Dear Neighbors,

Join with members of the Nederland Mountain Forum for Peace at the Sculpture Garden from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Mothers' Day, May 10, to protest war and war-makers and military registration in our United States.

Bring your signs and smiles as we've done in No Kings vigils for months.

Mountain Forum for Peace (MFP) was founded on Mothers' Day in 1985 to reject war and military registration in the United States of America by Jean Gardner, Arlene Strand, and Phyllis Wright.

They knew that a country with a huge military, and the contact  information about millions of young men and women, would succumb to battle cries, big guns and a stunning Pentagon Budget. They listened to Julia Ward Howe's warnings, and urged all of us to count on the good judgement of 18 year olds, and 28 year olds, and 38 and 48 and 58 year olds, to do what is necessary to confront enemies.

Talk, and reason, and compromise, and recognition of the humanity of friends and foes, and study war no more.

Mother’s Day Proclamation of Peace

– Julia Ward Howe

"Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands shall 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 women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says, ‘Disarm, Disarm!’

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

Ellen Moore  

Nederland