Join the Feminist Call for Peace this Mother’s Day
Feminist activists are taking their vision for world peace and green prosperity on tour across Canada this month. Here’s how, why, and what you can do to support.
All I want for Mother's Day is peace. For humans in power all around the world to set down their weapons and talk. To prioritise the negotiation of peaceful solutions to very real, complicated problems that cannot be solved with missiles, drones or man-made famines.
To some, this may sound childish. But I refuse to be embarrassed. One mother’s proclamation — circa 1870, calling on mothers all across the Western world to rise up in support of international peace and disarmament — is the fundamental, yet largely forgotten, reason we celebrate Mother’s Day in North America today.
More than a century and a half later, however, millions of innocent people (disproportionately women and children) continue to be displaced, trapped or and/or killed in armed conflicts around the world each year. The prospect of negotiated peace feels unimaginable.
But activists from coast to coast are not willing to stand by quietly and allow Canadians to believe that peace cannot prevail.
This Mother’s Day — Sunday, May 12 — marks the launch of the "On to Ottawa Peace Caravan.” The month-long, cross-country tour — a collaboration between Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) — aims to bring Canadian voters and politicians back to their peacekeeping roots.
Ellen Woodsworth, co-president of WILPF’s Canadian Chapter, told me over the phone last week that it will all begin with a peace rally in Vancouver: 11 a.m. Sunday, May 12, at Grandview Park on Commercial Drive.
The multicultural, multigenerational gathering will feature musical performances by Indigenous and Canadian women, mothers and children, including Daughters of the Drum and Solidarity Notes Choir. Afterward, all are invited to walk, bike, bus or drive along as the caravan embarks, up Commercial Drive to Highway One, toward the first stop in Kelowna.
“We'll stop at 15 cities across Canada and listen to people about what their issues are; talk about why we're planning for peace — demilitarize, decarbonize, decolonize — and bring the recommendations they have with us,” Ellen explained.
For those not yet familiar, Ellen Woodsworth is an internationally recognized feminist, 2SLGBTQIA++ activist, and the first open lesbian to be elected to the Vancouver City Council. She has spent her entire adult life organizing, advocating and legislating to help empower people with marginalized identities, including indigenous women and girls; mothers; and seniors. Recently, Ellen retired from leading the local intersectional feminist nonprofit organization she founded, Women Transforming Cities, to focus her attention globally.
As the caravan’s official name suggests, Ottawa is the ultimate destination. From May 27-28, hundreds of peace activists are expected to converge on Parliament Hill for workshops, teach-ins, lobbying Members of Parliament, and a protest against CANSEC, North America’s largest weapons fair.
But, beyond the logistics, I had to know: Is embarking on Mother’s Day just a coincidence?
Absolutely not. The decision to launch the caravan on Mother’s Day at Grandview Park was very deliberate, Ellen said. In her own words:
“One Mother's Day, I think it was in 1981, we strung up a clothes line across the [Grandview] park. We spelled out the letters ‘Wages for Housework’ on that banner to talk about, you know: Acknowledging mothers on one day of the year means that the other 364 days year — when women do the majority of unpaid work and still have to do paid work — it's kind of seen as a token acknowledgement of how important we are.
It's kind of like when we talk about Wages for Housework, or we talk about peace, people don't think these are important things. They're actually the most important thing that keeps humankind — and civilization, and a healthy environment — possible.
Right now, we're seeing war all over, whether it's in Sudan or whether it's in Ukraine or in Gaza. It's women who are trying to hold their families together; trying to get their families out of the danger zones; trying to feed their families not having enough to feed themselves; or having terrible birth and dying in self-birth because there's no health care.
And yet, women are the people who are the basis of our society, doing all that unrecognised and unpaid work.
Peace is the same way. It's something that seems like it's a good idea, and people should see it their way, but they don't see how fundamental it is to climate change or to society being peaceful.
And so, I felt like starting on Mother's Day is a way for us to talk about that. And it's a way for people to recognize that we don't want war. We don't want Canada to be engaged in war. We don't want Canada to fall with the United States into war with China. We want Canada to be a peacekeeping leader and not spend $50 billion for the defence budget.
