Vote: The right has been bought at high cost

I spoke recently with several young women who told me they might not vote this year (Nov. 2). Some said they didn’t like any of the candidates; others said they had no time to vote; and still others said their votes probably wouldn’t count for much one way or the other.

On that note, I’d like to share with you a synopsis of an HBO movie called “Iron Jawed Angels” that recently aired and is expected to be reshown (check local listings). It’s a graphic retelling of what many American women endured to get the vote.

The film focuses on one especially egregious incident that occurred on Nov. 15, 1917, and was later called by the press “The Night of Terror.” It happened in a Virginia jailhouse when the warden ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the women who were locked up in the facility for daring to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.

According to the reports of the time, 40 guards clubbed and otherwise assaulted the 33 prisoners. One was left to hang by her chained hands in her cell all night. Her cellmate suffered a heart attack. Others went on hunger strikes. And as happened with their British counterparts earlier in the century, feeding tubes were forced down their throats, causing them to vomit up not just the liquids that were poured into the tubes, but also the blood from the injuries they sustained.

When word of this barbarism leaked out to the press, the White House insisted that one of the suffragette leaders, Alice Paul, be declared insane and committed. Fortunately, a sympathetic psychiatrist refused, noting that, “Courage and strength in women is often mistaken for insanity.”

Bottom Line: Your vote has been bought at high cost to those who wanted better lives for themselves, their daughters and for you. Honor their courage. Vote.