[Vision2020] FW: Women Who Dared

[Pat Kraut]

This was sent to me by Carole (Helm) Butkus, former LEDC Executive Director and Pullman MayorThanks for the reminder BJ.
PK
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: B. J. Swanson 
  To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 9:40 PM
  Subject: [Vision2020] FW: Women Who Dared


  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.

   

   

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