WHY 
WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our grandmothers and 
great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were 
granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The 
women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for 
picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the right to vote. 


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.' 


(Lucy 
Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her 
head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for 
air.




(Dora Lewis) 

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.




(Alice Paul) 

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. 
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf


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, a friend went 
to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's newmovie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a 
graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that we women could pull 
the curtain at the polling booth and have our say. Maybe some of us needed this 
reminder.



HBO released the movie 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 Bridge 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, if you are so inclined, 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. Whether you vote Democrat, 
Republican, or Independent Party - remember to vote.

History is being 
made.