voting

[Guest guest]

A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...

The women were innocent & 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 into a dark cell, smashed her

head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold.

Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought 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 '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 , 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?

HBO's new movie " Iron Jawed Angels " is a graphic depiction of the

battle these women waged so that we could pull the curtain at the

polling booth and have our say.

To many, voting often feels more like an obligation than a privilege.

Sometimes it is inconvenient.

What would those women think of the way we use--or don't use--our

right to vote? How many of us take it for granted now, not just younger

women, but those of us who did seek to learn?

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on VHS & DVD.

All History, Social Studies and Government teachers should include the

movie in their curriculum. It should be shown anywhere else women

gather. This isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not

voting in the numbers that we should be, and perhaps a little shock

therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow and his cronies try to persuade

a psychiatrist to declare Alice insane so that she could be

permanently

institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse.

Alice 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 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.