rivers_bend

I thought I posted this on Friday, but I just found the tab with the unposted post, so here it is now instead.

sir_yessir did a podfic of Holding Pattern. I really loved being able to hear it in someone else's voice. I was also pleased that he chose it! And pleased that someone nominated it for spn_oscars, so thank you to whoever did that. *g*

This was forwarded to me with no information about the original poster, but I think it's an important message.

eta thank you to diachrony who found that it was -Connie Schultz, The Plain Dealer, 1801 Superior Ave.,Cleveland, OH 44114, Cschultz@plaind.com, August 2004 who originally posted this. here


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
Wilso n'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.



There is no passion to be found in playing small - in settling for a life
that is less than the one you are capable of living. ~Nelson Mandela