Granny Peace Brigade Blog

We like chocolate just fine, but we want peace – NOW.

So the Granny Peace Brigade and CodePink set out on our 4th Annual Mother’s Day stroll to take back the day. Julia Ward Howe started the whole thing in 1870 with her Mother’s Day Proclamation and we carry her words in our hearts today: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Special musical accompaniment

by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra

and the Raging Grannies brightened our way

as we gave Mother’s Day cards with a message of peace to passers by.

Three generations of peaceniks joined us. Now whose grandson might that be?

Article 9 is a clause in the National Constitution of Japan that prohibits an act of war by the state. The United States needs an Article 9.

One American woman with messages for everyone.

- Eva-Lee Baird
for the Granny Peace Brigade

-All Photos by Bud Korotzer

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Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided 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 bosom of the 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 the 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 at 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.

- Julia Ward Howe, 1870

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