That money should be spent for childcare; to be spent for healthcare; for affordable housing; and help immigrants and refugees. We want to make a statement as women — and there are men coming along as well — but we feel it's a critical turning point right now.
The climate change that's being fundamentally caused by wars, and the extraction of oil and gas that are used by the warmongers, are changing the world so that we don't know if there is going to be a future for the next generation. Mothers see that so clearly. So that's all the reasons why Mother's Day is a critical day to launch the Peace Caravan.”
Flyers for the caravan highlight an alternative vision: A “green care economy.” So, I had to ask Ellen how she envisions a green care future.
“I think that a green care economy is where we're caring for each other and we're caring for, as I think Indigenous as people have taught us, a healthy green environment,” she said.
“That would mean we build housing that is green. We build child care and community centres in the housing. We'd build communities that have housing from birth to the end of life, so elders and children live together.
The best example I know is in Vienna, where they created 250 units of housing, and it was designed, built, and constructed so it worked for women. So it was safe housing. So you didn't open the fridge door and hit the cupboard. So the cupboards weren't higher than we are. There's a child's area; there's an elder's area; and it's built in the circle. So there's a playing area in the middle of the complexes, so you can see your kids playing and what they're doing. And it's built with materials that are healthy. And teaches people how to grow things; so there's a garden.
Those are simple, doable things.
And a green economy doesn't extract things out of unceded Aboriginal territory to use for bomber jets to go kill other Indigenous people in other parts of the world.”
If we weren't pouring money into war in the military, we would have a greener economy. We could dedicate universities to coming up with ideas on how to green the globe — because we can't do it just one nation state after another. We have to be really using the United Nations in a way that doesn't just try to stop the wars that are happening, but actually works together with the possibilities.
When you turn your national economy into peace, into green initiatives, you actually have a lot of money, and you create a huge amount of energy. When people are thinking about peace, it's amazing what new ideas come forth.
But when people are full of fear, then they're afraid of their neighbours. They're fretting at each other. They're attacking each other. They're getting people fired. It's like it's a sickness right now going on with what's happening.
So we have to show another way. And that's what we want to do: Listen and show another way as part of the Peace Caravan.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask Ellen how she responds to those who believe that weapons are key to safety and security. And her response surprised me. She led with empathy.
“I think people are afraid right now,” she said. “I think it's a lot of fear since COVID. And then with the warmongering that's happening, with the big multinationals controlling the media and controlling social media, and then the unbelievable destruction that's happening in Gaza. That it's happening right before our eyes, and we can't believe that nobody's stopping it. And it took so long for Canada to call for a ceasefire.
I think that it's an easy solution to say: ‘If someone does something, then you hit them, or you shoot them, or you join the army and you sign up, go to war.’ It's a very masculinized, racialized and colonialist approach to addressing really real problems.
And what we want to talk about is that those aren't solutions. Those are making the problem much, much worse. And we want to show them that it's $50 billion of taxpayers money that could be providing affordable housing. That we could re-establish the National Housing Program. It could be used to create a national child care strategy. It could be used to bring the costs of education down so that everybody has the right to an education. In some countries, it's free.
It could be used to address some of the issues of women's unpaid work. That it's everybody's work to make sure that families, communities and societies run peacefully. And step out of the fear, war mentality, that seems to be gripping people.”
And finally, what can parents here in Vancouver do to support the call for peace and a green care economy?
Help send off the On To Ottawa Peace Caravan. 11 a.m. May 12 at Grandview Park in East Vancouver
Become a WILPF member and/or send a monetary donation to support the caravan. Contact wilpf.canada@gmail.com to make it happen.
Start talking to your people about peace. “The best thing is just get together with a group of friends and start talking. ‘Okay, what does this mean to you? What does it mean to you? And what could we do together?’” Ellen said. “We're happy to come and talk to their group. We can share our flyers and share what we've thought of and what we've come to.”
And, read! Ellen’s book recommendations:
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your wisdom with us, Ellen! Wishing the entire caravan a smooth and successful journey.
If anyone wants to join me at the rally here in Vancouver, let me know! 🕊️🕊️🕊️