[Vision2020] vote

[Margaret Howlett]

---  WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived
only 90 years ago. 
cid:1.1700063233 at web52301.mail.re2.yahoo.com
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to
the polls and vote.
cid:2.1700063234 at web52301.mail.re2.yahoo.com
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless
for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. 
cid:3.1700063234 at web52301.mail.re2.yahoo.com
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.' 

[See the attached file]
(Lucy Burns)
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. 
cid:4.1700063234 at web52301.mail.re2.yahoo.com
(Dora Lewis) 
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron
bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, 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. 
cid:5.1700063234 at web52301.mail.re2.yahoo.com
(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. 
 <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf>
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf 

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. 

 



 

 

 

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