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May 11th, 2008
Here’s a fun collection to share. John, Hillary and Barack … one IS a mother, two HAD one [John still has his, mid-90’s and a PIP!] GREAT pic’s, so open the links.
Then Garrison Keillor, Cindy Sheehan and other interesting reads about what motherhood was and is … the heartbeat that keeps it all going.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Jude
~ from Chelsea Clinton
You and I both know my mom will make a great president. I’m so blessed to have her as the best mom I could imagine — at 8, 18, and 28. As we approach Mother’s Day, I want to share a few memories of my mom with you.
Thank you again for your support of the person I am so proud to call my mom.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Chelsea ++
Sharing dreams from his mother
Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe
May 9, 2008
FROM time to time during this primary, I’ve wondered about Obama’s mama. In a race that was so much about biography, about beliefs rooted in her son’s “DNA,” she’s made only cameo appearances.
She was the “mother from Kansas” balanced alliteratively with the “father from Kenya.” Or she was the white parent whose genes combined with the black parent. Or she was the woman dying of cancer “more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.” And on Tuesday night when her son all but sewed up the nomination, she appeared again as the “single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point.”
I have been thinking of her not just because it’s nearly Mother’s Day but because Obama will soon have to reach out to Hillary Clinton’s supporters, especially to women of a certain age who attached their hopes to having a woman in the White House. Obama has not yet had a “gender conversation” with those women.
What better link does he have than his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, the girl whose own father expected and wanted a boy child? Ann Dunham, a nonconformist, a woman of the world who traveled a trajectory of change so associated with Hillary’s generation?
Last week, my eye lit on an odd correction in The New York Times. It read: “The assertion that Mr. Obama had ‘never known’ his Kenyan father should have been that he had ‘barely known’ him.” Surely it was a distinction without a difference.
It’s no surprise that Obama wrote an entire memoir dedicated to his “barely known” parent: “Dreams from My Father.” It was only after his mother’s death that he wrote in a new preface, “I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book - less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life.” He added that “she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”
From all accounts, this daughter of a family that kept traveling west in restless pursuit of the American dream took no part in Eisenhower-era conformity. She was a teenager in Hawaii when she fell for the charismatic Kenyan in her Russian class and married him six months before her son was born. This was a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in parts of the country.
The rest of the story is known: a divorce, a marriage to an Indonesian, a second divorce. She was a mother who kept her children focused as well as fed. But what’s less known is the woman in her own right, the one who became an anthropologist, the woman who spent years as the respected head of research for Women’s World Banking, bringing micro-financing to poor people in Indonesia.
Nancy Barry, who was the head of Women’s World Banking and knew Ann well, has been bewildered by the way she’s been reduced to a stick figure. “She was stubborn, hard core, decisive, convincing, deep-thinking, rigorous in her analysis,” says Barry. “When I hear Barack talking about how we are not red states, blue states, but the United States, I think he gets that from his mother. The other core capability he gets from her is the desire for healing.”
Indeed, the Obama we see may be the offspring of “Dreams from My Mother.”
If Ann were alive today she would be the age of Hillary Clinton’s most devoted demographic. She would be among those women who have gone through enormous transitions, making and remaking the female script. Dreaming big.
I am not suggesting Obama drag out his mama as a prop. But he’s staked his case for the presidency on his ability to bridge racial, cultural, party divides, to lead a post-partisan America. Now he’s faced with another divide: women who identified their success with Hillary’s and who are unsure they will vote for him.
What better way to begin reaching out, holding the ‘gender conversation,’ showing women he “gets it” than by sharing the dreams he inherited and the dreams he understands. The dreams from his mother. A girl named Stanley. ++
Nobody Loves You Like Mama Does
Garrison Keillor, Cagle
5/6/2008
The last time I witnessed a woman becoming a mother, it wasn’t anything like the frilly sentiments of Mother’s Day. She lay on her back, perspiring heavily and yelling, “Oh my God, why did you do this to me? I’ll never forgive you in a hundred years. I hope you hurt like this someday. Give me another epidural, you sadists. And get this thing out of me!” and looking up at me as if she were burning at the stake and I had lit the fire. And when the Infant appeared and was placed on the Madonna’s chest, she said, “What in the world am I supposed to do with that?”
It begins in innocence. Music is playing, the night smells of lilacs, she asks if he would like to come in for a minute, and he does, and little does she know what cataclysm awaits her inside: the loss of individuality as she joins the Holy Order of Maternity.
Mothers were, at one time, young women with Possibilities who might have taken a different route and become glamorous and powerful figures in size-two dresses and instead found themselves cleaning up excrement and jiggling colicky babies to get them to stop screaming. They hardly ever get to London anymore or have time to read James Joyce. They sit down to dinner with adults and feel brain-dead. A bouquet of flowers hardly seems compensation enough. How about a million dollars and a house in the south of France?
My mother appears in a photograph of five young women in white summer dresses walking hand-in-hand, grinning, on a country lane near Cottage Grove, Minnesota, in 1932 when she was 17, not long before she met my father, and they all look so fresh and happy, as if in a careless paradise all their own. She is willowy, shy and beautiful and she might’ve modeled evening gowns at Dayton’s Sky Room and maybe been spotted by a Hollywood scout and wound up in pictures, playing the village girl who charms the world-weary tycoon stranded in Littleville by the blizzard. Instead, she became a suburban pioneer, making a home in a muddy cornfield, putting up the stewed tomatoes and canned beans every fall, raising six children, slogging through bouts of mumps and flu, whomping up big Christmases, fishing the laundry out of the washing machine and putting it through the wringer and hanging it on the line. Is that what the smiling girl of 1932 had in mind?
The cruel injustice of motherhood is that, out of devotion to her brood, she sacrifices so much of her own life that her children grow up to find her a little boring in comparison to the maiden aunt who is a little rebellious and more fun to be around, whereas Mom is just the lady who runs the vacuum. As Erma Bombeck said, the kids walk in and ask her, “Is anybody home?”
But she loves you. You could come home with snakes tattooed on your face and she still would see the good in you. Most great men were mama’s boys. She encouraged them long before anybody else could see any talent there.
Your mother is on top of the situation. Your father has a hard time remembering your birthday or even your Christian name, but your mother knows you by scent, thanks to years of doing your laundry. She knows when you’re in trouble. And you will get into deep trouble someday. Count on it. Someone will file a lawsuit against you and subpoena your e-mail and it will all come flooding out, your dark secrets, your nefarious dealings, and your friends will cross the street to avoid you and your brothers and sisters will fade into the woodwork, but your mother will still love you. Like an old lioness, she’ll come running even if you’re two thousand miles away.
