Happy Mothers Day to All Incarcerated Mothers Repeal Hyde Art Project
Illustration courtesy Repeal Hyde Art Projection, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike iv.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA four.0)
This coming Sunday marks Mother's Twenty-four hours, a holiday with roots in the mail service-Civil War burgeoning feminist and pacifist movements in the U.S. In its modern incarnation, Mother's Day has become a more commercial observance, something more near brunch and flowers and treacly cards. (Though this yr, some are choosing to march on the Mall in Washington.) The question I find myself pondering today is this: If, as a land, we claim to honor mothers, why do we care for them then poorly?
If the U.S. loves mothers, why are fully 80% of women in prison mothers? Why is that number growing? Why, when pregnant people give birth while incarcerated, are they frequently, inhumanely forced to do and so in shackles?
Equally a taxpayer, I'chiliad wondering why my money is going to pay private contractors to detain immigrant mothers and their children for profit, spending over $2 billion a year to tear apart hundreds of thousands of families across the state and conduct them to the countries they fled because of gang violence? Why is Clearing and Community Enforcement immune to conduct warrantless, dragnet raids on immigrant mothers' homes, and betoken guns in their children's faces? How tin can our nation permit states similar Texas allocate immigrant detention centers as child care facilities?
How well do nosotros really laurels motherhood when we don't allow mothers to even touch their incarcerated children during the express visitation they're allotted? When we don't ensure that they're able to bathe their children in make clean, unpoisoned water, and so threaten them with foreclosure when they neglect to pay that toxic h2o bill? When politicians vilify those mothers who enroll in state or federal aid, and hypocritically label working mothers as sex offenders and throw them in jail for the crime of earning money to support themselves and their families?
Why, in 2017, are pregnant people forced to choose between their health and their jobs, thanks to the meager patchwork of workplace accommodations that exists from country to land? Why are politicians working overtime to forestall anyone with a uterus from accessing evidence-based, full-spectrum reproductive wellness care, unfettered by conservative ideologies and bad scientific discipline? Why is in that location nonetheless a doctrine that requires poor people to scramble to access the care that wealthier people accept for granted, cheers to the Hyde Amendment? For those who brand an adoption plan, is a choice made in the absence of other options a real, authentic choice?
Why does the likelihood of dying in childbirth or due to pregnancy-related causes continue to climb in the U.S., in this so-called pro-life country that claims to love mothers so much?
How much longer until we can truly gloat pregnancy without policing the bodies of Black and brown meaning people? How long until we stop stigmatizing parenting teens? When will nosotros no longer judge someone'south fitness to parent based on their concrete abilities?
How almost the fact that the very deed of having a babe in the U.S is deemed a luxury? (A luxury that will cost 425% more under Trumpcare.)
What can I practise to absolve for the Puerto Rican mothers whose bodies were used, without their consent, to make birth command more pleasant to employ for white women like me? Can I utter "never once again" when I read well-nigh the so-called "unfit" who were routinely sterilized in this country only 40 years agone? Especially when it did happen again, v years ago, in California's prisons?
On a solar day similar Mother'southward Day, what can I say to the mothers who take lost a kid due to police violence? Mothers like Constance Malcolm and Gwen Carr and Hawa Bah? Tin I begin to imagine the absenteeism this twenty-four hours marks for them? What about mothers like Marissa Alexander, who defend themselves and their children and are punished for information technology? Is it possible to know what Mother'south Day is like for Bresha Meadows' mother, Brandi?
What does this twenty-four hours hateful for those who are nontraditional mamas to many? To those genderqueer and femme parents? What 24-hour interval on the calendar is designated to celebrate our chosen families?
And what about the unacknowledged labor (both physical and emotional) that mothers and femmes perform in radical spaces and social justice movements? How can I thank them?
As I ruminate, I realize the answer to these questions all point toward another question: What concrete steps tin I take today to make Mother's Twenty-four hours a better day for those who are suffering under state-sanctioned violence?
Here is what I pledge to do today, and invite yous to exercise equally well:
1) Donate correct now to Mama's Bond Out Day, which aims to get equally many mothers out of jail equally possible before Mother's 24-hour interval this Sun.
2) Give generously to the Reunification Ride Buses that take children to visit their incarcerated mothers.
3) Support organizations like Mothering Justice in Michigan, a statewide project dedicated to returning decision making power to the ones affected by these decisions the most, and SisterSong, whose mission is to strengthen and amplify the collective voices of indigenous women and women of color to achieve reproductive justice past eradicating reproductive oppression and securing human rights.
iv) Send a Mama'southward Day card to all my favorite mamas, and award the love and sacrifice of immigrant and Muslim mamas -- and let them know they're welcome here.
v) Go along, always, to RESIST.
Note: Activist Mama teaser analogy courtesy of Forward Together
Source: https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2017/05/12/questions-ask-mother-s-day