Embodying and Disabling Antiwar Activism: Disrupting YouTube’s “Mother’s Day for Peace”

Abstract

YouTube allows activists to broadcast their missions and engage global audiences. “Mother’s Day for Peace,” a 2007 video, features American actresses who recite Julia Ward Howe’s radical 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation and describe their personal thoughts on mothering. Analyzing this video with transnational rhetoric and disability rhetoric frameworks not only illuminates the persuasive possibilities and drawbacks for the video’s normative feminine gender performance and the spectacle of a war-injured Iraqi girl but also models an approach that prompts rhetoricians to examine larger rhetorical concerns revealed by the intersections of disability, race, gender, and globalization.

Notes

¹ I am greatly indebted to RR peer reviewers Anne Demo, who helped me sharpen my focus, and Jay Dolmage, who both illuminated the broader implications of my analysis and introduced me to Meekosha’s invaluable work. Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson, Maggie LaWare, and Jason Palmeri also provided feedback that benefited my analysis during earlier stages of this project.

² Led by President Robert Greenwald, BNF produces film projects with activist causes, addressing such issues as improving US worker safety, ending petroleum drilling, revealing the power of billionaire Koch brothers, and uncovering US military spending. Greenwald has directed and produced numerous short films with his company Brave New Films, including exposés of Fox News, Walmart, and more. BNF’s activist videos clearly showcase their intention to inspire and create change toward progressive causes.

³ For the description I draw on here, see http://archive.is/0RFII. For NMV’s updated website, see http://www.nomorevictims.org/newsite/about/.

⁴ According to holiday historian Jones, Mother’s Day has facilitated a variety of political and social action. For example, in 1933 President Roosevelt issued a proclamation on Mother’s Day that called attention to mothers and children living in poverty (216), and in 1968 Coretta Scott King led a Mother’s Day march to support poor children and their mothers (217). Regarding peace-related political action, a “Mother’s Peace Day” parade was held in 1938, and decades later in the 1980s, Helen Caldicott founded the Women’s Party for Survival, organized against nuclear arms and proliferation. The Party led demonstrations on Mother’s Day. Most recently, on May 2, 2012, supermodel Christy Turlington’s organization, Every Mother Counts, which focuses on maternal mortality, uploaded the video, “No Mothers Day,” prompting mothers to be silent and “disappear” on Mother’s Day in order to “help raise awareness about the hundreds of thousands of women who die each year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth” (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0w669fZBH8).

⁵ Established in 2002, CodePink (http://www.codepink4peace.org/) identifies itself as a grassroots peace and social justice organization. While not exclusively, its approaches and strategies are women-initiated, women-led, and often based on traditionally feminine tropes such as the color pink.

⁶ Attending to the massive influence of Mother’s Day as a major cultural event in the US is beyond the confines of this article, but I encourage readers to look out for activist events that coincide with the holiday.

⁷ This photograph can be viewed online: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2005018835/.

⁸ Widely available online, the full document can be read at CodePink’s website: http://www.codepinkalert.org/article.php?id=217.

⁹ As of this writing, the site includes broken links and brief information on 2010’s International Women’s Day, another example of a lack of using YouTube’s ability to maintain a presence and further the ongoing discourse regarding Mother’s Day’s potential for antiwar activism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abby M. Dubisar

Abby M. Dubisar is an assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty member in women’s and gender studies at Iowa State University, where she teaches classes on women’s/feminist rhetoric, gender and communication, and popular culture analysis. Her research analyzes the rhetorical strategies of women peace activists in a wide variety of contexts, from archival holdings to YouTube.