Women's HISTORY prior to being able to VOTE

[Jasella]

Vote early, vote often, and above all.......VOTE TWO THOUSAND AND FOUR!


From a seventy-seven-year-old woman - 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 thirty-three 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. fifteenth, year: nineteen seventeen, when the warden at theOccoquan 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 car-pool 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.

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 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

[Vicks]

This was a great movie, actually it spured me to go to a rock the vote meeting. I think the best thing most of us can do who are voting is to drive people to the polls. Make sure all of our freinds are registered ect...

The women in the movie, deserve better from those of us now, just like the people who fought in the civil rights movement to get African Americans the right to vote. But people forget history and they forget that one vote really does matter.

Vicks

[Freetobe-Me]

:hugon Jasella :hugoff

Thank you for the article Jasella. Where did you find it? I have seen Iron Jawed Angels and it is amazing If you are a woman and this movie does not piss the hell out of you at the level of apathy that exists amongst some other women today I'd be surprised. I used to teach Jr high hisotry but left to go to law school. However, if I were still teaching my students would view this movie without a doubt. When people say why should i bother voting this movie depicts why. Sorry for my little rant. I fee very passionatly about this issue.

tina

[urbanfaerie]

I did most of my growing up near Seneca Falls...so was fortunately VERY VERY aware of the Suffragette's trials.

I've voted in every election...even the "piddly" ones, since I was eighteen.

VOTE...it is your DUTY as a citizen!!

[kris]

urbanfaerie said: I did most of my growing up near Seneca Falls...so was fortunately VERY VERY aware of the Suffragette's trials.

I've voted in every election...even the "piddly" ones, since I was eighteen.

VOTE...it is your DUTY as a citizen!!

It is ironic you say that

i LIVE in Seneca Falls, NY - the birthplace of Woman's Rights.

And woman's rights is just about all this town is about. It is every where - and into the surrounding communities as well (perserved homes of suffergette's, etc)

I hope that everyone has already registered to Vote. I missed my chance to vote in the two thousand election because i moved within thirty days of election day *bummer* but am planning on voting in this one - come heck or high water

As urbanfaerie said - Vote - it's you DUTY as an citizen

[urbanfaerie]

I am moving around the eighteenth of the month to Wisconsin, so I can't vote in a Swing State...grrr...BUT I AM voting by absentee ballot! I'm having it sent to my new house...as my car and license will still be registered California. I am NOT missing out on voting for my president.

Though I WISH I could vote in WI!!! My vote would count a little more, and my candidate already HAS California in the Electoral College.

Heather

[IthinkIcan]

Thank you :hugon Jasella :hugoff for a powerful post and direction toward a movie that might prove helpful in educating our daughters AND sons, not to mention ourselves.

I will admit to having grown somewhat lackadaisical in my attitude toward voting. This is a far cry from apathetic, but it is a long way from where I wanted to be. A movie such as that one would likely have proven the very motivation I needed to pursue the solution to my voting problem, instead of being a part of it. I remember as a young teen (for that matter, much younger even, but I was involved in a unique school situation) being aware of the political climate, the candidates, and their platforms. I was highly educated, and I felt a great deal of indignation toward the American system for choosing their system. I raled against the electoral college and insisted that for each person's vote to truly count we ought to switch to the popular vote. Additionally, I personally witnessed many young individuals who were more knowledgable of a particular election and would get no say, and supposedly wiser people who voted based ONLY on the "knowledge" of "their" candidate's party or who didn't vote at all. I promised myself I would never be one of those last two types. After all, I was all but counting the days until my vote would be counted. I certainly would NOT become a person who did not know about the candidates or the issues. I would NOT squander my privilege or shirk my duty to serve my country in this small way. I wouldn't make excuses. After all, how much time does it take to go vote.

But, it was all too easy. I found myself quickly disillusioned with the entire process. Not believing in the very method (electoral college), I absolutely feel this ought to be changed. The way it stands, charts can be found which label certain states as Democratic, Republican or swing. As such, the candidates pander to these swing states. Furthermore, "the" election functions as fifty separate elections, which are then not even equally weighted to form one single outcome. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or Independent for that matter, think of living, say, in a small state that is, for all intents and purposes, Republican. You are, however, a Democrat. This has been the pattern in your state the past, say, six elections and are not even considered a borderline swing state. You will go to the polls, but you know your state's electoral votes will go to the Republicans. Disillusioning, yes? Especially when you see this work time and again with, say, another, LARGE state that is Republican. Maybe they are swing and are pandered to. Maybe you feel like THEIR vote counted, when yours didn't. Or, maybe, like your state, theirs, is like "Old Faithful," forever pumping out Republican electoral votes on a timetable. Either way, the zest, the spark for voting may fade. Right and privilege turns into duty, turns into chore, fades into something resembling spring cleaning, there are people who are still disciplined enough to do it in the face of these obstacles and feelings, although it is a rarity. It ceases to become a priority and many more reasons (excuses) are found for avoiding the polls. We forget the sacrifices, or we don't really know. I think it is good to know, to be reminded.

In my disillusionment I pulled away from politics as I felt I could not effect a change. This is also, however, part of my illness, a withdrawal from life, a profound isolation and a feeling of being ineffectual. I felt I didn't matter, my vote didn't matter, and :muhaha for a while no matter how I tried to stand up and be counted it was as if I was invisible. I voted in the presidential election of ninety-two. That most assuredly took some quick maneuvering given my DOB and my move for college. Because I lived on my own, my address was in Indiana, yet my "permanent" address was wherever I happened to live at that moment. It was a bit unusual. No state would have claimed me for schooling purposes for quite a while, but, for voting, I made the cut-off, since I transferred everything upon moving to Missouri. Then, I moved, and moved, and moved . . . fifteen times in eleven years, which would be since age eighteen. During the last five moves I have had difficulties getting my voter's registration. I won't bore you with the details, but after a while I went from being tearful about it to almost not caring. THEN, in a LOCAL election the person I was going to vote for LOST by ONE vote. I kid you not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My attitude changed immediately. :ugh Suddenly I felt like, at least on a local level my vote counts. And this was after the world watched the Florida debacle, but I saw it as being more media hyped and dramatized than it probably deserved. Immediately I started to "aggressively" pursue my situation--interestingly, I WAS found in the system, though I never received anything. My husband and I signed up TWICE together and he received his stuff BOTH times. My most recent move was, hm, two months ago maybe. THIS time, however, I sent in a form that would work for either a new voter or new address and had my husband take it to work. He hand delivered it to the site coordinator who takes them to the county clerk, I believe, who is responsible for either getting them to the right place or doing what needs to be done. I am now officially registered, have my card, am educated, and will not be letting anything stand in my way that day.

I DO feel there needs to be a change in the way voting is done here, an amendment, BUT until such a time, I will exercise the rights, privileges, and freedoms I DO have. Electoral college!

I don't remember growing up hearing about the admirable women who fought for these rights. Already I've started teaching my daughter. This weekend we were at the Indianapolis Children's Museum (we were out of state), and we were looking at one of their exhibits, which had many interesting books about influential women--Alice Paul, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, and many others. We read several. I had never heard of some of these names until this weekend.

I'm thankful that we live in a time when our girls and young women can take for granted certain freedoms, not because I want them to, but because this implies change and growth and acceptance.