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Opinion
Want to Help Mothers This Mother's Day? Back a Guaranteed Income
If we are serious about supporting families, then we need to stop romanticizing hardship and start investing in mothers in real, tangible ways.
May 10, 2026
Happy Mother’s Day—because that’s what you’re supposed to say, right?
Motherhood is always dressed up in soft language like community, support, and…“it takes a village.” But I have learned in real time that not all of us actually have one.
I am raising my sons without consistent help, without a built-in break, without the kind of support people assume is just there. Everything falls on me emotionally, financially, and physically, and I still have to show up every single day like I am not carrying all of it alone. And when I do pull back, when I protect my energy or go quiet, it is not because I am distant. It is because I am overwhelmed.
There is this unspoken expectation that mothers, especially single mothers, are just supposed to figure it out, hold it together, and do it gracefully. But the truth is, a lot of us are doing the work of an entire village by ourselves, and nobody wants to say that part out loud.
In Baltimore's guaranteed income pilot, of which I was a part, data shows that I'm not alone: Young parents reported less stress and more stability, and those improvements lasted even after the payments stopped.
And this is where the conversation needs to shift, because how I feel about motherhood and how motherhood is structured in this country are two very different things.
I love being a mother. My children are everything to me. They are the reason I keep going when I am tired, when I am stretched thin, when I feel like there is nothing left to give. But love does not remove the weight. It does not pay bills. It does not create time, energy, or support where there is none. Loving my children deeply does not make the system around me any less difficult to navigate.
When people talk about motherhood like it is just a personal experience, like it begins and ends with love and sacrifice, they miss something critical.
Because motherhood is also structural. It is economic. It is shaped by whether or not you have resources, support, and stability. And when those things are missing, love alone is not enough to carry the load.
That is exactly why I stand behind guaranteed income strongly.
Because when there is no village, money becomes the closest thing to stability, something that's within our control.
It is about investing in the people who hold families together.
It is about acknowledging reality.
Caregiving is labor. Raising children is labor. Holding a household together on your own is labor.
Guaranteed income gives mothers breathing room. It gives us the ability to make decisions from a place of stability instead of survival.
It means not having to choose between rest and responsibility, between being present with our children or being consumed by stress.
In Baltimore's guaranteed income pilot, of which I was a part, data shows that I'm not alone: Young parents reported less stress and more stability, and those improvements lasted even after the payments stopped.
Right now, too many mothers are forced into impossible trade-offs. Work more and lose time with your kids. Stay present and fall behind financially. Ask for help and risk being judged. Stay silent and carry it alone. These are not personal failures. These are policy failures.
People love to celebrate strong mothers, but strength should not have to come from constant struggle. Strength should not be built on exhaustion. And survival should not be the standard we measure good parenting by.
If we are serious about supporting families, then we need to stop romanticizing hardship and start investing in mothers in real, tangible ways. Guaranteed income is one of those ways. It is not a cure-all, but it is a foundation. It is a recognition that mothers should not have to break themselves just to keep their households afloat.
Because the truth is, many of us are not asking for a village anymore…
We are building without one.
We are showing up every day, making a way out of no way, holding everything together with very little support and even less margin for error.
And still, we keep going.
So yes—Happy Mother’s Day.
Not the polished version. Not the performative one. But the real one.
Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers who carry what no one sees, who love without limit, who build without a village, and who keep showing up anyway. You are not invisible. You are powerful. And you are worthy of more than survival.
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Humanity's Journey to Peace: From a Chicago Lunchroom to the World Stage
When we listen to and empathize with our “enemy,” we can start seeing beyond the moment and working to create a world that works for everyone. We can only evolve together.
May 10, 2026
Yes, I’m still trying to write a book. Meanwhile, horrific wars rage and the outrage I feel quietly morphs into helplessness and then, after a while, shame. I believe, in some deep place inside me, that we can move beyond this. I know we can.
