My friend emailed me this
today and with a large, national election looming in the USA, I thought
that this was a good thing to post...
This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed
nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for
the vote.
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.'
(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head
and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
(Dora Lewis)
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.
(Alice Paul)
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.