That is why you pay homage to the old lady on Mother’s Day. You entered this cold world causing her more pain than she thought possible and now she won’t ever give up on you. Those old ladies you see being wheeled onto airliners are the mothers of children facing imminent indictment for terrible things. Mama will be in the courtroom for you, baby. She will look the jury in the eye and her look may get you acquitted.
Buy her something nice, like a set of gold ingots. Or a black car with a chauffeur. She’s your mama, honeybuns. At least you could write her a note. ++
Was It Easier Being a Mother in 1908?
On the first Mother’s Day 100 years ago, moms had a tough — but rewarding — job, just as they do today.
Marilyn Gardner, Christian Science Monitor
May 10, 2008
Motherhood ranks as one of the hardest jobs to do, yet one of the easiest to romanticize.
This Sunday, May 11, as families shower mothers with cards, gifts, and superlatives, they will be part of an observance that had its humble beginnings 100 years ago. On Sunday, May 10, 1908, simple church services in Grafton, W.Va., and Philadelphia honored the nation’s mothers. A bill introduced in the US Senate that year failed to establish an official Mother’s Day, but it set the stage for a successful measure in 1914.
With their tightly laced corsets, long skirts, heavy shoes, and upswept hair, the mothers of 1908 bear little physical resemblance to their counterparts in 2008, dressed in shorts, Spandex, and sneakers. But as today’s busy mothers savor their holiday, some might think longingly of simpler times, before women spoke of “juggling” or “balancing” work and family. They might even be tempted to idealize mothers of a century ago, whose serene images grace family photo albums.
But wait. “It’s not a time to be romanticized,” says Stephanie Coontz, a historian and author of “Marriage: A History.” “Mothers in 1908 spent less time mothering than they do today. Even in the middle classes, they spent much less time with their kids than we would have imagined.”
One reason for this time deficit involves work. “Most families needed several wage earners,” Ms. Coontz says. “Women took in boarders, did sewing at home, cleaning, and all sorts of jobs that weren’t counted as jobs on the Census but were time-consuming.”
A photo from that era shows a mother balancing a baby on her lap while she assembles cigarettes at her kitchen table. Two other children stand nearby.
Even mothers without paid employment labored endlessly doing housework. In 1908, a New York settlement worker estimated that the average woman, even in middle-class families, spent 40 hours a week just cleaning and shopping. Laundry was an arduous, two-day task, washing one day and ironing the next. Wood and coal stoves required tending and cleaning.
In 1908, Hoover introduced the electric suction sweeper, revolutionizing housecleaning. “It’ll sell itself if we can get the ladies to try it,” Mr. Hoover said. Assuming, of course, that the ladies had electricity. A majority of women still lived on farms. Until the New Deal Rural Electrification program was implemented in the 1930s, electricity was unavailable to huge sections of the country.
Although the birthrate was falling in the early 1900s, women still bore an average of 3.5 children. Farm women averaged closer to five.
The mothers of 1908, like their counterparts today, received advice from pediatricians. Emmett Holt, author of “The Care and Feeding of Children,” was the Dr. Spock of his era, Coontz says. His advice to women: Don’t pick babies up when they cry, and do not breast-feed. And a noted psychologist, Dr. J.B. Watson, cautioned against using pacifiers or indulging in displays of affection. He wrote, “When you are tempted to pet your child, remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument.”
Historians warn against romanticizing marriages of the early 20th century, when women still had to wed out of economic dependence. Husbands had the final say about domestic decisions and controlled family income. A mother could not be the natural guardian of her children unless they were illegitimate.
In the early 1900s, about 10 percent of families were single-parent households, partly because of death and partly because of a high rate of abandonment. “A lot of women were living apart from their husbands,” says Steven Mintz, a historian at Columbia University.
Despite the challenges, Coontz does not suggest that there were no happy families. “If you had a husband who was a good person as well as a good provider, you were fortunate,” she says. “If you were a wealthier mother in the city, you probably had a nanny and a housekeeper. And if you were in a small town, we might be envious of the neighborly interactions. It was a time when people still sat on front porches and did a lot of visiting.”
Even so, Professor Mintz says, “Life was tough in ways we don’t appreciate.” Life expectancy was 51. Infant mortality was high. Most women could not vote.
In 1907, Laura Clarke Rockwood wrote poignantly in The Craftsman magazine about the need to simplify housekeeping: “This mother of to-day hurries from kitchen to nursery and over the other parts of the house, performing as best she can the many home duties of our times. But she is so overwearied in the doing of it all that the deep well of mother love which should overflow, flooding the world with happiness and cheer, runs well nigh dry at times.”
As one solution, Mrs. Rockwood proposed moving meal preparation out of the home: “There should be food kitchens easily accessible to every home where cooked foods can be bought cheaply because of consolidation, and delivered hot to our homes with promptness and regularity in pneumatic tubes perhaps, or by whatever means the master mind shall decide is the cheapest and the best.”
Her pneumatic tubes remain a dream. But cooks of 2008 have an alternative. It’s called “takeout” and “home delivery.”
Two months before the first Mother’s Day observances, President Theodore Roosevelt addressed 200 delegates who gathered at the White House for the first International Congress on the Welfare of the Child, organized by the National Mothers’ Congress.
Speaking of “the supreme dignity, the supreme usefulness of motherhood,” he said, “The successful mother, the mother who does her part in rearing and training aright the boys and girls who are to be the men and women of the next generation, is of greater use to the community, and occupies, if she only would realize it, a more honorable, as well as a more important, position than any successful man in it.”
A century later, his lofty idealism might serve as a fitting tribute to mothers everywhere this Sunday as they celebrate — simply or lavishly — a day that is theirs alone. ++
Mother’s Day 2008: Peaceful Idealism v. Political Pragmatism
Cindy Sheehan, CommonDreams
Sunday, May 11, 2008
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
(From Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation)
Sadly, this is the fifth Mother’s Day since Casey was killed in Iraq on April 04, 2004. The people who told me that “time will heal” were wrong, or maybe it just takes more time? I have spoken to many mothers who buried their child years ago, however, that tell me it does not get any easier. I suspect the mothers who have buried children are probably right.
On this Mother’s Day, though, I am reflecting on all kinds of moms. Some women never have children and it seems that their lives are complete. Some women desperately want to have children, but for some reason, cannot. Some women have lost their only child to the ravenous war machine and they somehow go on.
One specific mother has her family intact and can callously sign blank checks to pay for war (that are really nothing but death warrants for other people’s children) with only the life and health of her political party in her heart. Another mother can talk about “obliterating” an entire innocent country filled with mothers and children without even blinking her eyes that only shed crocodile tears at the appropriate moments.
