Nashville to Reclaim Mother's Day.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Paige La Grone Babcock, paige@mothersactingup.org, 615-495-1879

Reclaiming Mother’s Day: UNITING OUR COMMUNITY FOR OUR GLOBAL FAMILY
Grassroots Movement Mobilizes Mothers* To Move From Concern To Action

(Nashville, April 30, 2008) Nashville’s Mothers Acting Up community announces Nashville’s 3rd Annual Mother’s Day Peace Parade. Mothers Acting Up (MAU) is a mother-led, mother fed grassroots movement of mothers (and others) publicly and passionately advocating for the world’s children, beginning right here at home.

The MAU hosted Peace Parade & Reclamation Celebration will take place on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 11 from 2-4 PM at Fannie Mae Dees (Dragon) Park. Stroller and wagon decorating and sign making (supplies provided!) begin at 1:30 PM. As in previous years, gaily dressed, apron-wearing participants will utilize the sidewalk to parade — on and by foot, wagon, stroller, tricycle, wheelchair and stilts!! — from Dragon Park (at 2400 Blakemore Ave.) down Blakemore, through the heart of Hillsboro Village, and back up Belcourt, ending at the Park where there will be family friendly activities, music provided by the Contrarians Ensemble, refreshments and FREE CAKE.

Nashville’s MAU community has been going strong for two years with regularly occurring play and action groups, potluck social and salons, and congressional visits with babes and children in tow. As its proudest community achievement, the local group of mothers* successfully led the call to fully reinstate 2007’s severe proposed budgetary cuts to the Nashville Public Library, a fate that would have diminished much of our city’s finest family offerings by way of the main branch’s stellar children’s programming.

Around the world, mothers and others are uniting into a gigantic, educated, noisy and powerful lobby to reclaim the original peaceful purpose of Mothers' Day and mobilize for the wellbeing of all children all year long. Nashville Mothers Acting Up invites you to be part of this exuberant revolution.

Reclaiming Mother’s Day events are inspired by the life, words and actions of Julia Ward Howe. In 1870 she wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation and called for a day when the world would honor what mothers hold most dear: the lives of our children, of all children. The events celebrate the vision that Julia spoke of 100 years ago: mothers everywhere rising up together around that which unites us rather than divides us — our global family.

Known and beloved to many in greater Nashville, Sherry Knott -- mother, active Scottsboro / Bells Bend community member, and Director of Abintra Montessori School -- will be honored by Nashville MAU and presented with the 2008 Julia Ward Howe Award at the Mother’s Day Parade. Join with us in celebrating exemplary mother leadership right here in our home city!!

Arise!! Our Mother’s Day collective action piece sees Nashville MAU affirming the need for protected greenspace over development of a mini-city in the Bells Bend community, preserving this local piece of Mother Earth for the children of both today, and tomorrow! Families of ALL kinds and in all stages welcome. Free raffle tickets with fantastic prizes for all attending mothers. Folks are invited to pack a picnic to come early, and stay late. Costumes, festive hats, stilts, hula hoops, skates, and trikes highly encouraged!

When mothers lead, generations follow!

For more information about the celebration, contact: Paige La Grone Babcock, paige@mothersactingup.org, 615-495-1879 or Kate Wingate, kzwingate@gmail.com, or visit www.nashvillemau.blogspot.com

About Mothers Acting Up: Mothers Acting Up exists to inspire and mobilize mothers* to advocate on behalf of the world’s children. MAU was founded in Boulder, CO. www.mothersactingup.org

* mothers and others, on stilts or off, who exercise protective care over someone smaller

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