For WOMEN Who Don't Vote -- Lessons From History (applies to all)

[loudsue]

I got this in an e-mail today, and it actually applies to every citizen in the country.

" I know all of you will be voting, but maybe you know someone to pass it on to? I asked all my grown grandchildren last year to register to vote as my Christmas present - and they were all registered already! How 'bout your kids and grandkids? I'm not sure which year Kansas women were allowed to vote, but my Aunt Ruth said my Grandma Teddy cried for joy when she came home from voting for the first time. Yours, Teddy

Remember how Women got the vote (from Leslie Sheridan's "Carpe Diem Voice"

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 helpless 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 slops--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 am ashamed to say I needed the reminder. There was a time when I knew these women well. I met them in college--not in my required American history courses, which barely mentioned them, but in women's history class. That's where I found the irrepressibly brave Alice Paul. Her large, brooding eyes seemed fixed on my own as she stared out from the page. "Remember!" she silently beckoned.

Remember. I thought I always would. I registered voters throughout college and law school, worked on congressional and presidential campaigns until I started writing for newspapers. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president, I took my 9-year-old son to meet her. "My knees are shaking," he whispered after shaking her hand. "I'm never going to wash this hand again."

>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 even 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 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 FORWARD THIS TO EVERY WOMAN YOU KNOW, ESPECIALLY SINGLE WOMEN. THEY SAY THAT ONLY ABOUT 50% OF SINGLE WOMEN VOTED IN THE LAST ELECTION, AND THAT SINGLE WOMEN VOTE DEMOCRATIC AROUND 90% OF THE TIME, AND IF WE JUST HAD 10% MORE SINGLE WOMEN VOTE, WE COULD ENSURE A DEM. WIN IN THIS ELECTION!"

This lesson applies to ALL OF US....because, at some point, ALL of our ancestors fought, bled, and/or were tortured, to secure our rights to vote.

NOW our corporations are trying to take the vote away from us, by counting our votes with pre-programmed black boxes. I say this is another fight we, as American patriots, may have to take on next. It's just another battle in our quest for voting rights in this country, but it may be the last chance we have.

[cally]

1. My great Aunt was about 15 when women got the right to vote

She shared with me her recollection that her mother was so proud the first time she voted. She got dressed in her Sunday Best and walked in and voted. She came home to her daughters and bragged. My Gr. Aunt never missed a vote! Sadly, she was a Republican.

We disrespect all thoes women who gave us this right when we don't vote. We didn't earn this right very long ago. There are still echoes in most campaigns that women's votes are somehow less than male. Listen to the Rebublican rhetoric bragging that they have men's votes. The focus on war and military record in this campaign also emphasizes primarily issues that sway male voters. Women have to vote in greater numbers.

[loudsue]

3. Me, too, cally....

My grandmother marched arm-in-arm with other suffragettes to earn our right to vote....though luckily she was never jailed...merely heckled and harrassed.

That blood runs through my veins, and that is part of the reason the BBV thing has been such a MAJOR issue for me.

:kick::kick::kick::kick:

[cally]

4. Wow, did you ever get a chance to discuss it with her?

My relatives did not fight for the vote :cry: just gloried in the right. You must be so proud!

[loudsue]

7. Yes; I discussed it with her .....even when I was very young.

My grandmother died when I was 18 years old. But even when I was very young, she told me about marching for the right to vote. I have pictures taken of her, and a whole protest march full of women, who were marching for the right to vote. She's right there on the front row....it was in a Texas newspaper.

She was a smart woman!!! Her father owned a huge bank in San Antonio, Texas, and her grandfather owned <at least a major partnership in> most of the railroads in Texas....so they wouldn't have DARED try to jail her!!!

She was an amazing woman! I only wish I had had more time with her.

:kick::kick::kick:

[jbm]

6. don't be sad she was a repub cally..

It's very possible that at the time your great aunt voted the repubs were quite liberal. Theodore Roosevelt was a republican and he is considered to have been fairly progressive. I've read some things about Woodrow Wilson (a democrat) that makes me think he would have found a better fit with the current republican party. The terms liberal and conservative are much more constant than the republican/democrat titles. Your aunts political beliefs may have mirrored your own!

on edit-I just reread your post and realized that she may have voted republican way past the time that they could have still been considered 'liberal'. I often wonder how many 'born and breds' are voting the opposite of what they believe family tradition would dictate..and they just don't realize the parties have flipped.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. I got this the other day but hadn't posted it -- glad you did!

I did forward it to some Dem women, though the version I got didn't mention parties.
It's a great reminder.

[smirkymonkey]

5. Very powerful.

I had no idea about what torture the early suffragettes had to go through to secure our right to vote.

I will send this to everyone I know, even though most of them are registered and voting Kerry, hopefully they will pass it on to others who may not be.

[kerryhawk]

8. whats more important

is that republicans have had a huge majority over white american males for over 50 years now. the democrat party basically gets elected by women and minorities, and for a good reason, because democrats take care of them.