Ladies, why we should vote Pic heavy, somewhat graphic descriptions

A friend of mine sent me this email as a reminder to vote, and I thought it would be great to share.


We take so much for granted, we should all be ashamed of ourselves. Get out and vote, ladies. Someone fought to give you that right. Use it!!!!!
This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who 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 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.



(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?




(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)




(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )

Frankly, voting often feels more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it is inconvenient.



(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

What would those women think of the way we use, or don't use, our right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.

HBO released the movie, Iron Jawed Angels, on video and DVD. It is a movie about the courageous ladies who sacrificed so much to give us the vote. 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.



(Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters,
Jackson Place [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul,
Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))
In the movie, 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.


(Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.')


History is being made.