A Message for all
women
THIS IS
MOVING. HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET.....IF ....WE EVER KNEW......
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.
![[]](..//WeThePeople/images/FLO3.jpg)
(Lucy
Burns)
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.
(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.
So, refresh my
memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, xactly? 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.