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1:53 p.m. - 2008-09-09 Currently Listening I don't want to write a blog about voting. I don't care which political party or candidate you think is best. But what I DO want to write about is the fact that women have only had the right to vote for the candidate of our choosing in a national election for just over 90 years. Yes, that's right... NINETY YEARS!!!! That means that our great grandmothers and grandmothers worked very hard to get the right for women to express their choices... My own grandmother's little sister remembered singing a protest song on a street corner about the candidates which means that my great-grandmother was involved in the women's movement for the right to vote.
A Message for all women 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 made up signs and protested at the White House when Woodrow Wilson was running for President. The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. 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 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 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 HBO's has a movie entitled 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that we can pull the curtain at the polling booth and have our say. For some, the actual act of voting had become less personal... more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient. One women who watched this HBO film said that she was 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. It should be shown on daytime TV and at all the professional women's gatherings. 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. " **************
We should continue to honor these very brave women. After all, they were our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Wouldn't you want to show them that you are just as strong as they were? I do.
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