Some of us are lucky enough to have had loving moms and some of us have had mothers who were cold and distant. Other moms are abusive, while some have been abused. Our world is made up of all kinds of women some of which are suited to be mothers some of which are suited to political life; some both: many neither.
I am a mother of four children. I planned on every one of them outliving me. When I thought of growing old, I imagined being surrounded on holidays by four children, children-in-law, grandchildren and great grandchildren. In the natural order of things, children should always bury their parents, but in our unnaturally violent, war torn world where shopping malls, schools, the streets and entire innocent nations are turned into bloodbaths, the situation is reversed and too many parents must tragically bury their children.
Today, one mother joyously watched her daughter marry at a pig farm in Crawford, TX. The mother’s husband, the daughter’s father, proudly looked on the scene that his actions have denied to so many of us. The daughter wore an Oscar de la Renta gown and it has been reported that there will be dancing throughout the night. Because of her father’s lies and greed, too many people the daughter’s age have been buried in their military dress uniforms (if there was enough of the body left to be buried) while their mothers and fathers watched in heartbroken grief as their child’s body was lowered into a cold, cold grave for eternity.
Too many mothers today in Iraq will have their babies blown to bits by American bombs or an insurgent’s last desperate act. If an Iraqi mother is fortunate enough to have all her children around her, she will be scraping for food, clean water and praying for a few minutes of electricity, or at least one day of peace and quiet.
Recently, I was confronted by a man at a farmer’s market in San Francisco. He is not “pro war” but he is pro-Pelosi because he is a “political pragmatist.”
Apparently, Ms. Pelosi funding the war for another year is “politically pragmatic” because it is worth murdering tens of thousands of more innocent people so that Democrats can gain the White House and more seats in Congress. I wish I had the luxury of being a political pragmatist, but I must do everything in my power to save other mothers from the life of never ending grief that I have been condemned to by men and women some of whom are mothers and fathers who have forgotten that other people’s children are precious to their parents, too.
On Mother’s Day this year, while mothers all over America are being taken out to brunch or being served breakfast in bed, I would like us to take time out of our day to reflect on the mothers who have been harmed by the last six years of bloody wars that are waged by neocon-Republicans and paid for by complicit-Democrats. I want us in the US to remember that we are a nation, if not in a legal, moral or declared war: at least a violent occupation that seems like a war to those that have been adversely affected by it.
I am luckier than many mothers whose only child has been stolen from them for lies, because I will be surrounded by my three surviving children and their partners on Mother’s Day and we will spend the time staring at my daughter’s belly which is fat (and one week past due) with my first grandchild. My grandson will never meet his Uncle Casey but he will know him because of the love that is left in his family.
I challenge us all to reject “political pragmatism” and embrace “peaceful idealism” for the love of all the world’s children.
Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation should be enshrined in our war-soaked national consciousness as our economy, ecology and our communities are being ravaged by the rapacious war machine:
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will 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, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.” ++
Mother’s Day Veteran: Moms Wear Combat Boots, Too
Eli PaintedCrow, CommonDreams
Saturday, May 10, 2008
At the age of twenty, being a mother of a three and five year-old was not easy. Being a single mom on welfare living in a cockroach-infested apartment was not living. I thought I needed to learn discipline, so I walked into the army recruitment office. I spent my 21st birthday in boot camp on a five-mile road march. Many a mom has gone through boot camp. I was no exception.
Today I work towards building a network of women, many of them mothers, who have served in the US military. We seek ways to tell the truth and speak for peace. This Mother’s Day is a time to remember the mothers serving in the military whose stories you’re not likely to hear.
In 1987 I was activated and left for Honduras. Once you put on the uniform, you’re a soldier and you do what is expected of you. You do your job and try not to think. You learn to shut your emotions off. When I returned, I didn’t talk with my sons about these life changes. You just come back, go to work, feed your kids.
In 1993 I went to drill sergeant school. Another eight weeks away from home. As a woman in the military, I had to eliminate showing any emotion or insecurity. It affected how I raised my sons. They knew what it was like to be in the military at very young ages. You lose emotions; you lose yourself and connections to others. They drove it out of me in boot camp and finished it off by sending me to Iraq. I don’t feel like a very good mom or partner these days.
My depression can be severe. Some days I can get out of bed, some days I can’t. Other times all I can do is cry. The military teaches you to accept the rules. When you have PTSD, the VA’s evaluation process seems to be the biggest obstacle to get help. Most veterans just give up.
Women are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and don’t know what is happening to them. They can’t be around their kids; they can’t control their anger or sadness and no one can get close to them. They’re suffering from PTSD but they pretend they’re all right because they don’t want to look weak.
When I started to speak about my experience, my son, a former Marine, thought I was crazy. He is still afraid for me. He thinks someone is going to kill me if I keep talking. But as a mother and a grandmother of eight, I feel there is an obligation to clear the path for our children. My tour in Iraq taught me this lesson.
It broke my heart to watch 20-year-olds walk in from patrol with faces dirty from the dust and heat — looking as if they just came in off the playground — with pictures of their loved ones on their armbands and their weapons on their backs, talking about how they just graduated high school.
Mothers cry for their babies, here and in Iraq. Mothers are the casualties that are not counted. We are the wounded that go untreated. We are also the healers that can change anything. We protect life because we give it. Send a prayer for the mothers and babies who have lost each other. This Mother’s Day remember them, remember us. We need each other to heal. And for all mothers who feel helpless because they think they can’t do anything to stop the war — if you knew the truth you would try. ++
Eli PaintedCrow is a SWAN co-founder and a retired vet working for peace with the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland, CA.
DÃa de la MADRE: In Celebration of Mothers around the Globe
MotherVerse Magazine, CommonDreams
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1983, a partnership was forged between a group of Nicaraguan women and a group of women in the United States. At the time, the US-backed Contra army was waging a campaign of killings, rape and abductions, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The organization that emerged from this partnership took its inspiration-and its name-from the mothers whose children had been killed by the Contras. MADRE (mother in Spanish) became an international women’s human rights organization rooted in connections between women worldwide and in the desire of mothers to seek social justice for all families.
On the celebration of Mother’s Day in the US, we take the opportunity to honor mothers around the globe who are striving to create positive social change. We remember that, in 1870, US activist Julia Ward Howe released her Mother’s Day Proclamation, in which she called for mothers to come together in the name of peace and justice. The women profiled below - all leaders in the communities of MADRE’s sister organizations - share their stories with mothers in the US and remind us of this call for unity.
Fatima Ahmed: Planting Seeds and Putting Down Roots (Sudan)
Ask Fatima Ahmed about the challenges of balancing work with raising her young sons, and she is frank. “I never rest. It takes a lot of energy.” For years, she has served as the director for Zenab for Women in Development, a community-based women’s organization in Sudan. In a country roiled for decades by civil war in the south and more recently by bloodshed in Darfur, Zenab has partnered with MADRE to provide emergency aid to displaced women and families and to support women in refugee camps, who are routinely targeted for sexual violence.
