The Gift of Our Past Relations - The Right to Vote

It doesn't matter who you are voting for - just vote. The video here would be inspirational to the most conservative of Americans - at least those with an open heart and a desire to awaken to a new dream - one of unity, hope and relevant, needed change...then read the note below...

The right to vote is a miracles for many of us...I am reprinting a letter below from an unknown source - not for the terror of it but as a reminder of how fortunate we are today and as a gratitude prayer to all of those who walked before, marched before and believed before...

history lesson for all of us....

How Women Got To Vote

A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...

The women were innocent and defenseless. 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 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 will run the movie periodically before releasing it 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 Bunko 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 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.

Enjoy the right that you have been gifted...VOTE!

Comments

[Dana's Energy Drawings at Nine Tomatoes]

It's interesting that all kinds of artists - musicians, designers, advertisers - are donating their time and services in support of Obama. To me, he is our only hope for real, heart-centered change in this country. This is a pivotal year in history and I will be exercising my hard-won right to vote!