The women were innocent and defenseless. 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 Burn, 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 cell mate, 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 sloop -- 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.

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. Frankly, voting often felt
more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was
inconvenient. One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that
movie, 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.

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it 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 Women's
Group 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 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.