As a part of honoring the mothers in our lives, and as members of Mothers Out Front, we honor the many women who have organized mothers to take action.
They give us strength to face the climate crisis, to raise our voices, and to organize. They took their messages to their communities, to the streets and to the halls of government.
Their example is especially important for us to emulate in this election year in asking for bold action on climate from candidates for the dozens of elected offices locally and at the state level.
Two mothers who inspired Mother’s Day, Anna Reeves Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe, called on the power of mothers to change the world. Both were deeply influenced by the Civil War. Jarvis became an advocate for poor children’s health in the face of environmental pollution. Howe became a leader of women’s suffrage, and later an anti-war activist.
Jarvis lived in Appalachia and, in the 1850s, organized mothers to protect their children’s health and to help care for wounded soldiers, both Confederate and Union. After the war, she used the power of organized mothers to help reconcile communities torn apart by the war.
After Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, honored her mother’s memory by organizing the first Mother’s Day in 1908 in Philadelphia. She must have inherited some of her mother’s organizing skill because 15,000 people showed up for the afternoon event.
Jarvis wrote countless letters to elected officials and influential men and, in 1914, succeeded in convincing President Woodrow Wilson to establish Mother’s Day as a national holiday.
Howe, a contemporary of Anna Reeves Jarvis, and a mother, activist, suffragist, and prolific writer, was another source of Mother’s Day. An ardent women’s rights activist, she met Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and then wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
During the war, she cared for wounded soldiers, which informed her anti-war sentiments. Her 1870 “Mother’s Day Proclamation” was a call for mothers to gather to work for international peace: “Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears. … From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. …”
The mission of Mothers Out Front builds on the legacy of these originators of Mother’s Day. We have found that we have power when we work together as mothers collaborating across divides of geography, race, class and political persuasion.
All families are affected by the climate crisis and the path we’re on is most dire for communities of color and those without sufficient resources for resilience in response to the catastrophic effects of climate change.
Mothers Out Front Massachusetts is working with the mothers from the Pennsylvania communities whose health and land has been compromised by the extraction of gas through fracking. We are advocating for a law that would require utilities to speed up the increase of renewable power every year.
Locally, we are going door-to-door in Northampton to encourage energy efficiency and switching to efficient heating and cooking in place of fossil fuels. We are ensuring that new municipal buildings meet zero energy standards in Amherst.
We are also working toward our 100 percent renewable energy goals by helping with an inter-municipal experiment in local control of energy, Community Choice Energy. This is a way to reduce our collective energy use and create a clean energy future.
In this election year, in the Valley, we have a particularly potent venue for building the commitment to a clean, healthy and just future. Let’s ask at every opportunity, of every candidate for every office, in local and state races, how they will take swift and bold action on climate change.
All of our children depend upon us to speak up and organize to secure a world free of carbon pollution.
Felicia Mednick, of Amherst, is an elementary school reading specialist who is active in Mothers Out Front Pioneer Valley, working to combat climate change. Further information is available online at www.mothersoutfrontma.org or by emailing info.ma.pioneervalley@mothersoutfront.org.