Why Women Should Vote (an email)
(this was in my inbox today)
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.'
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.
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.
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?
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 and Bingo 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
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. History is being made.
Links:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/tactics.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/brftime3.html
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?
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 and Bingo 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
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. History is being made.
Links:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/tactics.html
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/brftime3.html
Comments
Thanks, dewitte! Very timely.
Oh and by the way...I DO vote. I just don't buy the fact that women who don't are somehow deficient and ungrateful.
Sure we have the right to not vote. But people who don't take part in the process have no right to complain about the results. Too bad they refuse to realize that and complain anyway.
You responded very nicely while I was trying to figure out how to roll my eyes hard enough to express exactly how obnoxious that sentiment was. ;)
Can you teach me how to do that?
Great post, DeWitte. Please thank the person who sent that email! Love the old B and W photos. I have a photo like that of my grandma and I treasure her strength and courage every day, just like I value that of the women pictured here.
What ticks me off is that I wrote in Gore for the primaries, but does that get recorded? No. I did it not because he'd get elected (obviously he won't) but to send a message that I'm dissatisfied with our current choices. (Of course it's probably due to those who write in their dog Fluffy or something LOL)
If we have the right to vote, we should also have the right to send a message through our "right" to write someone in. It's a shame we're forced into a corner of just a handful of candidates.
Great article! Here's another to go with it.
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Charlie Parkhurst had a secret. People had noticed that Charlie never talked much about his past or himself, but then, that wasn't unusual in California in the 1800s. Lots of people had pasts that they didn't want brought up. Charlie's secret however, was different from most.
Charlie had been born in New Hampshire sometime around 1810. Some say Charlie was an orphan and some say Charlie grew up on an uncle's ranch, but all accounts agree that Charlie grew up loving horses. Charlie had a "way" with horses and often said he got along better with horses than with people. When Charlie was 12 he ran away, because he was being forced out of the stable work he'd done up until then. Charlie gradually worked his way out west...arriving in California sometime around 1850. There he became a stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo, steering six horse teams over narrow, windy Sierra Nevada roads.
Charlie was known for being one of the safest and most reliable stagecoach drivers in California. Stagecoach robberies were common in those days, and Charlie was robbed twice. The first time, the villians got away with the gold that the coach had been carrying. The second time Charlie was prepared and coldly pulled out his gun and shot both would-be bandits dead. Charlie was never robbed after that.
Most people liked Charlie Parkhurst. He was known to be rather stand-offish and shy, but he was kind and often helped people in need. One story of tells of a widow about to lose her farm. Charlie took out his savings and paid off the deed on the farm, saving the woman's home. Charlie drank, smoked, played cards, and shook dice with the rest of the drivers, but he never got too close to anyone. He never married either, nor did he ever visit the whorehouses or brothels that were common in those days. Charlie pretty much stayed to himself.
Charlie retired from stagecoach driving around 1865, having had enough of the mud and cold. He opened a stage stop and saloon, and eventually did some cattle ranching and even chicken farming when he got really old. His last years of life were spent with a bachelor partner in a small cabin near Watsonville, California.
Charlie died December 29, 1979. That's when his secret was revealed. Charlie Parkhurst was a woman. Apparently Charlie had run away from the orphanage when they attempted to train her in "womanly duties" at age 12. Charlie dressed and acted like a man from that day on, even registering and voting in 1868, some 52 years before women could legally vote.
Charlie's was buried in Pioneer cemetary in Freedom, California. Her tombstone reads simply "Parkhurst" and no one was really sure what her real name was.
I am certainly not a bleeding heart liberal or a right wing fund. cons either but I have my own mind and I don't base my convictions along ANY party lines.
As for having to "adjust your wording...." before you posted that comment that shows how knee jerk you find this issue which it shouldn't be really.. My comment was not worded impolitely and I was not attacking you per se and I never found myself feeling I should be rude or 'yell' to get my point across..
Also...people who do not vote and still complain about the process and results may not have any legitimate cause for complaint but they are still free to do so.
People are not perfect little political packages and neither are they always consistent or even logical. For instance I am pro choice but also pro death penalty. I think regular people shouldn't be allowed to carry guns unless they are using them to hunt for food but if someone killed a person I loved I would happily take a gun and shoot them in the head.
I'm a human being before I am anything else political...and that includes being a woman as today it seems you cannot be a woman without it becoming political.
Which is exactly how it should be.
No, it shows what a smart ass mouth I have and that I have to work to keep it under control.
I don't believe I accused you of any such thing.
Yes, we do still have freedom of speech here. As it should be. What I should have said is "But people who don't take part in the process have no cause to complain about the results. Too bad they refuse to realize that and complain anyway."
That's even true of me. We are all, first of all, human and come complete with differing opinions which most certainly makes the world more interesting and fun.
I voxed you.
Incredible post.