friends Meeting.

Mother’s Day Proclamation
—1870—
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have questions
answered 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 voice of a 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 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 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.