Fatima works with women farmers, many of whom bring their babies into the fields with them everyday. The women have organized a union, part of an effort to recognize the key role played by women in agriculture and the need for more resources, like seeds and farm tools, to sustain their work and their communities.
Occasionally, Fatima’s work requires her to leave her own children for weeks on end, as she travels to rural communities throughout Sudan. The separation can be difficult, but she explains, “I know how much I love my children, and I know that I want everything for them. That is why I feel so much for other mothers who want the same but cannot provide it. When my kids ask me why I’m leaving, I tell them that I’m going to help other mothers and kids who cannot afford the things they have.”
She attributes her drive and her commitment in large part to her own mother, who was also a community leader. “Since I was a child,” says Fatima, “I saw my mother’s compassion for the people around her. Women in the community would come to her for help, and no matter what, she would always welcome them and help them with their problems.” Zenab, the organization that Fatima founded, is named for her mother, and the values and goals it embodies are clearly inspired by her legacy.
“I wish peace for my children, says Fatima, “because without peace, how can we make any progress? We need progress in health, in education, in all areas. For this, we need peace in local communities, at a national level and at an international level. That is the only way.”
On Mother’s Day, Fatima’s thoughts turn to mothers in the US. “I want to tell mothers in the US to raise their kids to look to other worlds beyond their own. They must teach their children that there are other kids just like them and that we are all connected.”
Yanar Mohammed: Motherhood as a Source of Strength (Iraq)
“Becoming a mother,” says Yanar Mohammed, “changes you from an individual into someone who is inextricably connected to-and responsible for-other people’s lives.” In her own life, Yanar has built on that connection through founding the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). Yanar has dedicated herself to meeting the needs of Iraqi women and families suffering as a result of the US invasion and the rising religious extremism it has unleashed. Together with MADRE, OWFI has founded a network of women’s shelters in Iraq. In addition, OWFI’s unique Freedom Space project brings together young poets and artists of varying religious and ethnic backgrounds to create art and express their hopes for a peaceful Iraq where human rights are cherished.
In the context of US occupation and civil war, Yanar’s work has proven dangerous. But she is driven to fight for peace and human rights, in part because she is a mother. “When you are responsible for a vulnerable life, it changes your own. You realize that millions of people can become vulnerable as a result of some situation that they didn’t create-a war, a famine, an occupation. Being a mother is about making the connection between the life you have brought into the world and all life. It’s about stepping up to meet the needs of those who are vulnerable.”
“Early motherhood, especially, can be destabilizing in its many practical challenges, like sleeplessness and the disappearance of any ‘free time.’ But learning to meet those challenges can also be empowering. It makes you more durable, and ultimately, more willing to take on the work of nurturing. Developing that capability prepares you for the even bigger mission of creating social change. You see that any big, positive change needs to be birthed, nurtured and committed to with constancy. I see this in the women of Iraq. They are more prepared for the challenge of living through this difficult time than their men, more resilient because of the experience of being mothers.”
As she looks towards the future, her goals-for her own son and for her country-are far-ranging. “What I want is freedom and equality. As a mother, I feel therefore that I have to constantly protect my child from a world where these cherished things are missing.”
“My wish for mothers in the US and around the world is that they never carry this burden of having to protect their children from a ruthless world. Children should grow in a world where they are nurtured, protected and safe. They should not be punished for being born in the wrong place. I hope that mothers in the US will think of the children of Iraq this Mother’s Day, because these are their children, too. I believe it’s the birthright of every child to be cared for by every adult.”
Robitalia Moreno DÃaz & MarÃa del Rosario Moreno DÃaz: Building a Future in the Face of War (Colombia)
War has changed the face of Villavicencio, a city a few hours by car outside of Colombia’s capital of Bogotá. Displaced by armed conflict and seeking the relative safety of the city, families routinely arrive by the hundreds. Over the past four years, they have built houses along the edges of the city and filled empty lots, establishing a community known as Ciudad Porfia. Women are often forced to start their lives over and struggle to find new homes and new means of survival for their families. But even in these challenging and dangerous circumstances, mothers are determined to build a future for themselves and for their children.
LIMPAL, a MADRE sister organization in Colombia, has worked with displaced women and families for over ten years. In Ciudad Porfia, LIMPAL has been helping women to organize, to participate in human rights trainings and to create their own community development projects. All the while, the leadership of mothers has been the major motivating force. Two sisters, Robitalia Moreno DÃaz (known as Robi) and MarÃa del Rosario Moreno DÃaz (known as Rosa), exemplify this drive.
When the war and financial hardship forced Rosa and her family to flee their home, she was lucky to have the aid of her older sister Robi, who helped her to settle in Ciudad Porfia. Together, Robi and Rosa have become leaders within the women’s group, motivated like so many mothers by their desire to lay a foundation for their children’s success.
“I want what every mother wants for her children,” says Robi. “Their well-being. I want conditions to get better.” Robi, a long-time community activist, pointed to reasons for hope she could see around her. “Throughout the years, everything has changed. The community has brought progress to Ciudad Porfia. Now we have electricity, and we pressured the government to build a footbridge across the river to improve transportation. But there is still more that needs to happen.” She worries about the continuing violence and the limited access to health care.
Robi’s children have absorbed their mother’s determination to create positive change. Mayra, her 17-year-old daughter, explains her goals for the future, saying, “What I have always wanted is to study nursing or medicine. I would like to work on anything that involves helping this community.”
At a meeting of the women’s group in Ciudad Porfia, the scope of their plans and projects for the future is inspiring. Rosa explains, “All of the women agree that it’s important to establish projects that will help the children’s development. For example, we may found a community feeding center, a day care or a job training project for women. Hopefully, we can start implementing our ideas soon.”
“Women here are fighters, and we all know that we will improve our conditions and make progress. We work hard for our children so that they can have better opportunities. As mothers, we are not fighting only for ourselves but for our children.”
Robi adds, “I always remember that life is really short and that we should take advantage of the moments we have with our children. We have to value and educate our kids, and we have to build trust with them. That is all we can give them-the guidelines to start building a solid future.” ++
Women’s Group MADRE shares the stories of mothers from Iraq, Sudan, and Colombia who are fighting for better futures for their children. Their MotherVerse Magazine features smart and engaging writing from mothers across the globe.
A Stitch In Time
Judith Gayle, PoliticalWaves
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Entry Filed under: Political Waves
Happy Mother’s Day
May 11th, 2008
Here’s a fun collection to share. John, Hillary and Barack … one IS a mother, two HAD one [John still has his, mid-90’s and a PIP!] GREAT pic’s, so open the links.
