My life in pictures, stories and open letters.

My life in pictures, stories and open letters.
Warning

Please be advised that you are entering my blog.
My blog.
The opinions herein are mine.
I am free to rant and vent to my heart's content.
If you find yourself mentioned here, then you've made quite an impression on me.
Feel free to read on if you would like to know if that impression is good, bad or ugly.
If you choose not to know, I invite you to move your mouse over to the little red X in the top corner of your screen and click.
Regardless of the option you choose, I hope you have a fabulous day!



Sunday, October 12, 2008

I Am Woman - Watch Me 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 defenceless, but they were jailed
nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking
for the vote.
(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.

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 right, left or independent party – remember to vote.

Taken from an email I received this morning.

8 comments:

organicyogamom said...

It's amazing how much things have changed isn't it? I know I take so many basic things forgranted and demand and expect so many other things that not to long ago woudl not have been acceptable for woman. I'll be putting my vote in on Tuesday!

Melisa S. said...

Wow...just wow. I know I would never have the courage these women did and it's a shame to know so many of us today take this right forgranted. I am going to link this post over to my livejournal, if you don't mind.

Rhonda said...

Absolutely!! Use it, forward it, link it!

wy-not said...

Hey sweetie. I'm whining because ALL of the choices on our ballots on Tuesday will be bad ones. I believe them to be liars and cheats making promises they know they'll never keep. But after reading this, I WILL exercise my right to vote. I will use my pale voice to at least make my selection of the least bad of the lot. I wonder when we got the vote in Canada. I think it was even later than that...utterly sad to consider that.

Rhonda said...

I hear you one that one loud and clear. Cassie asked the other day what a politician was.

"A liar" said I.

"A cheat" said Leon.

"A thief" I responded.

We did not waste that teaching opportunity, so sir-eeee!

A New Yorker said...

History is very important. Did you see my earlier post?

Ronda's Rants said...

I will get that DVD...I do believe in voting!

Mamahut said...

Good one Rhonda. I have actually said that I don't think I will vote this year because I don't like my choices. I will vote. I just like to complain I guess :)