While You're at

it...please...

vote for the bible!

God bless all the

"Esther's" rising up!

A Message:  for all women         THIS IS MOVING.  HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET.....IF ....WE EVER  KNEW...... WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE 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.' (Lucy Burns) 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. (Dora Lewis) 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. (Alice Paul) 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. http://memory.loc.gov/ammen/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf 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  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   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, 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.