- This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers;
they lived only 90 years ago.
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- Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted
the right to go to the polls and vote.
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- The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were
jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking
for the vote.
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- 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.'
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- (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.
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- (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.
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- 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.
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- (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. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf
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- 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?
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.'
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- 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 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.
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- 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 sa id, and brave. That didn't
make her crazy.
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- The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often
mistaken for insanity.'
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- Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the
women you know.
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- 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.
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- History is being made.
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