By Katherine King

I attended a Mother’s Day rally at Arlington West on the Santa Monica beach to mourn all the sons and daughters who have been killed and gravely wounded in the Iraq War. The rally was organized by Code Pink: Women for Peace and co-sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Moms and Iraqi Voices for Peace.

A short ceremony honored the mothers who have paid the ultimate price in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jodi Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, read The Mother’s Day Declaration by Julia Ward Howe (most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic").

Sickened by the carnage of the Civil War, Howe became a tireless peace activist, urging mothers to come together "first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead," and then "solemnly to take counsel with each other as to the means / Whereby the great human family can live in peace…"

Iraqi mother Yanar Mohammed, who was visiting from Iraq, spoke about how difficult it is to be a woman in Iraq now. Before the U.S. invasion she could walk the streets unveiled, but now all women must be covered and are treated as women were in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Mrs. Mohammed has organized The Iraq Women’s Federation for women’s rights. In today’s Iraq, she said, women are kidnapped for the sex trade and family ‘honor’ killings of women are neither prevented nor punished by the Iraqi government. The conflicts for mothers in Iraq today "are intolerable," Mohammed explained: "Does she send her children to school and risk them being blown up? Or does she keep them home without learning and without a future? Does she try to take them out of the country? If so, she risks being confined "to a squalid refugee camp where there is no more future than in Iraq."

The last speaker was a representative from Veterans for Peace who is involved in the Arlington West project.

Every Sunday since Feb. 15, 2004, Veterans for Peace and other volunteers set up a dawn to dusk memorial next to the pier on the Santa Monica beach. The purpose of the memorial is "To acknowledge the human cost and consequences of war as an instrument of national policy; To mourn the loss of life at the hands of violence and the terrorism of war; To acknowledge the fallen and the wounded; To offer a grim reminder of the cost and consequences of invasion and occupation; To provide a place for contemplation; To educate the public about the needs of those returning from war." You can learn more about Veterans for Peace and Arlington West at www.arlingtonwestsantamonica.org/.

Everyone vowed to stay active so that this might be the last Mother’s Day with our nation at war.

This is part of the May 18, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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