Cast Your Vote

This was sent to my by my friend Angela. I thought it was worth sharing. I know that no carpool duties or rain will keep me away.
The upcoming election is a big one, and in recent years the representation of women voters has been slim.
In the early 1900s it didn't matter if you wanted to vote or if you had an opinion on who should win because
you didn't have the right to have your voice heard. This is the story, the struggle of our Grandmothers,
and Great-grandmothers, as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted
the right to go to the polls and vote. Those women didn't suffer so we could sit on our rumps and watch tv.
You may have no clue what I am talking about, so let me give you a brief history.

Nov. 15, 1917, the 'Night of Terror' unfolded when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there. He was livid because they dared to picket Woodrow
Wilson's White House for the right to vote. The women were innocent and
defenseless, and by the end of the night they were barely alive. Forty
prison guards wielded clubs at their warden's blessing and went on a
rampage against the 33 women. The women were wrongly accused and convicted
for 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat activist Lucy Burns, 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.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.
When leader, Alice Paul, started a hunger strike and refused food for several days they tied her to a chair, forced a tube
down her throat and force fed 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? They have carpool duties? They have to get to work?
Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

If you are waiting on the shock factor to kick in, go rent HBO's movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' Its a graphic depiction of the battles these women
fought in order to receive the right to vote. Something to think about when you watch the movie...

'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.'

Women 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.'



History is being made.