Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
6/23/11
The past could be our future if the Tea Party Republicans have their way!
onNC woman sterilized because state deemed her ‘promiscuous’
10/12/10
THE NIGHT OF TERROR- Women's Suffrage
I would like to thank my good friend Curtis McDermott for helping me to remind women and men alike what is at stake Nov. 2nd, 2010.
Normally I would not tell another woman how to vote. I would only encourage her to vote. This election is different because the Tea Party, GOP and Religious Right are trying to take women and our Country backwards. We cannot go backwards and succeed as a Country! If you vote for the Tea Party Candidate or the Republican Candidate you are voting against our grandmothers and our great grandmothers and all their sacrifice's. You also vote against your own daughters and granddaughters!-Mem Oct. 15, 2010 Added Updates
7/28/10
Why Women Should Vote
Here are some stories of our history and a great reminder of the abuse that women went through to have the right to vote. They fought for their future daughters, granddaughters and every woman in the United States. My hope is to be as brave as these women were so that I too can make a difference for my children and their children. Many years have passed but the sacrifice will always touch those of us who feel the camaraderie with these women, and their strength to right a wrong. ~Mem
This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.
Women picket the White House
Lucy Burns
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
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.' They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
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.
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. Links to photos
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because- -why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
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 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.
History is being made.
Read Jailed for Freedom from Gutenberg.
Visit Gwenny At Newsvine
7/11/10
Sarah Palin Losing Ground With "Real Women"
I have long questioned how anyone can call themselves a "Christian" and support or turn a blind eye to the hate, violence and racism of Sarah from Alaska. I have especially been baffled by the women who support her. Most women that I know have a maternal instinct and would never use or throw their own children under the bus for any reason. Most women cry when they see an animal in pain or dying. Not Sarah! Sarah proudly announces that "Real Women" shoot moose! (As seen on the bag she carries) Sarah also states that they hunt for "sport" as well. I don't know any women like that but maybe I just don't feel the need to know any women like that.I also don't feel the need to "know" any "Christians" who would support, condone or turn a blind eye to the invoking of violence, hate and racism. That is not the kind of world I want my granddaughter to be left with. I am still waiting for the "Real Christians" to stand up and say not in our Country! I'm still waiting for the "Real Christians" to stand up and say we will not support a Known Liar who uses God and is a False Profit, For Profit. I'm still waiting for the "Real Americans" to stand up and say you will not take us backwards, you will not cause division in our Country so that you can get rich on our fears and anger....still waiting...but maybe someone is standing up and maybe Alaskans are ready to tell the rest of us what they know?~Mem
For some reason, Sarah Palin and her acolytes, or as she likes to call them, the “mama grizzlies,” want us to believe that politically conservative mothers speak for all mothers and that they have a corner on the political motherhood market.
Sure, I’m glad that women, especially mothers, of all political persuasions are finding and exercising their political voices, especially the ones who realize they can do it without demonizing the opposition. That’s why I’m so excited that over 50 amazing mothers of various political stripes agreed to be featured in my Mothers of Intention book that will be coming out late this fall thanks to the amazing people (especially Lucy Chambers!) at Bright Sky Press. In addition to great essays, the book explores the political revolution women and mothers are building online and through social media.
So I have to take exception to Palin trying to horn in on the political mom territory by implying through her rhetoric and advertising that her right-wing supporters are the ones who created this. They didn’t. We were out here shaking things up when she was still visiting the Beehive Beauty Shop to have her hair done in her pre-governor days.
Read More....
10/9/08
THE AMERICAN PROMISE-FROM THE WOMEN FOR OBAMA
IF YOU ARE A MOM, GRANDMA, AUNT, SISTER OR BEST FRIEND THEN WE ASK THAT YOU PASS THIS ON. TAKE THIS VIDEO VIRAL TO REMIND THE COUNTRY WHY WE MUST VOTE THIS YEAR. WE MUST STAND UNITED TO CHANGE THIS COUNTRY! IF YOU ARE A FATHER, GRANDPA, UNCLE, BROTHER OR BEST FRIEND THEN STAND WITH US TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN AND THEIR FUTURE! -MEM
7/18/08
McCain and Rape Joke
Sam Stein-The Huffington Post News circulated fast late Tuesday afternoon that back in 1986, during his initial run for the Senate, John McCain allegedly told a crude joke about rape involving a woman's affection for an ape.
The story, which was reprised on the blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion before being blasted out by Think Progress, goes like this: In an appearance before the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington D.C., McCain supposedly asked the crowd if they had heard "the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die?"
The punch line: "When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"
Eeeshh. The joke, as one can imagine, did not go over well with various women's groups, which responded with indignation. But the McCain campaign denied that he had ever said the offensive gag.
"It's pretty obvious to us that this is a politically motivated sideshow," Torrie Clarke, McCain's spokeswoman at the time, said back in 1986. Till this day it has never been proven definitively true or false whether the Senator ever said the line.
The Huffington Post reached out to the original reporter in that story, Norma Coile (who after talking to multiple sources months after it was told wrote about the response to the rape joke in the Tuscon Citizen) to find out if she thought it was true.
"I'm not sure exactly what the wording was of the joke, but something was said. Some joke involving a rape and ape was said. Enough women repeated it to me at the time and the McCain campaign had a non-denial denial," said Coile, now with the Arizona Daily Star. "It came after his 'Seizure World' joke, in which he referred to the [retirement community] Leisure World as Seizure World... I just think it reinforced this idea that John McCain is humor-challenged. Whatever his qualities, he seems to have a tin ear for how these jokes will go over."
Indeed, while this anecdote occurred more than 20 years ago, McCain has occasionally found himself with his foot in his mouth throughout his time in public office. Back in 1998, he odiously declared before a GOP crowd: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
More recently he joked that it might be good for the United States to keep exporting cigarettes to Iran as cancer would prove an effective weapon against that country's citizens.
But venturing into the extremely sensitive subject of rape and humor is not something that - even 22 years later - will endear McCain to the women voters his campaign has sought to recruit. And organizations in Arizona that weighed in on that 1986 line see it as another example of the Senator not being sensitive to female issues and concerns.
"I don't think we can say one example like that is indicative of someone's character. But certainly I think John McCain has made lots of quotes where he says jokes like that," said Linda Barter, head of the Arizona Women's Political Caucus, which objected to McCain's joke at the time. "Our organizational purpose, however, is to increase the number of elected and appointed women, and we support pro-choice women, so there is certainly a division there. John McCain has not been pro-choice or supportive of issues related to women's reproductive health."
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