I also believe I have a role to play, as a writer, to help push our collective awareness beyond a public shrug over the cost and consequences of militarism: our trillion-dollar-plus military budget and ho-hum acceptance of the “collateral damage” that budget inevitably winds up creating... over there somewhere. This is simply assumed to be the nature of power. You know, dominance. It’s how we stay safe.
What I want to cry out is that this is fake power. It’s a trap. It keeps us in hell. Connection and creative conflict resolution are a different form of power. When we listen to and empathize with our “enemy,” we can start seeing beyond the moment and working to create a world that works for everyone. We can only evolve together.
I say these words humbly, quietly. In no way am I suggesting that anything about such a process is simple. But it can only begin if we believe it’s possible, and then find the collective courage to begin the journey... together.
When emotions are uncontrolled—when they are uncontrolled and armed—the fragmentary nonsense has lethal potential.
So I open up the soul of my book and tell a story: a story about Restorative Justice, which I have written about a great deal. People sit together in what is called a peace circle, sometimes to discuss a harm that has been done, a wrong that has occurred. All sides in the matter are part of the circle; they sit in vibrant equality. A talking piece is passed around. When you hold it, you speak; otherwise, you listen. Often the words go deep. People tell difficult truths.
The following story is that of Robert Spicer, who at the time was the culture and climate coordinator at Chicago’s Fenger High School. To put it more simply, he was the peace guy. He had a peace room. He trained students in conflict resolution. He brought Restorative Justice to Fenger.
One day, as students were eating breakfast in the cafeteria, waiting for the first bell to ring, two boys were standing together and suddenly ignited the volatility in the room—the volatility present at every struggling school in a low-income neighborhood. They tried out a new handshake.
Amid the talk and laughter, Spicer explained: “Another student noticed them doing their handshake and began to question them about what they were doing. Feeling disrespected, the students started to have words and then other students gathered around to see what was going on.”
And suddenly, the first two boys, he explained, “postured themselves to fight.”
But Fenger was a high school that knew about something beyond fighting—beyond the unleashing of righteous anger, the subduing of an enemy. Fenger, like other schools that have opened their doors to Restorative Justice, had peace ambassadors roaming their hallways. These are young people trained in restorative practices, like listening, like keeping calm, like refusing to surrender to the inevitability of hatred. Sometimes they were called peer jurors: students who help run conflict-resolution circles, circles that address disputes and attempt to undo—that is, heal—harm that has been done.
And there were peace ambassadors in the cafeteria that morning.
“As I was preparing for my day, some of my peer jurors who were in the lunch room approached me and told me about the situation and who was involved. One of my peer jurors said, ‘You’re going to have a big peace circle today. Let me know if you need my help.’ Quite frankly, because this situation happened in the lunchroom, I knew that all of the eight male students involved were not going to end up in my office but be sent home on a suspension. But was I in for a surprise that day!”
Both the dean and the principal had interviewed the boys and, oh changing world, decided they needed to sit in a peace circle with one another. The Chicago Public School System, like most American school systems, is primarily ensconced in punishment-based discipline, but this is changing.
Eight boys, along with the dean and the principal, entered the Spicer peace room and sat with one another. They passed the talking piece around the circle. As each one talked, an awareness filled the room: This was a big misunderstanding, nothing more. Some of the boys talked about other issues they were dealing with, complicating their day and their behavior. People got it.
“After the closing ceremony,” Spicer wrote, “each of the students shook hands and even hugged each other as they were preparing to leave my office. They did this without any adults prompting them to do this, which showed their sincerity. Once we concluded the circle, the adults decided to allow them to blow off some steam and play basketball. And the students who were the main ones in conflict were on the same team. They played for about 25 minutes and afterwards were sent to class skipping and excited about the school day.”
And so it begins. Kids talk, a community that hadn’t existed—a sense of commonality and understanding among a group of tough guys at a Chicago high school—emerges. Punishment morphs into basketball, into joy, into healing. This is not a simple process, but—cynics, beware—it’s possible; it happens, in schools and elsewhere. An awareness is slowly shifting.