Then Garrison Keillor, Cindy Sheehan and other interesting reads about what motherhood was and is … the heartbeat that keeps it all going.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Jude
~ from Chelsea Clinton
You and I both know my mom will make a great president. I’m so blessed to have her as the best mom I could imagine — at 8, 18, and 28. As we approach Mother’s Day, I want to share a few memories of my mom with you.
Thank you again for your support of the person I am so proud to call my mom.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Chelsea ++
Sharing dreams from his mother
Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe
May 9, 2008
FROM time to time during this primary, I’ve wondered about Obama’s mama. In a race that was so much about biography, about beliefs rooted in her son’s “DNA,” she’s made only cameo appearances.
She was the “mother from Kansas” balanced alliteratively with the “father from Kenya.” Or she was the white parent whose genes combined with the black parent. Or she was the woman dying of cancer “more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.” And on Tuesday night when her son all but sewed up the nomination, she appeared again as the “single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point.”
I have been thinking of her not just because it’s nearly Mother’s Day but because Obama will soon have to reach out to Hillary Clinton’s supporters, especially to women of a certain age who attached their hopes to having a woman in the White House. Obama has not yet had a “gender conversation” with those women.
What better link does he have than his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, the girl whose own father expected and wanted a boy child? Ann Dunham, a nonconformist, a woman of the world who traveled a trajectory of change so associated with Hillary’s generation?
Last week, my eye lit on an odd correction in The New York Times. It read: “The assertion that Mr. Obama had ‘never known’ his Kenyan father should have been that he had ‘barely known’ him.” Surely it was a distinction without a difference.
It’s no surprise that Obama wrote an entire memoir dedicated to his “barely known” parent: “Dreams from My Father.” It was only after his mother’s death that he wrote in a new preface, “I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book - less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life.” He added that “she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”
From all accounts, this daughter of a family that kept traveling west in restless pursuit of the American dream took no part in Eisenhower-era conformity. She was a teenager in Hawaii when she fell for the charismatic Kenyan in her Russian class and married him six months before her son was born. This was a time when interracial marriage was still illegal in parts of the country.
The rest of the story is known: a divorce, a marriage to an Indonesian, a second divorce. She was a mother who kept her children focused as well as fed. But what’s less known is the woman in her own right, the one who became an anthropologist, the woman who spent years as the respected head of research for Women’s World Banking, bringing micro-financing to poor people in Indonesia.
Nancy Barry, who was the head of Women’s World Banking and knew Ann well, has been bewildered by the way she’s been reduced to a stick figure. “She was stubborn, hard core, decisive, convincing, deep-thinking, rigorous in her analysis,” says Barry. “When I hear Barack talking about how we are not red states, blue states, but the United States, I think he gets that from his mother. The other core capability he gets from her is the desire for healing.”
Indeed, the Obama we see may be the offspring of “Dreams from My Mother.”
If Ann were alive today she would be the age of Hillary Clinton’s most devoted demographic. She would be among those women who have gone through enormous transitions, making and remaking the female script. Dreaming big.
I am not suggesting Obama drag out his mama as a prop. But he’s staked his case for the presidency on his ability to bridge racial, cultural, party divides, to lead a post-partisan America. Now he’s faced with another divide: women who identified their success with Hillary’s and who are unsure they will vote for him.
What better way to begin reaching out, holding the ‘gender conversation,’ showing women he “gets it” than by sharing the dreams he inherited and the dreams he understands. The dreams from his mother. A girl named Stanley. ++
Nobody Loves You Like Mama Does
Garrison Keillor, Cagle
5/6/2008
The last time I witnessed a woman becoming a mother, it wasn’t anything like the frilly sentiments of Mother’s Day. She lay on her back, perspiring heavily and yelling, “Oh my God, why did you do this to me? I’ll never forgive you in a hundred years. I hope you hurt like this someday. Give me another epidural, you sadists. And get this thing out of me!” and looking up at me as if she were burning at the stake and I had lit the fire. And when the Infant appeared and was placed on the Madonna’s chest, she said, “What in the world am I supposed to do with that?”
It begins in innocence. Music is playing, the night smells of lilacs, she asks if he would like to come in for a minute, and he does, and little does she know what cataclysm awaits her inside: the loss of individuality as she joins the Holy Order of Maternity.
Mothers were, at one time, young women with Possibilities who might have taken a different route and become glamorous and powerful figures in size-two dresses and instead found themselves cleaning up excrement and jiggling colicky babies to get them to stop screaming. They hardly ever get to London anymore or have time to read James Joyce. They sit down to dinner with adults and feel brain-dead. A bouquet of flowers hardly seems compensation enough. How about a million dollars and a house in the south of France?
My mother appears in a photograph of five young women in white summer dresses walking hand-in-hand, grinning, on a country lane near Cottage Grove, Minnesota, in 1932 when she was 17, not long before she met my father, and they all look so fresh and happy, as if in a careless paradise all their own. She is willowy, shy and beautiful and she might’ve modeled evening gowns at Dayton’s Sky Room and maybe been spotted by a Hollywood scout and wound up in pictures, playing the village girl who charms the world-weary tycoon stranded in Littleville by the blizzard. Instead, she became a suburban pioneer, making a home in a muddy cornfield, putting up the stewed tomatoes and canned beans every fall, raising six children, slogging through bouts of mumps and flu, whomping up big Christmases, fishing the laundry out of the washing machine and putting it through the wringer and hanging it on the line. Is that what the smiling girl of 1932 had in mind?
The cruel injustice of motherhood is that, out of devotion to her brood, she sacrifices so much of her own life that her children grow up to find her a little boring in comparison to the maiden aunt who is a little rebellious and more fun to be around, whereas Mom is just the lady who runs the vacuum. As Erma Bombeck said, the kids walk in and ask her, “Is anybody home?”
But she loves you. You could come home with snakes tattooed on your face and she still would see the good in you. Most great men were mama’s boys. She encouraged them long before anybody else could see any talent there.
Your mother is on top of the situation. Your father has a hard time remembering your birthday or even your Christian name, but your mother knows you by scent, thanks to years of doing your laundry. She knows when you’re in trouble. And you will get into deep trouble someday. Count on it. Someone will file a lawsuit against you and subpoena your e-mail and it will all come flooding out, your dark secrets, your nefarious dealings, and your friends will cross the street to avoid you and your brothers and sisters will fade into the woodwork, but your mother will still love you. Like an old lioness, she’ll come running even if you’re two thousand miles away.
