Why Women Should Vote

Great information Diane thank you for helping us remember why we should honor our mother''s and grandmother's every time we go into a voting booth.

Ebrownp, respect your call for proof. I haven't any other proof than the stories.
When I have more time to devote to research, I will look into it and come back with a response.
As for your statement that women and men should also have the right not to vote, unfortunately, women and men have always had that right, but for women,due only to the unfair practices of the government, whether it be slaves, women or those who didn't own land and the list goes on and on.

Robert, this thread is about the fight women went through in order to acieve that right and how we should try not to let our rights become unimportant.

I think you would agree that our right to privacy have been trampled, that the Constitution has been ignored and people, for the most part, have agreed to those practices, under the guise of patriotism.

Rights are lost when they become taken for granted and their importance is lost to the public which becomes uninterested and lazy.

And Senator Obama will do far more to enhance and preserve that right than John McCain every would. When Senator Obama was a Community Organizer he was responsible for a massive increase in black voter registration. There were more women registered than men!

Alice Paul's grandaughter, Lorraiane Paul, was a good friend of mine when I lived in California. We both were Vice Presidents and founding Executive Board members of the Coalition of Labor Union Women who created CLUE. We also worked on a number of projects together. Lorraine was a wonderful women who survived a terrible auto accident. She didn't let that prevent her from working to improve womens' lives.

BBB

Agree wholeheartedly JPB - I hate politics too..but for the reasons you mentioned above. There is not a straightshooter to be found in Politics. I can't see them anyway. Don't trust anyone...I have to do my best to choose the lesser of two evils in my opinion.

I have voted in every election since I was 18. I was excited about it even. I hope I can do that for my children as well. To me it was as much a defining moment as getting my drivers license.

I have to disagree with the phrase "has come to define politics".

Politics has always been that way... from the very dawn of democracy (both in Greece and here) until now.

Politics is a dirty business- always has been and always will be, with parties, and smears and backroom deals and game-paying BS. Women and men need to understand that if they want to participate.

I understand that - I hate it - but will always vote my conscience to the best of my ability.

Although - there have been years that I don't remember the venom that seems to permeate this one...maybe it was because I wasn't a member of A2K at the last election. (kidding - sort of - A2K has opened my eyes in many ways...not sure if it is good or bad)

I too belonged to CLUE and the League of Women Voters and I was in Washington, D.C., on the 70th anniversary of the 20th amendment and heard my grandmothers's name read from a list of 100's of suffragists.

I read once that after their 1st convention the leaders of CLUE when asked by the press what had gone on in the meeting hall they said, "we were not trading recipes".

BBB, I always love to hear that men or women stay devoted to the honorable legacy left by an ancestor.

Glad you mentioned it.

JPB, mismi and Tilly Wink, you all are steadfast voters despite the venom and ugliness of politics. Thank heaven. There are so many reasons why politics is corrupt. 'Twas ever thus. Wh0 knows why?

I think power has a lot to do with it. Power does corrupt and add greed to the mix, the best among us are affected. And when you look at all the goodies that are dangled before the eyes of everyone of them, it isn't surprising, although there is nothing about it that can be condoned.

Maybe this should be another thread (and I will create it if you want this discussion elsewhere), but I am a steadfast voter because of the venom and ugliness.

Politics works because it is an adversarial system (like our justice system). Any number of people are going to have differing interests... and with more people consensus becomes impossible.

The whole idea of Democracy is to give people a set of rules (i.e. a steel cage) and the let the various sides fight it out. As long as the basic rules are followed, it is anything goes. Nastiness is simply part of Democracy. There is no other way.

There is no other system of government that has ever worked in a large scale.

Ironically, I grew up halfway in the Quaker tradition (one parent was a Quaker). Part of this tradition is the idea of consensus-- the ideal is that no decision is made without agreement by the community. In my experience this doesn't work... there is always an underlying power struggle which is unspoken because after all Quakers don't care about power, but it is there.

I prefer that important fights are fought out in the open.

I just realized the irony of this tangent (nastiness in politics) in a thread about Alice Paul.

Alice Paul was about the nastiest political fighter there was. Look at how she treated Woodrow Wilson.

Alice Paul started her hunger strike before the "torture" took place... in fact she did everything she could to escalate the confrontation before and after her arrest. I am not saying that the officials were not responsible for their actions... only that Alice Paul was quite politically shrewd.

Alice Paul and the other Suffragette's savaged Woodrow Wilson's reputation -- whether the attacks on his character were true or not was no concern; all that mattered was the goal.

I am not saying this was a bad thing... quite the contrary, I love the story and respect the woman.

If you value your right to vote... understand it (and most any worthy political cause) came about as the result of hard fought and ugly politics.

Interesting point, Ebrown, mostly I prefer that too. The backshit (new version of baksheesh - back talk or back payments?) is stultifying, though it will always be with us, it seems a human way of legislation.

To me the level of palliative talk in political news combined with inappropriate undercuts in the absense of more than x-second sound bites/columns/tolerance for discourse/ gets discouraging and it comes from seemingly all sides.
What we have going on in discourse seems very lightweight and soundbitey. So many times, I'd like to hear serious argument from varied points of view.

I remember less and less of what my father ever said to me. I've never been clear on all he thought - he died when I was in my mid twenties, really faded when I was about twenty, and had hardly gotten a voice myself. But I do remember him talking about a country in africa with his own argument that "you can't say people aren't ready for democracy".

That sort of echoes for me, and I've agreed with him and not, in my mind, for years now. Sometimes I think we in the u.s. aren't ready for it, we slip slide away.
Or maybe democracy is all bought factions voting without fraud at the booth.

Anyway, I personally don't fathom in my bones being a u.s. citizen not voting if possible, woman or man.