Sometimes it’s a matter of life or death. When emotions are uncontrolled—when they are uncontrolled and armed—the fragmentary nonsense has lethal potential. This is the case in so many broken communities, around the country, across the planet.
How can we transcend war? For those planning for peace, Restorative Justice is a gold nugget.
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Pivot to Peace This Mother's Day
Let us be as committed to peace as the war mongers are to war; they all do it for transaction and money—together let us build a future that serves life with love.
May 10, 2026
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe penned her “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” calling for peace. Her words still ring with truth, calling us not to raise our children to kill another mother’s child but rather to gather together to “promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” She wrote this following the ravages and violence of the Civil War, a war like the wars today waged for the needs of the rich. Now the War Economy has consolidated in the hands of the rich to a level never seen in history.
We live deep inside the War Economy—the extractive, destructive, oppressive economy founded upon greedy capitalism and imperialism. With the years-old genocide in Gaza ongoing, the continued dehumanizing blockade of Cuba, and the inhumane and strategically disastrous war on Iran all coinciding, we see how war serves the War Economy. Proof of this violence is served up, ubiquitous and relentless, via our phones, those devices we hold so near and dear to us. The War Economy has mesmerized us into participating in its cynical lullaby: We accept domination, dehumanization, demoralization, cynicism, and apathy as normal and natural, allowing War Economy thinking to pervade everyday interactions with our families, communities, and even our relationship to ourselves. The War Economy knows that, individually, we have little power to stop it. Convincing us that we are alone and powerless is its greatest trick.
These, however, are lies. We know this intuitively. We can understand that the War Economy is trying to lull us into a fugue of forgetfulness of our own nature. How do we remember what care and connection feel like? How can we begin to practice something other than the addictions the war economy forces on us? What experiences that we perceive as normal and natural are just internalized War Economy thinking and behaviors?
The Peace Economy is how humans have survived for millennia; it is how we have served each other and the world since humanity began tens of thousands of years ago. It is how people across the ages and the globe have learned to survive and thrive through the experience of community, collaboration, and connection. It is showing up for the needs of each other with generous and caring hearts. It is the giving, sharing, caring, thriving, relational, resilient economy that serves all life on this planet. Whether we know it or not, it is fundamental to serving life and cultivating peace. We can’t end war until we end the War Economy, so we who desire peace must create a future built on the habits of peace.
What can you choose to practice this week, right where you live? How might you care for others the way a mother might care for her child?
The Peace Economy is rooted in maternal care. When we are born, most of us experience love and connection effortlessly. We are provided for without the need for transactional thinking and relationships. The War Economy lies to us and says we can find love and connection through the purchase of things and transactional relationships. An insidious lie.
Think about it. How do you experience connection and care in your life? How do you experience joy and creativity? How do you play? How do you give of yourself to others and to things that matter to you? When you disconnect from phones and computers and walk out into the more-than-human world, how do you relate to what surrounds and sustains you? None of those things has a purchase price. They are freely given, like a mother’s love.
The War Economy forces addictions on us to survive its abusive thrall. We can break those addictions just by practicing habits of peace and walking through life with the care and connection of a mother’s love. Habits of peace, which we like to call “Pivots to Peace,” build muscles that will help us thrive and participate in the creation of a more beautiful future. It is a way to “mother” the world. A pivot is a commitment you can make on this Mother’s Day, a day hijacked by the War Economy to be one of consumption. Let us be as committed to peace as the war mongers are to war; they all do it for transaction and money—together let us build a future that serves life with love.
Here are some Pivots to Peace.
