It didn't seem to me this should be on the Politics forum as it's not about a politician, lol. Anyway, it seemed worthy of consideration by all.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I think this makes a very good point that all of us ladies should remember. I am permanently registered as an
absentee voter so that I don't have to worry about when I can make it to the polls.
How Women Got To Vote
A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the
night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and
their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women
wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head
and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They
hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed
and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was
dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the
guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and
kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow
Wilson's White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of
the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a
chair,forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she
vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled
out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why,
exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote
doesn't matter? It's raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie"
Iron Jawed Angels" It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women
waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my
say I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO
movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it,she looked
angry. She was upset with herself.
"One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said.
"What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right
to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women. The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."
HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and
DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would
include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Card night,
too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual
idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should
be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a
psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be
permanently institutionalized.
And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse.
Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men:
"Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
Please pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard
for by these very courageous women.