An interesting story which appeared in the Huffington Post about a month ago regarding a new campaign that has been started in the United States to have Mother Jones commemorated on a postage stamp in her adopted country.

According to the article by author, playwright and former union activist David Macaray, a group of US labour activists and historians have got together and formed a campaign to put a Mother Jones stamp on millions of letters, postcards and parcels posted in the USA. Macaray argues that if Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne could be featured on postage stamps, then why not Mother Jones?

The campaign is asking people, and particularly US citizens, to write to the US Postal Administration and ask for Mother Jones to be featured on a commemorative stamp in the near future.  It is a call we wholeheartedly endorse at the Cork Mother Jones Commemorative Committee.  

As we’re at it, the same request could be put to the Irish postal authorities (An Post).  They even have an online form where suitable subjects and individuals who people think should be put on commemorative stamps can be suggested.     You can make that submission here.  

There is a precedent for join stamp issues between the US and Ireland.  In the past identical stamps were issued simultaneously in the US and Ireland to mark the 150th anniversary of the Irish Great Famine.   Maybe we can make that a transatlantic campaign to put the head of Mother Jones on postage stamps on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean!