OMNI FATHER’S DAY FOR PEACE ANTHOLOGY JUNE 15, 2025

 

OMNI

FATHER’S DAY FOR PEACE ANTHOLOGY JUNE 15, 2025 (3^RD 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.