On Saturday, May 7, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, Madison Women for Peace will hold an alternate Mother's Day celebration at 30 on the Square (State Street near Capitol Square), featuring musicians, face painting for children, an informational coloring activity about the U.S. federal budget, and postcards urging Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to support increased funding for international children's programs.
The theme of the Mother's Day celebration is "Connecting the Dots." Participants will discuss how increased war spending on the national level results in decreased support for children and families in Wisconsin and around the world. Connections will also be drawn between Julia Ward Howe's vision of Mother's Day as a women's call for peace, as described in her 1870 Mother's Day Proclamation, and the issues faced by U.S. mothers today.
In an all-ages coloring activity, participants will draw how they would allot the U.S. federal budget, and compare their result to the actual budget. When Women for Peace organized the same activity for Mother's Day 2004, participants awarded nearly one-quarter of the federal budget to Health and Social Services, and 15 to 20 percent each to Education, Environment, and International Relations. According to the New York-based War Resisters League, the actual budget numbers give roughly half of those percentages to those programs.
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation reads, in part: "Our husbands shall 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 taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
Madison Women for Peace (www.madwomen.org) was founded on International Women's Day 2003, as the Bush administration prepared to invade Iraq. The group emphasizes worldwide solidarity among women and employs a wide variety of protest, public education and other tactics to achieve peace and social justice.