Cindy Sheehan Visits Arlington West

by Ruth Rosen, professor of history at UC Davis

Santa Barbara Veterans For Peace first welcomed Cindy and Patrick Sheehan to Arlington West on Mothers Day 2004.

Cindy Sheehan first showed up at Arlington West in Santa Barbara for Mothers Day, 2004. Her son Casey was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, and when she heard about Arlington West, a memorial to the fallen and demonstration of the cost of war, she determined to be there for Mothers Day.

The Santa Barbara Veterans For Peace Chapter #54 had a special presentation that day:

“In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, proposed an annual Mother’s Day for Peace. Committed to abolishing war, Howe wrote: “Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage… 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.”

For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers’ Day for Peace on June 2. Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of society and to turn America into a more civilized nation. They played a leading role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery. In the following decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor.

To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social and economic justice seemed self-evident.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. During the 1980’s, some peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother’s Day to protest the arms race. Today, our greatest threat is not from missiles but from our indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet. Imagine, if you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation’s capital. Imagine a Mother’s Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.

Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother’s Day. But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all year round.) Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women’s civil activism. We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic activism. “