Mothers have always been political. Mother’s Day began as a movement rooted in collective action against war, nurturing the future and teaching the revolution. In the 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation for Peace, abolitionist and feminist Julia Howe pleads “Arise, then, women of this day! … From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says “Disarm, Disarm!”
This Mother’s Day, we honor the mother behind
@theslowfactory and
@everything_political , Author of
@awomanisaschool a mother of ideas, education, change, and collective action. It begins with how we educate ourselves, each other, and our children.
She asks: How do you talk to your children about war?
As a child refugee and war survivor, still surviving, Céline Semaan has dedicated her work to creative resistance and systems change for collective liberation. She connects the dots across difficult truths, insisting on our shared humanity and our responsibility to care for both people and the more-than-human world.
In the words of Toni Morrison: Art is dangerous. She reminds us that art is a “bloody” endeavor, it tells the truth, disrupts, and threatens those who seek control or deception.
Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers making dangerous art, educating the next generation, transforming their communities, healing one another, mothering their neighbors, and nurturing movements for change. To those feeding their communities with ideas and nourishment, planting seeds, both literal and metaphorical.
To the mothers who are healing and dismantling what must be undone, all at once.
Mother’s Day is a celebration of a simple truth: without mothers, none of us would be here.
Photographs by Alizayuh Vigil
@alizayuh ❤️
Dress by
@vanina_world (Made in Lebanon)
Hair jewelry by
@tala.barbotinkhalidy 
