[Dialogue] poem

[Charles or Doris Hahn]

The more things change, the more they are the same.
Doris Hahn

Arise, then, women of this Day!
Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism
be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly:  "We will not have great questions decided
by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with
carnage, for caresses and applause.
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 women of one country will be too tender of those of
another country to allow our sons to be trained to
injure theirs."
>From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up
with our own.
It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate
possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at
the summons of war, let women now leave all that may
be left of home for a great and earnest day of
counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and
commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as
the means whereby the great human family can live in
peace,
And each bearing after her own time the sacred
impress, not of Ceasar, but of God.
-Julia Ward Howe, 1870
 
Distributed by Atlanta WAND, the local chapter of
Women'a Action for New Directions, a national
organization which seeks to channel womens voices into
a powerful movement for change