[Vision2020] FW: Women Who Dared

[B. J. Swanson]

Visionaries,

I thought you might find this interesting.  It was sent to
me by Carole (Helm) Butkus, former LEDC Executive Director
and Pullman Mayor.

B. J. Swanson

--------------------

Women Who Dared
written by Beverly Davies

A short history of voting...

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 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?

HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels," 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.
It is a sham to say we need the reminder. Voting often feels
more like an obligation
than a privilege. Sometimes it is inconvenient, but "what
would those women think
of the way we use--or don't use--our 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, is valuable, please value your rights! 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 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.


This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and
privileged information. If you are not the intended
recipient, please notify the sender immediately by return
e-mail, delete this e-mail and destroy any copies. Any
dissemination or use of this information by a person other
than the intended recipient is unauthorized and may be
illegal.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20040915/ce03d32e/attachment-0001.htm