Just a Couple More Days.....
Alice Paul, wearing "suffragette white," toasts the 1920 passage of the Nineteenth Amendment
Photo modifications © Jone Johnson Lewis 2000 All Rights Reserved
We are praying, we are hoping, we are visualizing....and above all - WE ARE VOTING!!!!!
The woman you see here was beaten, tortured, imprisoned, then went on a hunger strike only to be force fed with a tube shoved down her throat into her stomach. Woodrow Wilson himself tried to have her committed for being insane. Why did he think she was insane? Because she wanted women to have the right to vote. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. We women folk just HAD to be insane if we thought we were going to tread into a Democracy that was for men only. Thank God for people like Alice Paul, and for all the people who suffered greatly so that we don't have to today. Unlike Alice, who stood in protest in front of the White House for months with a group of other determined women through rain and snow, today we can walk out our front door and saunter into our neighborhood polling place, give our name, and be given a ballot. We owe her, and all the suffragettes, a profound debt of gratitude that we can only repay by voting in EVERY election that comes our way. And remember your I.D.'s this year. They are not telling THIS woman that I don't have the right stuff to vote.
See you at the polls. Be well.
posted by frstlymil @ 10/31/2004 09:01:00 PM
3 Comments:
Oh God. And just today I overheard a woman in the grocery store say on her cell phone "Yeah, Bruce Springsteen called me up and asked for my vote for Kerry today. That was cool, but I so don't vote..it's just such Bullshit anyway" Something was Bullshit. It's all I can do not to GO OFF at such times. Honestly.
I'm always surprised when people admit to not voting. To me it feels like a duty or something; it's just part of my personal code of ethics. Democracy may be bullshit but it's better than all the other systems of government! Twice in the past few weeks I've had conversations with people who claim to never vote; both of these people would be WAY better off with Democrats in power. One is a woman with no health care insurance. The other is a Hmong immigrant. I think I may have convinced them both to vote for the first time ever.
-Laura
God just logged back in to see if you had posted something new. It is so poignant to see Alice's smiling face so full of hope and pride. Good thing she is not here to see her great great grand daughters generation gladly hand over power to the same sort of men who would have locked her up back in the day.
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