USA: Mother's Day for peace or for business?

This video from the USA says about itself:

Mother’s Day World Peace Poem by Julia Ward Howe

Experience a message for World Peace from Julia Ward Howe. Discover how an 1870 activist for womenʼs rights, peace and abolition inspired our Motherʼs Day Holiday.

Today, Mother’s Day is often used to boost sales of various businesses; and/or to emphasize “traditional” role patterns for women.

However, its originator, Julia Ward Howe, activist against slavery, against exclusion of women from voting, and other evils, founded it as a day of action against militarism and war.

From Democracy Now! radio in the USA:

We end today’s show with a Mother’s Day special.

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald has just produced a short film titled Mother’s Day For Peace.

It features a dramatic reading of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation by Felicity Huffman, Christine Lahti, Fatma Saleh, Ashraf Salimian, Vanessa Williams and Alfre Woodard. [includes rush transcript]

See article on and video of Greenwald’s Mothers’ Day film: here.

A Mother’s Day Manifesto: Promoting Personal and Communal Responsibility. Windy Cooler, New Clear Vision: “Some time ago a woman invented Mother’s Day. Julia Ward Howe. She called on mothers to raise their sons well, to not be tools for war, as she saw happen in the American Civil War…. Quickly this was forgotten; the holiday progressed to honor mothers just for being mothers, not call us to solidarity. And quickly, yet again, the holiday was consumerized”: here.

Forget Flowers This Mother’s Day: 11 Ways to REALLY Help Mothers: here.

Mother’s Day and the Bush family women: here.

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