LUCY BURN
WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE
This is the story 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.
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?
Women vote, they would rather vote on American Idol contestants than political figures. 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 released the movie 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 Bunco 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, if you are so inclined, 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. Whether you vote democratic, republican or
independent party - remember to vote.
In politics as well as on American Idol ladies. History is being made.
Author Unknown
I'm for women voting what scares me and other men is their minimal understanding of critical issues. An ignorant woman voter is more dangerous than the woman who doesn't vote.
