This year, Mother’s Day comes as people are living with the consequences of a war Congress never authorized.
Far from mimosa brunches and hallmark greetings, the first Mother’s Day in the United States occurred against the scourge of war. In 1870, abolitionist and suffragist Julie Ward Howe—who still had the horrors of the Civil War on her mind and was disturbed by the plight of war abroad—called for an international movement of mothers as a way to call for peace and to protest the devastation of war.
Earlier during the Civil War itself, Anna Reeves Jarvis had pioneered mothers’ working days to raise awareness about the need for sanitation (polluted water was causing a range of health issues for children) and to care for those harmed in war.
Her daughter, also a social activist, later advocated to establish the day as a legal holiday to honor her mother’s community work—and the work of all mothers.
This was a time when women had little political power—the 19th Amendment establishing the right to vote for women was not recognized in the Constitution until 1920—and very little economic power. Yet, mothers were using their voices collectively to oppose injustice and to take action in their own communities.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Mother’s Day comes this year as our nation and those across the globe are living with the dire consequences of a war with Iran Congress never authorized.
The war has cost American lives as well as the lives of innocent children—including nearly 100 schoolgirls—in Iran. Former U.S. military officials have criticized the Pentagon’s strike and the lack of transparency around it. The president continues to threaten many of our global allies, as the rate of autocracies across the globe rise while democracies decline.
All the while, costs continue to rise, making it harder and harder for working people to make ends meet.
This Mother’s Day all of us—whether we are mothers or not—must recommit to the children of every nation. We must recommit to opposing attacks on our children and attacks on our shared future.
The District of Columbia, where I raise my son, has been under military occupation for more than a year. In our community, parents are having to answer questions from their kids—as I did mine this past weekend—about why people in military uniforms are on our streets as the president seeks to close parks and public spaces or rebuild them in his own image.
Across the nation, parents are preparing their kids for what to say or do if ICE raids their neighborhood, their school or their sports games. Mothers are being detained without their children, forced to reassure terrified kids over the phone or before being taken away.
Last week, a 10-year-old was forced to appear before a court alone.
A generation of children are growing up in an age of terror. The number of children in ICE detention on a given day has increased sixfold since the start of the administration. The Dilley Detention Center in my home state of Texas is detaining even infants as children’s voices chanting, “Let us out,” rings against the Texas sky. Families have been detained when going to hospitals to seek basic care.
It isn’t just immigrant children and their families at risk. Last year, for the first time in history the president weaponized the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) that 42 million Americans—most of them working Americans—rely on for sustenance during a government shutdown in an attempt to score political points.
Have you ever seen or cared for a child that is hungry? Or had to tell a child you don’t know how they are going to eat? Parents had to do this last year as a result of the choices our president made.
Like the mothers who built movements before they had even the right to vote, we must firmly commit to using our voice and our resources, even as there are efforts to divide and disenfranchise us.
To compound this terror, last week the U.S. Supreme Court issued a major blow to voting rights—at the encouragement of the president’s allies. The days of state-sanctioned voter disenfranchisement are back, and it isn’t going to get better soon.
Like the mothers who built movements before they had even the right to vote, we must firmly commit to using our voice and our resources, even as there are efforts to divide and disenfranchise us. There is no credible basis to claim that the terror infants and children are living in today is justified, and as Americans, we must make that clear to our elected leaders.
Are your members of Congress and local officials opposing the maltreatment of children, or are they aiding and abetting this morally bankrupt agenda? It is time to find out and to hold them to account.
This will be harder in the upcoming elections given the president’s threats to voting rights and the U.S. Supreme Court’s devastating decimation of core providings of our Voting Rights Act and it is going to require that every person do their part to vote, make a plan, and commit to not standing by as attacks on voting and elections continue.
Just like the mothers that the first Mother’s Day honored, many of the people on the frontlines of defending our democracy this year have been moms. We’ve seen them in the streets standing up for their communities, at the polls running for office, peacefully protesting across the country. But we can’t leave it to them to carry the burdens. The responsibility for our country’s future and its children belongs to all of us.
It’s on all of us to support the frontline organizations providing services to children and communities, including immigrant children, as well as those supporting voting rights. Support can take the form of donations, but it also can take the form of giving your time, sharing information with your community, and sending notes of gratitude for those on the frontlines.
Over the past year, as powerful institutions have sat on the sidelines, the people have stepped forward: neighbors helping those in need, rendering mutual aid, communities coming together to protect their neighbors. We must build on this engagement in earnest—it will be needed in the days ahead. Democracy begins at your front door, and the actions you take to support your community are important.
And while there is much work to do—and we must stay focused on opposing attacks on our freedom and our communities today—we also have to keep our eyes on the future. On our children.
While the Trump-Vance administration has accelerated many attacks on our freedom and our democracy, the attacks didn’t begin on Inauguration Day. They have been building for some time—and many repeat the darkest parts of our history in this nation.
The only way this crisis will become a catalyst for change is if we commit not just to rebuilding our nation, but to reimagining it as a nation that can hold all of us and to demand that our leaders drive bold change to achieve true democracy and true change for the next generation. A nation where it is unacceptable for children to go hungry while others enjoy nation-building wealth. A nation where it is unacceptable to detain children and infants based on their skin color or who their parents are or where they are from. A nation where every person finds the courage to call out the cruelty.
On this Mother’s Day, may we all be the mothers—and the fighters—our children need. If we don’t, who will?
