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/
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.