TEN HISTORIC PHOTOS | Our Legacy!

Women activist, we are at a crossroads of whether we want to be seen as equal under the law, the ERA amendment has enough ratification to put it in the Constitution yet Congress drags its feet denying women this right . You can join the women who have continued with tenacity to fight for women to be seen as equal under the law. You can contact Dianne Post at postdlpost@aol.com to help push the ERA amendment into the US Constitution to give women equal rights under the law.

Also whether you believe in abortion or not this is also a critical issue. If we pass the current right to abortion in AZ it gives women control over their own bodies and lives. Without it women are just incubators that men control. This would continue the concept that women are not equal to men. It gives men the right to see women as slaves to mens desires and to create more fodder for wars.

This article reminds us that women are strong and sacrificed to give us the right to vote so we could have a say in our own futures.

A TRUE STORY

This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

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.

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.

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 released the movie 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 Bunco/Bingo 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.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.

Please be involved. The women of the future depend on our actions today.

So, refresh MY memory. Some women won't vote this year because - Why, exactly?