Columnist, Richard (RJ) Eskow wrote a humorously helpful article at Huffington Poat honoring his mother’s wish not to send her a card on Mothers’ Day. She, like me, thinks it’s a “phony holiday designed to boost profits for Hallmark Cards.”. So if your mom is like me and RJ’s mom, here are his helpful suggestions that every Mom will love you for:
1. Tell our leaders to stop talking about budget cuts.
I don’t know about you, but my mother and father always told me: If you do something stupid and bad things happen, don’t do it again. It aggravates many of America’s mothers when this advice isn’t followed. [..]
Mother wouldn’t like that. So write them and tell them you want them to stop.
2. Demand that Congress repeal the sequester.
The sequester is a remarkably stupid policy, even by today’s degraded standards. It has already cost the country a lot of lost jobs, and has shrunk the economy at a time when government should be investing in its growth. [..]
Congress needs to repeal this numbskull grab-bag of destructive cuts and invest in growth instead. The President needs to stop using “I’ve got a smarter austerity plan” argument and start arguing forcefully for jobs and growth. If he refuses, other Democrats need to step up to the plate as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a handful of others have done. [..]
You can go here to drop a Mom-centric message to Congress: Repeal the nitwit sequester once and for all.
3. Demand more education funding, rather than less.
Mothers and fathers also care about their children’s education, and funds for education are being slashed. We need to hire more teachers, stop trying to siphon education money off to private corporations, provide our schools with adequate supplies, and rebuild the ones that are in bad shape. [..]
4. Insist that Congress create jobs — for the young, for our crumbling infrastructure, for the future.
Those crumbling schools need workers to rebuild them. So do our crumbling roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. [..]
5. Tell Congress not to pass the president’s destructive Social Security cut. (It’s also a tax hike.)
The most cynical con in this country is the idea that cutting Social Security cost-of-living adjustments — through the president’s proposed “chained CPI” — is being done to protect “the younger generations” from “greedy geezers.” [..]
And that’s no way to talk to your mother.
6. Support the fast food and retail workers’ strike.
Low-wage workers went on strike last week in New York, and the walkout is spreading like wildfire: first to New York, then Chicago, then to St. Louis, and now to Detroit. Terrance Heath has a good write-up on working conditions in Detroit. [..]
7. Contact Congress and demand they raise the minimum wage.
The minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation, depriving generations of Americans of a decent life. If it had kept pace with inflation, it would be more than $16 per hour by now. [..]
You can go here to sign a petition demanding an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.
RJ finishes the piece with reminder of how this day to honor our mother’s began and it’s true meaning:
Postscript: Mother’s Work Day
Julia Ward Howe, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was the one who first popularized the idea of Mother’s Day. She got the idea from Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian housewife who organized “Mother’s Work Days” to provide sanitary conditions for troops on both sides of the Civil War. Jarvis went on to promote worker health and safety issues, as well as reconciliation between Northern and Southern soldiers.
There’s a different kind of Civil War being waged today. It’s a Class War, and the wealthy are waging it on the rest of us. As we’ve said before, the class war is a war on women. It’s time to take action against this economic assault on all women, including the Mothers of America. What better day to rededicate ourselves to that struggle than Mother’s Day?
So tell your family, friends and neighbors to pressure our elected officials to do the right thing for our mothers. And as RJ said, when you call your representatives, “tell ’em your Mother sent you.”
Yeah, really make my day.
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