Code Pink in the Bay Area will hold a Mother's Day protest on Saturday, May 7th. They will gather at 1pm at CBS-5's offices on Battery Street at Broadway in San Francisco. The will march through "San Francisco's media block" and end at the U.S. Military Recruiting Office on 670 Davis Street. They say, "Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women and men who had lost their sons. Today, we are seeing the carnage of the war in Iraq and watching family and friends lose their loved ones. Reclaim Mother's Day as an anti-war day." There will be events in other cities such as Menlo Park this weekend, as well. Raging Grannies and others will gather on Sunday, May 8th at 11am at the Menlo Park Farmer's Market to sing anti-war and counter military recruiting ditties, and watch a Julia Ward Howe re-enactor recite the original Mother's Day Proclamation. More details

CodePink says, "It is with our Mothers’ pride and fierce determination to end all war, that we will convene a “Congress of Women without limit of nationality” on May 8th, Mother’s Day: All we want for Mother's Day is our troops home from Iraq now. We will also begin the call to Governor Schwarzenegger and our State Legislators to bring our California National Guard home from Iraq by Labor Day, 2005." Mothers and others will gather on Sunday, May 8th, from 4pm to 6pm at the Vietnam War Memorial on the capitol grounds in Sacramento. They will hold a General Congress of Women without limit to nationality to "reclaim the origins of Mother's Day and to begin calling our National Guard home from Iraq."

Mothers, Daughters, and Grandmothers from CodePink, Gold Star Families for Peace, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Grandmothers for Peace, and many others have come together to embrace the message written by the original mother’s day founder, Julia Ward Howe, in 1870: "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 women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

Read more about the Mother's Day Call for Peace