Women Vote

[mykpart]

This was posted in 2004 just before the election. I saved it and it bears reading again.

WOMEN - YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE


With elections coming up, I thought this was pretty thought provoking. A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...

The women were innocent and defenseless. 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 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 cell mate, 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. 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 amashamed 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 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." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it 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."

[omega minimo]

1. "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

Not voting is hypocritical and insane.

[neoblues]

2. What? Womern Got the Vote? When-How Did Thet Happin?

Said the redneck, hillbilly member in good standing of the Republican "base", expressing the sentiments of himself and his compatriots (co-conspirators).

It's rather surprising Republicans haven't sought the repeal of voting rights for women and minorities; I suppose they recognize they couldn't "win" without them--for now...

[bobbieinok]

6. some pundit after selection 2000 said republicans wouldn't

have any problems if blacks and women didn't vote. I interpreted this to mean that they were looking for ways to eliminate the right to vote for women and minorities.

When I was teaching at the college level from 1989-2004, I was constantly surprised/appalled at the voting apathy of black students. I couldn't believe that they were throwing away rights people fought, suffered, and even died for in the civil rights struggles of the 60s.

And then I remembered that I in college and grad school in the late 50s and 60s never thought about (in fact, wasn't even conscious of) the fact that women did not have the right to vote until 1920.

IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT OLDER PEOPLE TALK to young people about their experiences. Only then can young people begin to have a personal understanding of past realities, sufferings, and sacrifices.

Also, BTW, many of the women faculty were appalled at how most of the women students took the present (women in law school, med school, as business executives, etc) as a given, something that had always existed and would/could never change.

****
At one point after selection 2000, Anne Coulter said women shouldn't be allowed to vote b/c 'all they understand about economics is how to shop at the mall.'

[omega minimo]

3. K&R

:kick:

[AliceWonderland]

4. Thanks for posting this.

These are the people who fought for my freedom -- and I am very, very grateful to them. Participation in the electoral process is something these women sacrificed for. I'm not much into heroes, but you bet, these women are my heroines.

I think of them when I cast my vote.

[LilyLibber]

5. K & R

:kick:

[Skidmore]

7. A salute to those sisters who walked before us

and cleared the path. We will remember and keep the charge.