Women--continue to history today. VOTE

First Tuesday of November...Election day. For a long time women did not need to concern themselves with this day because we did not have the right to participate. Numerous women fought to the death to give our gender this equal opportunity. Until my own mother sent me this information in an email I was unaware that the following was what some of our foremothers went through for my generation. Read up...then, head out to the polls ladies!

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.'   

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.   

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. 

                              Continue reading after the jump...

 

 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 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.

 

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  independent party - remember to vote this  November.

 

   

History  is  being  made.