If we’re going to remember women in this region, let’s start with Mother Jones, She gathered the wives and daughters of miners and marched them over Coaldale mountain, carrying buckets and brushes — as if they were going to clean, to warn their husbands that mine owners had plans to bust any unionizing.* Her story starts as so many women’s do, after losing everything (her husband and four children to yellow fever in 1867 and her dressmaking business in 1871 to the Great Chicago Fire), there was nothing left for her to do but change the world. Unlike many women of her era, she was not concerned with women’s suffrage, her motto was, “you don’t need the vote to fight like hell.” (Maybe not, but it certainly makes it a lot easier, as does equal access to education, work, pay, and healthcare!)

Mother Jones was an Irish-born American who became a union organizer, a community organizer and an activist. She helped coordinate major strikes, secure bans on child labor, and co-founded the International Workers of the World (IWW).

“Her memory evokes the great American tradition of protest. It reminds us that passion still matters, and that a well-crafted symbol can offer inspiration, emboldening us in a world where the possibility of meaningful change sometimes seems beyond our reach.”**

Certainly, protest and defense are meaningful work that women contribute to life. But as the old protest song goes, “Give us bread, but we want roses too.” Each person contributes to life. Women offer their own particular gifts which too often go unrecognized. Women create, hold, nurture and protect life, in addition to attending to the many things that get us through the day. The heart that offers these loving actions is what yearns for roses — roses nurtured outside a modest home, roses growing wild around a fence, roses offered from one exuberant heart to another. 

Millenia of women’s going about their work with a baby on their hip have found that these sweet burdens color their expectations of what a good life is: one that provides sustenance for every child; healing for the hurts and imbalances; and encouragement, resources, and tools to achieve dreams. Not every woman seeks to be a mother, but every woman is shaped by a mother’s dreams. If her own mother’s dreams were too limiting, she often sought a new model, who dreamed more boldly, and taught her to dare to lay a path for meaningful change.

Unnamed women have made contributions in every field. It’s been exciting to see their work uncovered. Sometimes credit for that work was subsumed under a husband’s or male boss’s name. Times continue to change. Now more than ever, women are changing not simply domestic life, but daily life, in every sphere. March is set apart for those celebrations!

Sadly, however, women are still the target of underestimations, prejudices, dismissals, under-remuneration, and flat-out violence. Women’s rights to our bodies, our right to our truths, our right to our achievements are still held back. Together we can change that narrative to one of Peace and Equality.

In this region there are the most incredible young women coming along, proposing new ways of managing century old problems. They are visionaries with great implementation skills! Food, furniture, housing, transportation, they’re working on it. Someone once asked me, if I minded seeing these women’s showing up, suggesting new things, spreading out the possibilities. I know as an aging activist and dreamer, that when I look in a rearview mirror, and see them charging up behind, I’m happy to pull over, let them pass and take the lead on social change! 

Mother Jones said “Pray for the dead and work like hell for the living.” Your Peacemaker would say that differently “Honor the departed, cherish the living, and work together for Peace.”Nothing could honor the women in our lives more.

Ann Keeler Evans, The Priestess and Peacemaker is in! Find me at https://annkeelerevans.org and sign up for my daily musing.

*Thank you, Wikipedia 

**motherjones.com