Legislating Compassion

Women and the vote

This just came in my email and I checked it out on Snopes.com where they said it was true, noting that some details could not be specifically confirmed from eyewitness accounts and added some more graphic details should you care what the law of the womens' right to vote in America cost these suffragettes:

http://www.snopes.com/politics...

Subject: FW: 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 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 womens' 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/ammem/co...

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 womens' 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."

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.

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by: Armchair @ Tue Oct 14, 2008 at 21:02:53 PM UTC

Omnivore's Dilemma

Brookie... Have you read The Omnivore's Dilemma? It's a fantastically excellent book that changed my approach to food. It's not a vegetarian screed at all. In fact, it made me question my views about vegetarianism. Also, it made me want to drop everything and become a farmer.

My brother was a passionate meat-eater until he read the book Dominion. It turned him into a vegetarian overnight. I haven't made it past the first 20 pages -- it's a powerful argument, and I don't feel ready for it yet.

Tricycle Blog has a post about The Hidden Costs of Eating Meat:

...Overconsumption of meat imposes huge costs on both the environment and on public health. And that's to say nothing of the indefensible cruelty that characterizes CAFO operations. Yet we spend billions to subsidize ever cheaper meat....

Check it out.

I don't live in Calif. these days, but I would support Prop. 2. I live in Colorado and will be voting No on Amendment 48, the "Personhood" measure. I don't feel the slightest bit conflicted about opposing cruelty to animals AND opposing the codification of the religious belief that human life begins at the moment of conception.

Similarly, I think marriage is a sacred institution AND I think gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, not just form civil unions. Go fig.

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by: deardenver @ Thu Oct 16, 2008 at 19:46:07 PM UTC