When\u00a0I filled out my ballot for the 2024 primary election, I thought about the women\u00a0who fought and suffered so I could do this important thing: vote. Because the politics\u00a0are so egregious right now, it weighs exceptionally heavy on my heart to think\u00a0that there are people who are so ambivalent about their right to vote, they
just don\u2019t bother. It\u2019s too inconvenient. They don\u2019t know anything about the\u00a0candidates. They don\u2019t like any of them. They have other things to do. My\u00a0mother stood in line with her walker when she was in her late eighties to vote\u00a0for Obama. Today, all we have to do is fill out a ballot and slip it into a\u00a0designated drop box.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0day after I voted, I asked a friend in her forties if she was aware of the Suffragettes,\u00a0groups of courageous women who endured physical and mental abuse to give her\u00a0the freedom to express her opinion. \u201cI don\u2019t know what that word means,\u201d my\u00a0friend said. \u201cI\u2019ve never heard it before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe\u00a0Suffragettes were an organization of activist women,\u201d I educated her, \u201cwho\u00a0fought for their rights under the banner of \u2018Votes for Women.\u2019 They were abused\u00a0terribly but they never gave up, and we stand on their shoulders each time we\u00a0cast a ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I hung up the phone, I wondered what one woman could do to raise the awareness\u00a0of citizens who don\u2019t bother to vote. It was no surprise that I turned to my\u00a0tried-and-true way to get things off my chest and make sense of them: I wrote. I\u00a0composed this blog to motivate women of all ages and races and the men who love\u00a0and support them, to get out and vote.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I began my research for this piece, I found a moving article written by reporter,\u00a0Lizzie Pook. I paraphrase:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0Friday, November 18th, 1910. You\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
You\u00a0get physically attacked by bystanders as well, and no one attends to your\u00a0wounds as the policeman arrests you and throws you in jail where you suffer more\u00a0groping and abuse. When you join the other imprisoned women in a hunger strike,\u00a0a female warden ties you to a chair and stuffs a four-foot-long tube down your\u00a0throat to force feed you. When you get out of prison, wounded and scarred, your\u00a0husband won\u2019t let you back in the house and he kidnaps your children. You endure\u00a0all of this, even though you\u2019re aware that winning the battle might not happen\u00a0in your lifetime. This may sound fantastical, like a violent scene in a Scorsese\u00a0movie, but it isn\u2019t. It happened, it was real, and the abusers had no remorse.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Suffragette movement began in England in 1903, as defiant women used art,\u00a0debate, window smashing and arson to get people\u2019s attention. One of the most\u00a0famous of all, Christable Pankhurst, who was at the forefront of the British movement,
was arrested and abused a multitude of times. The movement\u2019s catch phrases were\u00a0\u201cFreedom or death.\u201d \u201cTrust in God. She will provide.\u201d \u201cDeeds, not words.\u201d The message\u00a0spread 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: \u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged\u00a0by the United States or any State on account of sex.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I 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\u2019s 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, \u201cWe are pure and high minded and we don\u2019t have to mimic a man to achieve our rights.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now,\u00a0in 2024, we\u2019re fighting for the right to claim ownership of our own bodies. Once\u00a0again. It makes me sad that not a whole lot has changed in all these years. It\u00a0also makes me irate that some of the women who hold high positions in\u00a0government today are not honoring their predecessors who fought so hard for\u00a0equal rights under the law so they could run for office.<\/p>\n
Remember\u00a0these names:<\/p>\n
Christabel\u00a0Pankhurst, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emmeline Parkhurst, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia\u00a0Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Cary Chapman Catt, Septima Poinsette Clark.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0we vote, we honor them. When we don\u2019t vote, we stomp on their suffering and\u00a0sacrifice. Because I\u2019m aware of these women and their sacrifices, I wouldn\u2019t\u00a0dream of not voting and neither should any woman of voting age.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0want to be clear here that this blog is not a political statement. Although I\u2019d\u00a0like to, I have no recommendations about whom to vote for. That decision is up\u00a0to each of us as part of the freedoms that we enjoy. But I do have a\u00a0recommendation concerning how to think about it in a way that goes beyond\u00a0political affiliations. Look for a candidate with a heart. A person who cares\u00a0about other people. A person who listens, thinks and tells the truth. A person\u00a0who makes you feel safe. And a person who honors women and our issues that are\u00a0still hanging on by a thread. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When\u00a0I filled out my ballot for the 2024 primary election, I thought about the women\u00a0who fought and suffered so I could do this important thing: vote. Because the politics\u00a0are so egregious right now, it weighs exceptionally heavy on my heart to think\u00a0that there are people who are so ambivalent about their right to vote, theyjust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2469,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2468\/revisions\/2469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}