Hundreds March for Peace on Mother's Day
Marchers rally at City Park in Bath. Photo: Norma Athearn
by W. T. Whitney, Jr.
Some 300 peace activists participated in a Mother's Day March across the Sagadahoc Bridge on May 12, Below the bridge were four nuclear-capable destroyers under construction for the US Navy at Bath Iron Works. The skies threatened rain, drums sounded, and solidarity honks were heard from passing cars.
The march for peace was the high point of Maine's emerging anti-war movement. Ever since September 11, peace vigils have occurred weekly throughout the state. A broad coalition of pacifists, feminists, and fighters for social justice brought an atmosphere of strength and determination to the event that will not soon be forgotten by those who took part in it.
One sign read, "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind." Another, "The War on Terrorism Ignores the Cause of Terrorism." And: "No Taxation to Fund War Escalation!" Susan Marshall, a march organizer from Montville, made a number of beautiful signs employing the word for peace in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
Afterwards, the walkers gathered in the city park to listen to various speakers and singers. State Senator Beth Edmonds of Freeport told us that war in the Middle East is about access to oil, and threatens to cost 60 times more each year than is spent on energy conservation. She compared the cost, $60 billion annually to the total Maine budget of $5 billion. Jack Bussell of Veterans for Peace noted that the stock price of General Dynamics, the owner of Bath Iron Works, has risen 25% since September 11.
Karen Wainberg, the new chair of the board of Peace Action Maine, evoked the memory of reformer and writer Julia Ward Howe, the founder of Mother's Day in the United States and the leader, during the late 19th century, of a woman's peace crusade. Wainberg read Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, which exhorts, "Arise, then, women of this day...we will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage...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."
With rain beginning to fall, the assembled celebrants of Mother's Day intoned a "Pledge of Resistance," which states in part: "Not in our name will you invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children letting history take its course over the graves of all the unnamed.....Not in our name will you erode the very freedoms that you have claimed that we fight for. Not in our mouths will fear silence us... We pledge resistance; we pledge alliance with those who have come under attack for voicing opposition to the war...
"We pledge to make common cause with the people of the world, to bring about freedom, justice, and peace. Another world is possible, and we pledge to make it real."
Along with the words that were spoken, a seriousness of purpose permeated the day's events that surely encouraged the participants to rededicate themselves to resistance and opposition.
Tom Whitney, a retired physician, lives in South Paris.
Back to Peace Talk Index, Summer, 2002
