Vote!

Thursday evening, Rod and I left work early, planning to vote early and then celebrate by having dinner at new vietnamese restaurant. The line was an hour long! Although we were disappointed that we would not be able to go to dinner after all, we were ECSTATIC that so many people were voting. It is so exciting to hear all the stories about the projected record voter turnout. I have never understood how people can make excuses not to vote (I understand it even less now that registering and voting is SO easy). When you consider everything our ancestors went through to have the right to vote, not voting is inexcusable.

With that I mind, I thought I would share with you an email forward that has been making the rounds:
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.

(Lucy Burns)
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 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 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.

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?

Although the above email is specifically targeted to women, its lesson is applicable to all Americans who are eligible to vote. The right to vote is a privilege. It should not be taken for granted.