Something To Remember By Judy Junod This is the story of our
Mothers, Grandmothers and Remember,
it was not until 1920 that women 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
History is being made. Anyone wishing to buy a copy of "Iron
Jawed Angels" And
for anyone who would like to know exactly what the religion of Beating Etiquette;
After listening to what these two "rag-headed"
ding-a-lings have to say about
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