When I filled out my ballot for the 2024 primary election, I thought about the women who fought and suffered so I could do this important thing: vote. Because the politics are so egregious right now, it weighs exceptionally heavy on my heart to think that there are people who are so ambivalent about their right to vote, they
just don’t bother. It’s too inconvenient. They don’t know anything about the candidates. They don’t like any of them. They have other things to do. My mother stood in line with her walker when she was in her late eighties to vote for Obama. Today, all we have to do is fill out a ballot and slip it into a designated drop box.
The day after I voted, I asked a friend in her forties if she was aware of the Suffragettes, groups of courageous women who endured physical and mental abuse to give her the freedom to express her opinion. “I don’t know what that word means,” my friend said. “I’ve never heard it before.”
“The Suffragettes were an organization of activist women,” I educated her, “who fought for their rights under the banner of ‘Votes for Women.’ They were abused terribly but they never gave up, and we stand on their shoulders each time we cast a ballot.”
When I hung up the phone, I wondered what one woman could do to raise the awareness of citizens who don’t bother to vote. It was no surprise that I turned to my tried-and-true way to get things off my chest and make sense of them: I wrote. I composed this blog to motivate women of all ages and races and the men who love and support them, to get out and vote.
When I began my research for this piece, I found a moving article written by reporter, Lizzie Pook. I paraphrase:
It’s Friday, November 18th, 1910. You’re out in the streets, part of a protest to allow women to vote, when you see a large policeman striding toward you, his eyes fixed on your face. As he gets closer, he raises his hands in a choking position. He shoves you violently to the ground, his hands rubbing against your body as he grabs and twists your breasts. You struggle to push him away, but his hands move down, finding their way under your dress and up to your groin. You kick out. He yells in frustration as he drops his helmet and baton on the cement. After he picks them up, he faces you, raises his arm and punches you square in the face.
You get physically attacked by bystanders as well, and no one attends to your wounds as the policeman arrests you and throws you in jail where you suffer more groping and abuse. When you join the other imprisoned women in a hunger strike, a female warden ties you to a chair and stuffs a four-foot-long tube down your throat to force feed you. When you get out of prison, wounded and scarred, your husband won’t let you back in the house and he kidnaps your children. You endure all of this, even though you’re aware that winning the battle might not happen in your lifetime. This may sound fantastical, like a violent scene in a Scorsese movie, but it isn’t. It happened, it was real, and the abusers had no remorse.
The Suffragette movement began in England in 1903, as defiant women used art, debate, window smashing and arson to get people’s attention. One of the most famous of all, Christable Pankhurst, who was at the forefront of the British movement,
was arrested and abused a multitude of times. The movement’s catch phrases were “Freedom or death.” “Trust in God. She will provide.” “Deeds, not words.” The message spread out into Scotland, all across the United Kingdom and made its way to the
United States. The 19th amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920. It read:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.
When I watched the State of the Union address on March 5th, 2024, I was gratified to see more than twenty Democratic Congresswomen aiming a clear message at the Supreme Court for taking away a woman’s right to have agency over her own bodies. These women sat together, wore white and commemorated the protesters who came before. Back in the day, the protestors ditched their tight corsets and long skirts for white dresses that allowed for more movement, accented by purple and gold sashes. They made a point of dressing well, wearing bright red lipstick, defying the stereotypical image of a strong-minded woman in masculine clothes, pebble thick glasses and galoshes, choosing instead to present a fashionable feminine image to the world. The message was, “We are pure and high minded and we don’t have to mimic a man to achieve our rights.” Dressed in her smartest clothes that conveyed an impression of femininity, leader Christabel Pankhurst strode around in an elegant and artistic full-length green satin dress with delicate embroidery and tricolor-striped regalia.
Now, in 2024, we’re fighting for the right to claim ownership of our own bodies. Once again. It makes me sad that not a whole lot has changed in all these years. It also makes me irate that some of the women who hold high positions in government today are not honoring their predecessors who fought so hard for equal rights under the law so they could run for office.
Remember these names:
Christabel Pankhurst, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmeline Parkhurst, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Cary Chapman Catt, Septima Poinsette Clark.
When we vote, we honor them. When we don’t vote, we stomp on their suffering and sacrifice. Because I’m aware of these women and their sacrifices, I wouldn’t dream of not voting and neither should any woman of voting age.
I want to be clear here that this blog is not a political statement. Although I’d like to, I have no recommendations about whom to vote for. That decision is up to each of us as part of the freedoms that we enjoy. But I do have a recommendation concerning how to think about it in a way that goes beyond political affiliations. Look for a candidate with a heart. A person who cares about other people. A person who listens, thinks and tells the truth. A person who makes you feel safe. And a person who honors women and our issues that are still hanging on by a thread.
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