Mother's Day: A Women's Day for Peace and Disarmament?

As hopefully everyone remembered, Sunday was Mother's Day!

This weekend, Citizens for Global Solutions held its May Partners Call, a nationwide conference call with CGS members and expert speakers on nuclear security issues. This call, we focused on the New START Treaty with Russia that will cut back strategic nuclear weapons in each country by almost one-third. During the call, we learned quite a bit about the prospects of the New START treaty being ratified by the Senate as well as the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review conference that is going on right now. 

You might wonder why I'm talking about nuclear weapons in reference to Mother's Day. As I learned this weekend from one of our members in Cincinnati, Fr. Ben Urmston, Mother's Day was originally founded as a Women's Day for peace and disarmament in 1870. Julia Ward Howe is famously quoted as saying "From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!" Of course these women weren't talking about nuclear disarmament, but the quote is certainly prophetic.

In memory of the women that pioneered Mother's Day in the name of disarmament, let's continue to celebrate our mothers and grandmothers today.

We know that women and girls around the world face violence and discrimination daily. We also know that CEDAW, the Women's Treaty, helps women and girls to go to school, to own and inherit property, to take part in public life, and to fight violence and oppression. We need Senate action on the CEDAW Treaty (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) to give the U.S. greater clout to help women worldwide win these basic rights. Let's stand together for women and girls around the world. Click here to ask your Senators to support CEDAW today. 

Hear Don Kraus, CEO, and Abby Long, Programs Coordinator, talk about why CEDAW is so important: