On this Moral Monday after Mother’s Day, we held peace and nonviolence rallies across the nation and outside the White House in Washington, DC. I was on the north side of the White House, just across the street from where Julia Ward Howe stayed when she visited the nation’s capital during the Civil War and wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Even though she believed the cause of the Civil War to be just and supported it until the formerly enslaved people of the South were free, Howe was horrified by the destruction of the Civil War. She saw what it did to bodies, she saw what it did to the body politic, and she saw what it was doing to the world. She knew that a tyrant could ask the people to sing her “Battle Hymn” to make the people feel righteous about unnecessary sacrifice.
So Howe wrote another piece. It was the original call for a Mother’s Day in this country. And it was a moral cry for an end to all war:
Arise, then... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. 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 been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, 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!
I’m grateful to Roland Martin and the Black Star Network for covering our rally and the direct action that followed outside the White House, where people were willing to put their bodies on the line in a nonviolent public witness for peace.
As Dr. Broome said tonight, “We ain’t going anywhere.” We will be back. You can register here if you’d like to get information about how to join Moral Monday in DC or at a Congressional office near you.
