WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE
Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE
It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
On the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to 33 suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote. The women had been wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’
The women were innocent and defenseless. That night, 40 prison guards, wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing, went on a rampage against them … And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.
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.
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.
‘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.’
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 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.’
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.
Author Unknown
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