OT: Why Women Have a Responsibility to Vote | Arthritis Information

 

On Determining Our Leadership: Why Women Have a Responsibility to Vote

| posted by Julie Auslander

This is the story of our grandmothers and greatgrandmothers; 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 defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

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.
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 November 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.

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.

HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. 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 Democrat, Republican, or independent — remember to vote.
History is being made .

Read more:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/tactics.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/brftime3.html

Look at what these women have gone through in order to secure our right to vote.  We are forever indebted to them.  Surely you can find the time and energy to go vote tomorrow if you haven't already done so.  While it may not be comfortable or convenient to stand in line to cast your vote, no one is going to throw you in jail, beat you, have you committed to an insane asylum or force-feed you until you vomit for doing so tomorrow.  90 years ago these girls weren't so lucky.  They risked their lives for us.
You are so very right Jasmine...all women need to go and vote. But, so should EVERYBODY of age and with the ability to get to a voting station. Even then, those unable to get to a station can vote if they alert the proper authorities. There is no excuse for not voting then complaining about how the next Government performs.