That is why you pay homage to the old lady on Mother’s Day. You entered this cold world causing her more pain than she thought possible and now she won’t ever give up on you. Those old ladies you see being wheeled onto airliners are the mothers of children facing imminent indictment for terrible things. Mama will be in the courtroom for you, baby. She will look the jury in the eye and her look may get you acquitted.
Buy her something nice, like a set of gold ingots. Or a black car with a chauffeur. She’s your mama, honeybuns. At least you could write her a note. ++
Was It Easier Being a Mother in 1908?
On the first Mother’s Day 100 years ago, moms had a tough — but rewarding — job, just as they do today.
Marilyn Gardner, Christian Science Monitor
May 10, 2008
Motherhood ranks as one of the hardest jobs to do, yet one of the easiest to romanticize.
This Sunday, May 11, as families shower mothers with cards, gifts, and superlatives, they will be part of an observance that had its humble beginnings 100 years ago. On Sunday, May 10, 1908, simple church services in Grafton, W.Va., and Philadelphia honored the nation’s mothers. A bill introduced in the US Senate that year failed to establish an official Mother’s Day, but it set the stage for a successful measure in 1914.
With their tightly laced corsets, long skirts, heavy shoes, and upswept hair, the mothers of 1908 bear little physical resemblance to their counterparts in 2008, dressed in shorts, Spandex, and sneakers. But as today’s busy mothers savor their holiday, some might think longingly of simpler times, before women spoke of “juggling” or “balancing” work and family. They might even be tempted to idealize mothers of a century ago, whose serene images grace family photo albums.
But wait. “It’s not a time to be romanticized,” says Stephanie Coontz, a historian and author of “Marriage: A History.” “Mothers in 1908 spent less time mothering than they do today. Even in the middle classes, they spent much less time with their kids than we would have imagined.”
One reason for this time deficit involves work. “Most families needed several wage earners,” Ms. Coontz says. “Women took in boarders, did sewing at home, cleaning, and all sorts of jobs that weren’t counted as jobs on the Census but were time-consuming.”
A photo from that era shows a mother balancing a baby on her lap while she assembles cigarettes at her kitchen table. Two other children stand nearby.
Even mothers without paid employment labored endlessly doing housework. In 1908, a New York settlement worker estimated that the average woman, even in middle-class families, spent 40 hours a week just cleaning and shopping. Laundry was an arduous, two-day task, washing one day and ironing the next. Wood and coal stoves required tending and cleaning.
In 1908, Hoover introduced the electric suction sweeper, revolutionizing housecleaning. “It’ll sell itself if we can get the ladies to try it,” Mr. Hoover said. Assuming, of course, that the ladies had electricity. A majority of women still lived on farms. Until the New Deal Rural Electrification program was implemented in the 1930s, electricity was unavailable to huge sections of the country.
Although the birthrate was falling in the early 1900s, women still bore an average of 3.5 children. Farm women averaged closer to five.
The mothers of 1908, like their counterparts today, received advice from pediatricians. Emmett Holt, author of “The Care and Feeding of Children,” was the Dr. Spock of his era, Coontz says. His advice to women: Don’t pick babies up when they cry, and do not breast-feed. And a noted psychologist, Dr. J.B. Watson, cautioned against using pacifiers or indulging in displays of affection. He wrote, “When you are tempted to pet your child, remember that mother love is a dangerous instrument.”
Historians warn against romanticizing marriages of the early 20th century, when women still had to wed out of economic dependence. Husbands had the final say about domestic decisions and controlled family income. A mother could not be the natural guardian of her children unless they were illegitimate.
In the early 1900s, about 10 percent of families were single-parent households, partly because of death and partly because of a high rate of abandonment. “A lot of women were living apart from their husbands,” says Steven Mintz, a historian at Columbia University.
Despite the challenges, Coontz does not suggest that there were no happy families. “If you had a husband who was a good person as well as a good provider, you were fortunate,” she says. “If you were a wealthier mother in the city, you probably had a nanny and a housekeeper. And if you were in a small town, we might be envious of the neighborly interactions. It was a time when people still sat on front porches and did a lot of visiting.”
Even so, Professor Mintz says, “Life was tough in ways we don’t appreciate.” Life expectancy was 51. Infant mortality was high. Most women could not vote.
In 1907, Laura Clarke Rockwood wrote poignantly in The Craftsman magazine about the need to simplify housekeeping: “This mother of to-day hurries from kitchen to nursery and over the other parts of the house, performing as best she can the many home duties of our times. But she is so overwearied in the doing of it all that the deep well of mother love which should overflow, flooding the world with happiness and cheer, runs well nigh dry at times.”
As one solution, Mrs. Rockwood proposed moving meal preparation out of the home: “There should be food kitchens easily accessible to every home where cooked foods can be bought cheaply because of consolidation, and delivered hot to our homes with promptness and regularity in pneumatic tubes perhaps, or by whatever means the master mind shall decide is the cheapest and the best.”
Her pneumatic tubes remain a dream. But cooks of 2008 have an alternative. It’s called “takeout” and “home delivery.”
Two months before the first Mother’s Day observances, President Theodore Roosevelt addressed 200 delegates who gathered at the White House for the first International Congress on the Welfare of the Child, organized by the National Mothers’ Congress.
Speaking of “the supreme dignity, the supreme usefulness of motherhood,” he said, “The successful mother, the mother who does her part in rearing and training aright the boys and girls who are to be the men and women of the next generation, is of greater use to the community, and occupies, if she only would realize it, a more honorable, as well as a more important, position than any successful man in it.”
A century later, his lofty idealism might serve as a fitting tribute to mothers everywhere this Sunday as they celebrate — simply or lavishly — a day that is theirs alone. ++
Mother’s Day 2008: Peaceful Idealism v. Political Pragmatism
Cindy Sheehan, CommonDreams
Sunday, May 11, 2008
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
(From Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation)
Sadly, this is the fifth Mother’s Day since Casey was killed in Iraq on April 04, 2004. The people who told me that “time will heal” were wrong, or maybe it just takes more time? I have spoken to many mothers who buried their child years ago, however, that tell me it does not get any easier. I suspect the mothers who have buried children are probably right.
On this Mother’s Day, though, I am reflecting on all kinds of moms. Some women never have children and it seems that their lives are complete. Some women desperately want to have children, but for some reason, cannot. Some women have lost their only child to the ravenous war machine and they somehow go on.
One specific mother has her family intact and can callously sign blank checks to pay for war (that are really nothing but death warrants for other people’s children) with only the life and health of her political party in her heart. Another mother can talk about “obliterating” an entire innocent country filled with mothers and children without even blinking her eyes that only shed crocodile tears at the appropriate moments.
