WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

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 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.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

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?

"'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/womenvote.asp

Faye

"Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your
voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to
what you have to say." --Maggie Kuhn