hearts and roses
Mind Reader
I had to edit it & remove the pics for space but...
A Message for all women and men. This is the story of our Grandmothers & Great grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to vote.
The women were innocent & defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. By the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs & their warden's blessing rampaged against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.' They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head & left her hanging for the night, bleeding & gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a cell, smashed her head against an iron bed & knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead & suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting & 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 Alice Paul embarked on a hunger strike they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat & poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured for weeks until word was smuggled to the press.
Some women won't vote this year because why? HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels' is a depiction of the battle these women waged so we could pull the curtain at the polling booth & have our say. What would those women think of the way we use or don't use our right to vote? Many of us take it for granted now. HBO released the movie on VHS & DVD. I wish all history & gov't teachers would show the movie in their classes; everywhere women gather. It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson & 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, & 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 & vote & use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote Democratic/Republican/Independent party, remember to vote.
A Message for all women and men. This is the story of our Grandmothers & Great grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to vote.
The women were innocent & defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. By the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs & their warden's blessing rampaged against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.' They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head & left her hanging for the night, bleeding & gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a cell, smashed her head against an iron bed & knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead & suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting & 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 Alice Paul embarked on a hunger strike they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat & poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured for weeks until word was smuggled to the press.
Some women won't vote this year because why? HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels' is a depiction of the battle these women waged so we could pull the curtain at the polling booth & have our say. What would those women think of the way we use or don't use our right to vote? Many of us take it for granted now. HBO released the movie on VHS & DVD. I wish all history & gov't teachers would show the movie in their classes; everywhere women gather. It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson & 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, & 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 & vote & use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote Democratic/Republican/Independent party, remember to vote.