Some of us are lucky enough to have had loving moms and some of us have had mothers who were cold and distant. Other moms are abusive, while some have been abused. Our world is made up of all kinds of women some of which are suited to be mothers some of which are suited to political life; some both: many neither.
I am a mother of four children. I planned on every one of them outliving me. When I thought of growing old, I imagined being surrounded on holidays by four children, children-in-law, grandchildren and great grandchildren. In the natural order of things, children should always bury their parents, but in our unnaturally violent, war torn world where shopping malls, schools, the streets and entire innocent nations are turned into bloodbaths, the situation is reversed and too many parents must tragically bury their children.
Today, one mother joyously watched her daughter marry at a pig farm in Crawford, TX. The mother’s husband, the daughter’s father, proudly looked on the scene that his actions have denied to so many of us. The daughter wore an Oscar de la Renta gown and it has been reported that there will be dancing throughout the night. Because of her father’s lies and greed, too many people the daughter’s age have been buried in their military dress uniforms (if there was enough of the body left to be buried) while their mothers and fathers watched in heartbroken grief as their child’s body was lowered into a cold, cold grave for eternity.
Too many mothers today in Iraq will have their babies blown to bits by American bombs or an insurgent’s last desperate act. If an Iraqi mother is fortunate enough to have all her children around her, she will be scraping for food, clean water and praying for a few minutes of electricity, or at least one day of peace and quiet.
Recently, I was confronted by a man at a farmer’s market in San Francisco. He is not “pro war” but he is pro-Pelosi because he is a “political pragmatist.”
Apparently, Ms. Pelosi funding the war for another year is “politically pragmatic” because it is worth murdering tens of thousands of more innocent people so that Democrats can gain the White House and more seats in Congress. I wish I had the luxury of being a political pragmatist, but I must do everything in my power to save other mothers from the life of never ending grief that I have been condemned to by men and women some of whom are mothers and fathers who have forgotten that other people’s children are precious to their parents, too.
On Mother’s Day this year, while mothers all over America are being taken out to brunch or being served breakfast in bed, I would like us to take time out of our day to reflect on the mothers who have been harmed by the last six years of bloody wars that are waged by neocon-Republicans and paid for by complicit-Democrats. I want us in the US to remember that we are a nation, if not in a legal, moral or declared war: at least a violent occupation that seems like a war to those that have been adversely affected by it.
I am luckier than many mothers whose only child has been stolen from them for lies, because I will be surrounded by my three surviving children and their partners on Mother’s Day and we will spend the time staring at my daughter’s belly which is fat (and one week past due) with my first grandchild. My grandson will never meet his Uncle Casey but he will know him because of the love that is left in his family.
I challenge us all to reject “political pragmatism” and embrace “peaceful idealism” for the love of all the world’s children.
Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation should be enshrined in our war-soaked national consciousness as our economy, ecology and our communities are being ravaged by the rapacious war machine:
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will 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, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.” ++
Mother’s Day Veteran: Moms Wear Combat Boots, Too
Eli PaintedCrow, CommonDreams
Saturday, May 10, 2008
At the age of twenty, being a mother of a three and five year-old was not easy. Being a single mom on welfare living in a cockroach-infested apartment was not living. I thought I needed to learn discipline, so I walked into the army recruitment office. I spent my 21st birthday in boot camp on a five-mile road march. Many a mom has gone through boot camp. I was no exception.
Today I work towards building a network of women, many of them mothers, who have served in the US military. We seek ways to tell the truth and speak for peace. This Mother’s Day is a time to remember the mothers serving in the military whose stories you’re not likely to hear.
In 1987 I was activated and left for Honduras. Once you put on the uniform, you’re a soldier and you do what is expected of you. You do your job and try not to think. You learn to shut your emotions off. When I returned, I didn’t talk with my sons about these life changes. You just come back, go to work, feed your kids.
In 1993 I went to drill sergeant school. Another eight weeks away from home. As a woman in the military, I had to eliminate showing any emotion or insecurity. It affected how I raised my sons. They knew what it was like to be in the military at very young ages. You lose emotions; you lose yourself and connections to others. They drove it out of me in boot camp and finished it off by sending me to Iraq. I don’t feel like a very good mom or partner these days.
My depression can be severe. Some days I can get out of bed, some days I can’t. Other times all I can do is cry. The military teaches you to accept the rules. When you have PTSD, the VA’s evaluation process seems to be the biggest obstacle to get help. Most veterans just give up.
Women are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and don’t know what is happening to them. They can’t be around their kids; they can’t control their anger or sadness and no one can get close to them. They’re suffering from PTSD but they pretend they’re all right because they don’t want to look weak.
When I started to speak about my experience, my son, a former Marine, thought I was crazy. He is still afraid for me. He thinks someone is going to kill me if I keep talking. But as a mother and a grandmother of eight, I feel there is an obligation to clear the path for our children. My tour in Iraq taught me this lesson.
It broke my heart to watch 20-year-olds walk in from patrol with faces dirty from the dust and heat — looking as if they just came in off the playground — with pictures of their loved ones on their armbands and their weapons on their backs, talking about how they just graduated high school.
Mothers cry for their babies, here and in Iraq. Mothers are the casualties that are not counted. We are the wounded that go untreated. We are also the healers that can change anything. We protect life because we give it. Send a prayer for the mothers and babies who have lost each other. This Mother’s Day remember them, remember us. We need each other to heal. And for all mothers who feel helpless because they think they can’t do anything to stop the war — if you knew the truth you would try. ++
Eli PaintedCrow is a SWAN co-founder and a retired vet working for peace with the Women of Color Resource Center in Oakland, CA.
DÃa de la MADRE: In Celebration of Mothers around the Globe
MotherVerse Magazine, CommonDreams
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Twenty-five years ago, in the summer of 1983, a partnership was forged between a group of Nicaraguan women and a group of women in the United States. At the time, the US-backed Contra army was waging a campaign of killings, rape and abductions, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The organization that emerged from this partnership took its inspiration-and its name-from the mothers whose children had been killed by the Contras. MADRE (mother in Spanish) became an international women’s human rights organization rooted in connections between women worldwide and in the desire of mothers to seek social justice for all families.
On the celebration of Mother’s Day in the US, we take the opportunity to honor mothers around the globe who are striving to create positive social change. We remember that, in 1870, US activist Julia Ward Howe released her Mother’s Day Proclamation, in which she called for mothers to come together in the name of peace and justice. The women profiled below - all leaders in the communities of MADRE’s sister organizations - share their stories with mothers in the US and remind us of this call for unity.
