>
>
> 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
>