- Pivot from Transactional Relationships to Relational Connections: Our relationships are what keep us alive and thriving. One of the ways our War Economy has isolated us from each other is by turning our relationships into transactions. Transactions do not support life and relationships. Instead, transactional interaction steals what nourishes you and your community. Because our culture is based on transactions, this pivot can be especially challenging. It will require some self-honesty to witness what drives you. This will take a lifetime of practice, and the reward is life itself. How might you decrease transactionality in your everyday interactions with your family, friends, and neighbors?
- Pivot from Feelings of Scarcity to Abundance: The War Economy takes those things that were once free—food, water, land, entertainment, etc.—and monetizes them, forcing us to experience them as scarce. The War Economy also forces us to think we need an excess of things that are not essential to life; these things don’t really bring us true joy and pleasure, but rather distract us. How do you experience scarcity in your life? What feels out of reach to you? Which of your needs are unmet? What always feels out of your reach, and how does that make you feel? Ideas to pivot to abundance: Start with defining what is “enough.” What is it that you really need? What do you already have? What can you share with others who have less than you? Give something away every day this week—not as a transaction but as a way of relating.
- Pivot from Self-Oriented to Community-Engaged: It’s easy to see why we’re all alienated from each other when we live in a society that emphasizes individual achievement and self-directed actions over community care and engagement with those around us. What if our culture valued community care and engagement with those around you as the highest virtue? What are some ways you retreat into self-directed actions and individual achievement? Reflect on what nourishes you when you are community-engaged. Take some opportunities to see those who are caring for and creating your community—the teachers, healers, caretakers, nurses, essential workers, gardeners, etc., who enrich all of our lives. Thank them.
- Pivot from Reactionary to Investigative: In the War Economy, the corporate elites and warmongers control the media and the cultural narrative that is so pervasive in our lives. They capture your heart and mind to support their goals of domination and control. Often, they are weaponizing you to serve their goals, maneuvering you into a reactive stance. Mainstream media relies on us becoming reactive so that we will support the agenda of the War Economy. Instead of swallowing what the media is serving up, begin to practice investigating. What stories are seeking a reaction? What stories are investigative and nuanced? Begin to pay attention to who is benefiting. Where do you notice informed journalism that is not serving the War Economy? Notice what changes when you practice investigative and discerning media intake.
- Pivot from “Us vs. Them” to All of Us: Have you noticed that in most movies, the solution to the problem is to kill the villain? From an early age, we are fed the “good guy vs. bad guy” narrative. What are some ways this has permeated your own life and thinking? Where do you hold on to an “us vs. them” attitude? How does this serve your life? Can you transform your idea of separation from “them” into a more complex understanding of how relationships to the larger systems are affecting all of us—instead of placing blame on an individual or particular group of people? The War Economy thrives on divide and conquer, and people are the power if we stay connected.
- Pivot from Consumption to Creativity: The War Economy is fueled by consumption. Through the lifestyle the War Economy creates, we are forced into an addiction to consuming—be that the consumption of material goods, media, entertainment, or something else. Most of the things we consume are not what we need but what we are taught to need. Often, they distance us from joy and pleasure, creating a cycle of dissatisfaction and emptiness. Creativity is usually the way to truly fill the void we are seeking to fill through consumption. We are fulfilled through connections. We are fulfilled when we create avenues for feeling, art, expression, and for life to thrive. How can you create space for creativity in your life?
- Pivot from Limitation to Imagination: Limitation of ourselves is one of the great crimes of the War Economy; it gets us locked into transaction, productivity, and patterns of comfort that sever us from free thinking, creative action, and imagination. The War Economy convinces us that we need to stay narrow to survive, and often, we don’t even realize how narrow our bandwidth for creative thought, wild expression, and imagination has become. Where in your life does your imagination find expression and value? Take time each day to let your mind wander beyond what feels safe or familiar. Gather with your community and discuss what frustrates you. Then start a free flow of ideas that could address the frustrations. The more “out there” the idea, the better. Being in relationship with new pathways and new potential realities is a great way to expand creativity and birth the future.
