Someone posted this on another Forum that I belong to... I found of the utmost interest and thought I'd pass it along to JPiC Members. This for all of us really - but especially if you're a woman and have wondered how did women gain the right to suffrage (voting priviledges)... I think you can appreciate the plight that some extremely courageous Women went through so that we could have this essential right to vote.
If you are a man, please forward to your Sisters or Mothers or Daughters or female Friends, etcetera.... I'm sure they can appreciate the plight d'courage as well. And obviously the presidential elections are not far off... This article could very well be the incentive that gets those Women (and Men) who have not exercised their right to vote in such a great while... Could be the incentive to get them to the voting booth, closing curtains and such, and pulling levers, casting with pride a vote for the candidate of their choice. It's an ESSENTIAL right really. And we need to be part of the decision or we are part of the problem.
Please read this and act on it in November. We have so many women to thank for the privilege of voting.
Read on...
How Women Got To Vote
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 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.
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?
From HBO Films: Oscar-winner Hilary Swank leads an outstanding cast in the inspirational true story of two women who dared to make a stand for women's rights, and ended up shaping the future of America.
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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 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 Bunko 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 is strong," he said, "and brave. That doesn't make her crazy."
The doctor admonished the men with, "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
How Women Got To Vote (True Story of Courage...)
Just wow! This was a tremendous speech and I am just a bit speechless at the moment... Just wow! Such bravery - no wonder she is honored via American coinage. Just wow! A bit of a history lesson...