Taking Back Mother's Day for Peace

From Brave New Foundation, CodePink and No More Victims: Brave New Foundation launched a new short viral video in honor of Mother’s Day featuring actresses Felicity Huffman, Vanessa Williams, Alfre Woodward, Christine Lahti and feminist icon Gloria Steinem, as well as two Muslim women, Fatma Saleh and Ashraf Salimian. The video celebrates the original meaning of Mother’s Day, founded during the Civil War as a call upon women to unite for peace in the name children everywhere. The video is being distributed virally over the internet by Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Foundation via You Tube in partnership with a large coalition of groups including the Unitarian Universalists, SEIU, Soldiers of Yesterday and Tomorrow, National Organization for Women (NOW), Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools, United For Peace and Justice and others.

In 1870, after the devastation of the American Civil War, social activist and poet Julia Ward Howe wrote the original Mother's Day Proclamation calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace. This Mother's Day, celebrate the true meaning of the holiday by giving your mother an e-card with a donation to No More Vicims. No More Victims is a non-profit organization which brings war-injured Iraqi children to the United States for medical treatment. Learn more at MothersDayForPeace.com.

Contributions made through the site will go to help bring Salee, a ten-year-old girl who lost both of her legs in the Iraq war, to Greenville, South Carolina where she will receive surgical treatment and prosthetics.

On November 7, 2006, ten-year-old Salee was playing outside her home in Hasswa, Iraq with her brother, cousin and some friends when US jets circled overhead. Suddenly the jets fired three missiles, apparently at two passenger vehicles. One of the missiles hit Salee's home, killing her brother and taking both of Salee's legs.