- Pivot from Restraint to Pleasure: The War Economy shakes in its boots because the things that bring us joy and pleasure are free and abundant—a secret they don’t want us to realize. What would you be doing with your time and energy if you made decisions based on a feeling of deep, erotic yes? Often, the first thing we need to remove to find pleasure is transaction. Where do you experience restraint in your life? How is it imposed on you? By your habits? By self-limiting beliefs? By the culture? What scares you about pleasure? What excites you? Even when we do things we think will give us pleasure, we are sometimes so lost in transaction and productivity that instead we find emptiness and frustration. What were some times, have you sought pleasure and it has been beyond your reach? What were the circumstances? What one thing can you do today that will make you feel joy without having to purchase something?
These are a few of the 23 pivots you can find at peaceeconomy.org. They are offerings to serve you as you take your life away from serving the War Economy and cultivate a future on the foundation of a peace economy. It all starts small and local. Peace-making starts with our circle of influence right around us—in our families and communities—and that is where our personal actions and their impacts are felt and create effect. What can you choose to practice this week, right where you live? How might you care for others the way a mother might care for her child?
What would it look like if peace came alive in your community, connection by connection, family by family, and eroded the grip of the War Economy habits? What if we all remembered the connection and unconditional love given to us as our birthright by our mothers? Remember, we may be just one drop in an ocean of our culture, but oceans are made, drop by drop, little by little, to become the most powerful force in nature. Together, let us be an ocean of peace.
"No matter what you do it will never amount to anything but a single drop in a limitless ocean. What is an ocean but a multitude of drops.”―David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
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Extra! Extra! All the News the Media Won't Print
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
May 09, 2026
Editors of newspapers like to say that they cover the newsworthy events “without fear or favor.” Sure. But how can they cover events without the requisite curiosity, without deeply feeling for the public’s right to know, and without breaking through their “comfort zone”?
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
1. You’ll recall the criminal enterprise, led by felon Elon Musk, in 2025 called “The Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE. Trickster Trump allowed Musk to rampage through one government agency after another. In fact, DOGE ushered in a regime that set records in government waste yet received insufficient media attention. By shuttering, dismantling, or closing programs and whole agencies serving people’s needs—health, safety, and economic support and protections—the Musk-Trump DOGE left crumbling agencies doing little or nothing with hamstrung staff.
There is sprawling corruption and waste inside the government, causing devastating and real waste by not preventing sicknesses and injuries, and forcing consumers deeper into personal debt for necessities such as healthcare, housing, food, and transportation.
With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed.
Since DOGE began to wind down last summer, after Musk exited as a hyper-wealthy fugitive from justice, there have been no thorough investigations by Congress nor by the inspectors general, most of whom President Donald Trump illegally fired very early on in his dictatorial regime.
Not a day goes by without Trump unilaterally wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on his White House ballroom, on further larding runaway Pentagon spending. Wasteful and unnecessary military attacks, and the firing of government auditors, watchdogs, irreplaceable experienced managers, and first responders to disasters all contribute to freezing vital government services.
2. Why has the media not covered the legislative drive in New York’s state legislature to end the 45-year-long rebate of a tiny sales tax on stock transactions? Minimally estimated at $15 billion a year collected and electronically rebated back to the brokers, the bill S01237-A allocates the revenues to mass transit, education, healthcare, and the environment (visit greedvsneed.org for more information on the campaign to pass this legislation). Two years ago, the sponsoring lawmakers led a demonstration before the New York Stock Exchange building. No coverage. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani needs this money for his people-serving programs, yet he has been totally silent about ending the rebate. No reporters are asking him why?
Over the last eight years, I have spoken to seven reporters and two business editors, who say that it is a good story, recently made better by Mamdani not speaking out about this proposal. The journalists said they would get back to me. None have. That’s not indifference from the top; that’s silent censorship! Only the Amsterdam News wrote a long feature on this topic. The rest of the New York City media balked. Shame on The New York Times and the New York City daily newspapers.
