What Mothers Really Want:

A Just & Peaceful Planet

By John Freitag

This past Mothers Day brought more than 300 people out on the street in Strafford in an effort to take Mothers Day back from the greeting card industry, and returned to its original intentions, articulated by Julia Ward Howe.

In 1870, Howe, still deeply moved by the devastation from the recently concluded Civil War, called for a day in which women would "take counsel with each other to find the means by which the great human family can live in peace."

The prime mover and shaker of this revitalization of Mothers Day in Strafford was Dannette Harris, a mother of two and a middle school science teacher at the Newton School in South Strafford.

Harris says a few weeks ago she awoke at three in the morning and could not stop thinking of what it would be like if her teenage son was serving in Bagdad. She says she then envisioned what it must be like for the many families who must often spend sleepless nights living in fear of soldiers coming up their walks to inform them that their loved ones had been slain. She knew she had to do something. She then remembered seeing something about an organization called "Mothers Acting Up." Harris got out of bed and searched the Internet to find out more. Later that day, she shared her findings with her minister and friends, and soon the idea for the Mothers Day event in Strafford was well on the way to becoming a reality.

A highpoint was when former Gov. Madeleine Kunin agreed to come and speak. Harris said that Kunin had long been a personal role model of how a caring mother could take positive action to affect the larger world for the benefit of all children.

Kunin was joined at the speaker’s podium after the march by poet Grace Paley and Rep. Margaret Cheney.

The success of the day is just a start, says Harris, who is determined to take further action as a mother to further actions to make a more just and peaceful world.