A Grim Reminder/Why Women (and Men) Should Vote

[Judy Harder]

   I have pictures to go along with this.....but, I still don't know how to download them on this forum, so I will email this to Teresa and maybe she will add them to this important message.

A reminder to all of us who have the freedom to do what these women did not.......



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 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, 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--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, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The 
right  to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over  again.'

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 Bunco 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 democratic,   republican  or inpendent party - remember to vote.

History is being  made.
 

[pam]

 

[Teresa]

Got the pictures on and you are so right.. We as women should exercise every right we have..and fight to keep them.

Teresa( the Political Junkie) 

[frawin]

Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat, think about that ladies

[Judy Harder]

Frank,

I still am not sure it is a PARTY ISSUE.........I really think it is RIGHTS and altho I am a registered Democrat.....I do find myself
voting the MAN/WOMAN......and have found that I lean towards Republican.............

Politics is just a very nasty and dirty word as far as I am concerned....and a necessary EVIL.

Too bad we have to learn the hard way and ALMOST LOSE our humanness..................but, I have so much faith in the PEOPLE to do what is RIGHT..........that I just know we will (GIT ER DONE!!) as we Red-necks say..............I just hope that after
the fur flies...............and it is over, we all can look back and be proud of all we have done/not done to AMERICA.

[frawin]

Judy, I agree with what you say. I was only kidding about Woodrow Wilson, although he was in actual fact a Democrat, he didn't have total say over the voting rights issue. I wonder what it was like for the men and for that matter the women that were married to each other and the man was against woman voting. I am guessing they spent some bad nights together. It is difficult to comprehend that less than 100 years ago women did not have the right to vote, can you imagine telling Teresa or Sarah Palin they couldn't vote. That was a good post and very informative. THANKS

[Teresa]

Frank... try telling me I can't do anything ...and see where it gets ya..