WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

I received this in an email from a friend yesterday. It sure makes

me sit up and realize how much I take for granted these days and

how grateful we should all be to the women that sacrificed so 

much for our rights. It is especially relevant this year as we witness

another strong woman making history. She has already proven herself

 as the governor of Alaska with a high approval rating by the people she 

governs and many successes in office, yet she and her family are being 

drug through the mud and personally torn apart by the media and 

political pundits because she is a woman that has dared to step up

and run for the second highest office in the land.

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 defenseless, but they were 

jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying 

signs asking for the vote. 

(Lucy Burns)

By the end of the night in jail, 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. 

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, 

bu t 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, & 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 us by these very courageous women. Whether you vote 

democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

History is being made.