OMNI
FATHER’S DAY FOR PEACE ANTHOLOGY
JUNE 15, 2025 (3RD SUNDAY IN JUNE).
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture
of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
(#1 June
19, 2008; #2 June 20, 2010; #3 June 19, 2011; #4 6-17-12); #5 June 16, 2013). Inspired by Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day for
PEACE.
I published 5
newsletters on Father’s Day USA during 2008-2013, but skipped 2014 -2024
because the celebration was seldom examined by anybody, at least as far as
google knew. I finally tried again in
2025, but still the same Father’s Day full of gift suggestions, all for profit.
I next searched Father’s Day and turned
up International Father’s Day, which was more of the same but wider and deeper
regarding gifts (from cards to quality time).
As far as google knew, or would report, nobody offered analysis; e.g., of
a fun holiday to increase sales and promote capitalism.
A few exceptions were reported by google
during this time; for examples,
Grace Paley’s poem “Fathers”;
an essay advocating the abolition of “parent day” (should be every day the same
as with children);
discussions
of same-sex fathers and J. C. Penney’s favorable ad.
But
the infinitely thoughtful possibilities of “Father’s Day”—the correlation
between masculine father-models and war; the possible connections to Julia Ward
Howe’s Mother’s Day for Peace, for example—are unobserved, at least by
google. Not fun, of course, and don’t
sell merchandise.
Is nobody asking on Father’s Day:
What are fathers doing to stop the wars, stop the warming, stop the
fascism? Stop the greatest threat to our
children?
So
join with me to imagine
JULIA
WARD HOWE’S PROCLAMATION FOR FATHERS
(her
Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870 slightly emended by Dick).
Arise, then, men
of this day!
Arise, all men
who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by nationalism and militarism. Our
sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the men of one country, will be too
tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure
theirs."
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." Blood does not
wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken
the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let men now leave all that may
be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet
first, as men, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take
counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live
in peace, Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God, humanity, and the earth.
In the name of manhood,
of true masculinity, and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of
men without limit of nationality May be appointed and held at someplace deemed
most convenient And at the earliest period consistent with its objects, To
promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of
international questions, The great and general interests of peace.
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