Dear John,

Whether your mother's still in your life, or has instead already moved beyond this one, we wish you a healthy and insightful Mothers Day.

While many celebrate Mothers Day as a celebration of mothers, it began as a commemoration of interests shared by mothers around the world. Advocate Julia Ward Howe wrote a Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, almost two generations before Mothers Day became an official holiday in the U.S.

Can you join us today so that we can stand taller in Julia Ward Howe's footsteps and help educate more voters previously unaware of how the corporate Democratic Party actively undermines its stated values under its current leadership?

Julia Ward Howe wrote:

“Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
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, women 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 vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place 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.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

Join us today to send a voice to Washington who has stood with mothers who prefer peace over militarism, to help end the cycle of corrupt weapons contracting that continues to drive conflict around the world!

I am often driven to consider the families left behind in the wake of Washington's bombs.

It's those mothers, from Laos to Yemen, and from Nicaragua to Afghanistan—and their counterparts who our country's corporate weapons drove to early graves—who I remember on Mothers Day.

That's why this isn't a day I particularly think of as "happy."

Thankfully, my mother died peacefully from natural causes. She had access to medical care throughout the illness that eventually took her from us in 2016. I held her hand in the moments that she left us, and feel as close to her now as I did when she was alive. My memories of her are generally joyful.

But she didn't raise me to think only of myself, or of her.

Too many today have been forced to mourn either their mothers, or their children, or others in their family denied the basic right to healthcare, or subjected to predatory policing, or sacrificed in a war for Wall Street.

Too many more are poised to mourn in the future if we don't force change on Washington now.

Can you join us today to finally help bring the cycle of misery and destruction to an end? We'd rather spend the $33 billion Congress is currently considering for weapons on ending homelessness and child poverty instead.

It's tough to think of mothers today, in 2022, without considering the women across the U.S. living in fear of being forced to bring unwanted pregnancies to term should the Supreme Court ultimately issue a majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization aligned with the one that was recently leaked.

This is a frustrating moment for many reasons, not the least of which is that Democrats could have stopped this from happening in any number of ways. Pelosi could have passed a bill to codify Roe when Democrats held both the Senate and the House, but she chose other priorities. She could have at least delayed the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but she chose instead to defer, while Sen. Dianne Feinstein outrageously described her confirmation hearings as among the proudest moments of her career!

We need not accept congressional complicity. I first suggested last week in an interview with Katie Halper, and explored again with Mutiny Radio yesterday, a strategy for blue states to escalate resistance to the Supreme Court’s demagoguery and force the Court to reconsider its reactionary assault on fundamental rights.

When North Carolina passed a bill in 2016 to marginalize trans community members by restricting their access to public restrooms assigned to their chosen gender, allies elsewhere responded by passing boycotts. Artists refused to perform. Corporations relocated their conferences. North Carolina paid an economic price for choosing to discriminate, and ultimately stepped back from its previous stance within a year.

If blue states pass boycott bills pledging to prohibit public spending within states that deny women’s rights, the economic impacts of the 2016 boycotts targeting North Carolina would pale by comparison. If California leads, other states would likely follow. That strategy would threaten interstate commerce and capital, which are the only things to which Washington shows any loyalty.

Can you support our campaign today? With less than a month before the jungle primary on June 7 to replace a conservative Democrat complicit in the rise of the right wing, your support could not come at a more crucial time.

I’m eager to serve in Washington as a representative of San Francisco, and the visionary values that once inspired our city to lead the progressive movement. But even without a seat in Congress, I've built a long history of building grassroots action opportunities to hold institutional power accountable.

I wish that history were less relevant today, and hope that your celebration of mothers can include a reflection on the concerns that have united so many of them for so long across so many countries.

Your voice,
Shahid