Women & the Vote

This popped up in my email the other day and I thought I'd share it with you. Even if you're like me and have to write someone in because you can't vote for anyone on the ballot, I still firmly believe in voting.

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they
lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted
the right to go to the polls and vote. 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--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 independent party - remember to vote.

History is being made.