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Topic: "Iron Jawed Angels" on HBO (Read 296 times)

luci
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"Iron Jawed Angels" on HBO
« on: Sep 1^st, 2004, 9:28am »

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"Women haven't always had the right to vote. 1928 was the first year women could vote in the USA. My Grandmother would tell me stories about women not being able to vote and how she voted the first year and never missed voting until her death. She lived to be 90. I do not take my right to vote lightly! Luci Grin

READ ON-----------------
A short history lesson on the privilege of voting... no matter what your
politics.

The women were innocent and defenseless. 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 Burn, chained her hands to the cell
bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and
gasping
for air. 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. 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.

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. 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 will run the movie periodically before releasing
it 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
Bunko 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."

Ms. Bryony Schwan, M.S.
National Campaigns Director
Women's Voices for the Earth (WVE)
P.O. Box 8743
Missoula, MT 59807
Tel. 406-543-3747

HBO Movie: "IRON JAWED ANGELS"
http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/synopsis/index.html

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