Fatima Ahmed: Planting Seeds and Putting Down Roots (Sudan)
Ask Fatima Ahmed about the challenges of balancing work with raising her young sons, and she is frank. “I never rest. It takes a lot of energy.” For years, she has served as the director for Zenab for Women in Development, a community-based women’s organization in Sudan. In a country roiled for decades by civil war in the south and more recently by bloodshed in Darfur, Zenab has partnered with MADRE to provide emergency aid to displaced women and families and to support women in refugee camps, who are routinely targeted for sexual violence.
Fatima works with women farmers, many of whom bring their babies into the fields with them everyday. The women have organized a union, part of an effort to recognize the key role played by women in agriculture and the need for more resources, like seeds and farm tools, to sustain their work and their communities.
Occasionally, Fatima’s work requires her to leave her own children for weeks on end, as she travels to rural communities throughout Sudan. The separation can be difficult, but she explains, “I know how much I love my children, and I know that I want everything for them. That is why I feel so much for other mothers who want the same but cannot provide it. When my kids ask me why I’m leaving, I tell them that I’m going to help other mothers and kids who cannot afford the things they have.”
She attributes her drive and her commitment in large part to her own mother, who was also a community leader. “Since I was a child,” says Fatima, “I saw my mother’s compassion for the people around her. Women in the community would come to her for help, and no matter what, she would always welcome them and help them with their problems.” Zenab, the organization that Fatima founded, is named for her mother, and the values and goals it embodies are clearly inspired by her legacy.
“I wish peace for my children, says Fatima, “because without peace, how can we make any progress? We need progress in health, in education, in all areas. For this, we need peace in local communities, at a national level and at an international level. That is the only way.”
On Mother’s Day, Fatima’s thoughts turn to mothers in the US. “I want to tell mothers in the US to raise their kids to look to other worlds beyond their own. They must teach their children that there are other kids just like them and that we are all connected.”
Yanar Mohammed: Motherhood as a Source of Strength (Iraq)
“Becoming a mother,” says Yanar Mohammed, “changes you from an individual into someone who is inextricably connected to-and responsible for-other people’s lives.” In her own life, Yanar has built on that connection through founding the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). Yanar has dedicated herself to meeting the needs of Iraqi women and families suffering as a result of the US invasion and the rising religious extremism it has unleashed. Together with MADRE, OWFI has founded a network of women’s shelters in Iraq. In addition, OWFI’s unique Freedom Space project brings together young poets and artists of varying religious and ethnic backgrounds to create art and express their hopes for a peaceful Iraq where human rights are cherished.
In the context of US occupation and civil war, Yanar’s work has proven dangerous. But she is driven to fight for peace and human rights, in part because she is a mother. “When you are responsible for a vulnerable life, it changes your own. You realize that millions of people can become vulnerable as a result of some situation that they didn’t create-a war, a famine, an occupation. Being a mother is about making the connection between the life you have brought into the world and all life. It’s about stepping up to meet the needs of those who are vulnerable.”
“Early motherhood, especially, can be destabilizing in its many practical challenges, like sleeplessness and the disappearance of any ‘free time.’ But learning to meet those challenges can also be empowering. It makes you more durable, and ultimately, more willing to take on the work of nurturing. Developing that capability prepares you for the even bigger mission of creating social change. You see that any big, positive change needs to be birthed, nurtured and committed to with constancy. I see this in the women of Iraq. They are more prepared for the challenge of living through this difficult time than their men, more resilient because of the experience of being mothers.”
As she looks towards the future, her goals-for her own son and for her country-are far-ranging. “What I want is freedom and equality. As a mother, I feel therefore that I have to constantly protect my child from a world where these cherished things are missing.”
“My wish for mothers in the US and around the world is that they never carry this burden of having to protect their children from a ruthless world. Children should grow in a world where they are nurtured, protected and safe. They should not be punished for being born in the wrong place. I hope that mothers in the US will think of the children of Iraq this Mother’s Day, because these are their children, too. I believe it’s the birthright of every child to be cared for by every adult.”
Robitalia Moreno DÃaz & MarÃa del Rosario Moreno DÃaz: Building a Future in the Face of War (Colombia)
War has changed the face of Villavicencio, a city a few hours by car outside of Colombia’s capital of Bogotá. Displaced by armed conflict and seeking the relative safety of the city, families routinely arrive by the hundreds. Over the past four years, they have built houses along the edges of the city and filled empty lots, establishing a community known as Ciudad Porfia. Women are often forced to start their lives over and struggle to find new homes and new means of survival for their families. But even in these challenging and dangerous circumstances, mothers are determined to build a future for themselves and for their children.
LIMPAL, a MADRE sister organization in Colombia, has worked with displaced women and families for over ten years. In Ciudad Porfia, LIMPAL has been helping women to organize, to participate in human rights trainings and to create their own community development projects. All the while, the leadership of mothers has been the major motivating force. Two sisters, Robitalia Moreno DÃaz (known as Robi) and MarÃa del Rosario Moreno DÃaz (known as Rosa), exemplify this drive.
When the war and financial hardship forced Rosa and her family to flee their home, she was lucky to have the aid of her older sister Robi, who helped her to settle in Ciudad Porfia. Together, Robi and Rosa have become leaders within the women’s group, motivated like so many mothers by their desire to lay a foundation for their children’s success.
“I want what every mother wants for her children,” says Robi. “Their well-being. I want conditions to get better.” Robi, a long-time community activist, pointed to reasons for hope she could see around her. “Throughout the years, everything has changed. The community has brought progress to Ciudad Porfia. Now we have electricity, and we pressured the government to build a footbridge across the river to improve transportation. But there is still more that needs to happen.” She worries about the continuing violence and the limited access to health care.
Robi’s children have absorbed their mother’s determination to create positive change. Mayra, her 17-year-old daughter, explains her goals for the future, saying, “What I have always wanted is to study nursing or medicine. I would like to work on anything that involves helping this community.”
At a meeting of the women’s group in Ciudad Porfia, the scope of their plans and projects for the future is inspiring. Rosa explains, “All of the women agree that it’s important to establish projects that will help the children’s development. For example, we may found a community feeding center, a day care or a job training project for women. Hopefully, we can start implementing our ideas soon.”
“Women here are fighters, and we all know that we will improve our conditions and make progress. We work hard for our children so that they can have better opportunities. As mothers, we are not fighting only for ourselves but for our children.”
Robi adds, “I always remember that life is really short and that we should take advantage of the moments we have with our children. We have to value and educate our kids, and we have to build trust with them. That is all we can give them-the guidelines to start building a solid future.” ++
Women’s Group MADRE shares the stories of mothers from Iraq, Sudan, and Colombia who are fighting for better futures for their children. Their MotherVerse Magazine features smart and engaging writing from mothers across the globe.
A Stitch In Time
Judith Gayle, PoliticalWaves
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Entry Filed under: Political Waves
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