Women Voting Matters and Who You Vote for Matters as Well

The last time I wore my grandmother's suffrage sash was a number of years ago for an ERA march.

My grandmother was born in 1867 and did not win the right to vote until she was in her mid-forties.

The sash is a deep gold, made of silk and is a satin weave.

It is covered with ERA , Pro-Choice, Equal Pay for Comparable Worth, Anti-violence Against Women and other buttons. I am honored and proud when i wear this sash--four inches wide and now heavy with all the emblems of issues that women and some men have been fighting for for over 160 years.  I like to think that the sash that lies over my breast and shoulder was warmed by hers. Heart to heart we have marched and rallied.

In 1848 at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls,

NY Susan B. Anthony and that brilliant but much lesser known strategist, writer and policy maker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as Lucretia Mott, stalwart abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott , among others, including Abolutionist Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglas put forward the Declaration of Sentiments of women's rights that Stanton had written.

Among its 18 grievances and reforms, was the notion that all women and men are created equal, wording we still do not have in the US constitution. With the strong support of Douglass the Declaration passed and in it was the first public demand for women's right to vote, a demand that was WON--NEVER GIVEN-- some 70 years later.. 

 

If you take the time to read a copy of the Declaration, you will be shocked at how current it sounds.

I think Anthony, Stanton, Douglass, Mott would be horrified at how few of their reforms have been fully integrated into American life and how much work still remains for women, and men of good will, like Frederick Douglass, to do.

 So when you vote, women of America, do the amazing thing. VOTE in YOUR SELF INTEREST. We are the majority of the population, the majority of the poor, the majority of the olders and the majority vote.  Feminists of a previous era knew that reform comes from going forward with new ideas and actions. Not with cleaving to the exclusive and backward looking policies of the past.

Susan B. Anthony, that indomitable and much maligned, women's rights warrior said, "Failure is impossible with the life long dedication of committed women." And I would add, some men.

This below was composed by a friend and is her commentary.

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These women's vision and courage is inspirational. They never gave up and were against insurmountable odds.

We owe a great debt to them. The book "The Vote", by Sybil Downing goes into more detail of what these remarkable women went through.

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

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

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 Burns, 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?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie ' Iron Jawed Jewels'.  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 els 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 democrati

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.

~Heather S. --Michigan

Comments

[Kim]

I go to Broad Ripple High School in Indianapolis, IN. For our semester project of my junior year, my group re-enacted the picketing scenes. Made banners, sashes, clothes, and all. While covering Women's Suffrage, the Humanities program at BRHS watches Iron Jawed Angels. It is an inspiring movie.