Lady voters, How many are not voting because you feel ?

Question

that your candidate did not make the cut you shouldn't vote for anyone? To everybody else - What do you feel about this reference?

Night of Terror and the Right to Vote
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 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. 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?

There recently was a 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 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”.

www.thrivingnow.com/for/Rick/night-of-...

www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071014... www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071014/O...

www.girlposse.com/talk_talk_talk/privi... www.girlposse.com/talk_talk_talk/privile...

www.medinadems.org/ht/d/sp/i/139859/pi...

Answer 1

I'm voting and I always vote because I realize how hard-fought the battle was for women's suffrage and for the right of African Americans to vote.



I supported Hillary but I'm voting for Obama, partially because in all of those previous voting battles, conservatives opposed our rights. Maintaining the status quo was always more important to them than the individual rights of many American citizens.



Thanks for pointing out that film.

Answer 2

No, not at all. If one cares about the country and the candidate one supports in the primaries doesn't get the nomination, does it make any sense to sit home on election day and sulk? Of course not. What makes sense is to go out and vote for the candidate that agrees most with the candidate that I supported. That is why the overwhelming majority of women that supported Hillary are voting for Obama. It is the only sensible alternative in this election.

Answer 3

I am a life-long liberal democrat and I have always voted, since my very first election. I voted for Ford. I voted for Reagan twice. I have never voted for anyone named Bush. Ann Richards would have made a great President, in my opinion.

Answer 4

I second Gorgeous Texas. I wish Ann Richards could have been president.

Answer 5

What would those brave woman think about all the women 43 years later who voted for Kennedy because he was more handsome than Nixon?

Answer 6

The Religious Right will destroy our nation...ever see the movie " V for Vendetta" nuff said



or the movie " Children of Men"..double nuff said

Answer 7

i'm vote casting for Romney and it has no longer something to do with abortion which may be the least of all human beings's concerns at this point. Romney is prevalent with of the thank you to restoration the economy, he's prevalent with of the thank you to stability the cheap which capacity getting rid of reckless spending. He huge into coaching his state is #a million national in the two English and Math for years something this u . s . a . so desperately desires. He is prevalent with of the thank you to create jobs. those themes are the precise opposite of what Obama has carried out and seem the place we are. Abortion is the least of my situation. to no longer point out Romney has stated that he's advantageous with abortion in severe situations alongside with rape, incest and probability to the mummy yet, there are thank you to a lot of human beings utilising abortion as a beginning administration technique.

Answer 8

It is stupid and unpatriotic not to vote. People died to give you that privilege. If you were denied the right to vote, you would be furious.