Looking at some of the crap flying around as we approach the US presidential election, you may be inclined to throw your vote in the trash. Please don’t. Some people wouldn’t have even had the right to vote 100 years ago… check out the story of these feminist martyrs.

feminist martyrs

November 15, 1917, Occoquan Workhouse, Virginia, USA

40 prison guards armed with clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against 33 women wrongly convicted of “obstructing sidewalk traffic”. Women did not yet have the right to vote, and they’d been picketing the White House asking for that right. For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food, all of it colorless slop, was infested with worms. Here’s some details on what happened to three of them that night and over the course of their imprisonment.

LUCY BURNS’ hands were chained to the cell bars above her head. She was beaten and left hanging there all night, bleeding and gasping for air.

ALICE PAUL was one of the leaders of the picket, and embarked on a hunger strike. The guards tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she puked. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

DORA LEWIS was hurled into a dark cell where guards smashed her head against an iron bed, knocking her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and had a heart attack. Additional affadavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Yeah, and you can imagine what else they did, too.

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VOTE!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm and is filed under activism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.