3. The vast death undercount in Gaza (over 600,000, not the reported 75,200) is explained away by both the mainstream and independent media. Reporters say they have no reliable estimate of the enormous death toll. Nonsense. Dig in and investigate! Various disaster casualty specialists have estimated deaths at hundreds of thousands resulting directly from Israeli military genocidal violence and indirectly from the related absence of food, water, healthcare, medicine, fuel, and electricity, blocked by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. One expert on bombing casualties, professor emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, calculated that the TNT volume of Israel’s bombs, missiles, and artillery was the equivalent of six or more Hiroshima atomic bombs and more devastating because of today’s precision targeting of this tiny enclave of crowded, defenseless civilians.
What other ethnic group would have its death toll underestimated by nearly 90%? (See my March 28, 2025 column “The Vast Gaza Death Undercount—Undermines Civic, Diplomatic, and Political Pressures” and my February 21, 2025 column “Stop Repeating the Vast Undercount of Gazan Deaths. It Is Ten Times Greater.” Also see “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount” in the August-September 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen.) A more accurate estimate matters morally and intensifies the political, diplomatic, and civic pressure to stop the killing and to compel the Israeli regime to fully allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza to help the starved, sick, and dying in this ravaged land. (See Dr. Feroze Sidhwa’s report, “The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”). The calculating media plays dumb.
4. The Democrats on Capitol Hill have been very willing to oust their colleagues accused of sexual harassment or assault. Pushed out were Congressman John Conyers in 2017, Senator Al Franken in 2018, and Congressman Eric Swalwell in 2026.
Yet when it comes to the far greater order of magnitude of offenses by the craven, sadistic, sexual abuser of women (over 60 women have dared to provide credible experiences of Trump’s abuses, and one woman has won a tort lawsuit against him). Since 2016, the congressional Democrats have largely looked away.
In early 2020, I delivered personally to over 100 Democratic members of Congress, most of them women, a lengthy letter detailing the case for congressional hearings on Trump’s felonious aggressions (See the OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMEN IN CONGRESS, February 24, 2020). I met staff who agreed that some action was necessary, but said it was up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi or that hearings would have little impact on Teflon Trump and be ineffective. Suffice it to say that only two members of Congress formally acknowledged receipt of the letter without comment. The rest ignored the letter, as did several women’s groups known for focusing on sexual harassment and assault against women. No media coverage. No interest at all in this contradiction by reporters. Read the letter; your observations are welcome.
5. With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed. Fast-rising tides could occur were the retired presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even G.W. Bush, to come out of their luxurious lairs and mobilize pressure to impeach Trump. The serious entry into this struggle to save the Republic and the Constitution for which it stands would electrify the mainstream media and the frustrated citizenry. Such an effort could quickly and easily attract the requisite funds needed to mobilize such an effort to every congressional district. Feeling the heat, Democrats in Congress would commence publicizing “shadow hearings” and further splinter the once iron-clad sycophancy for Trump by the GOP, who are terrified by their prospects in November.
Trump himself daily provides more vivid evidence of impeachable offenses. (See, H.Res. 1155). He can’t help himself, believing he can continue to get away with everything he does, no matter how extreme.
We know why there is reluctance by the ex-presidents. They would be assailed by Trump and the Trumpsters. They would be accused of having committed many of the same or similar crimes when they were in the White House. True for G.W. Bush in Iraq and Joe Biden in Gaza, for starters. However, this is an occasion for declared regrets and redemption as they pursue the removal from office of Donald Trump, a dangerously unstable, megalomaniacal tyrant who is perilously wrecking, endangering, and weakening our country. MOREOVER, WITH TRUMP, THE WORSE IS YET TO COME, MUCH WORSE AND SOON.
Do the former presidents want to stay on the sidelines and have their inaction on their conscience for historians to record? The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said wisely: “Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events.”
Why don’t the reporters ask the former presidents the obvious questions? How about some editorials? Or op-eds?
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