WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers,
as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that
women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the
night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding
clubs and with their warden's blessing went on a rampage against
the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk
traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, 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.

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 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.

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.