Arkansas Vets Coalition

Veterans, Reserves and Active Duty from all parts of Arkansas and across the nation, coming together to support those persons who best exemplify the principles on which our nation was founded - Fiscal Responsibility, Independent & self-sustaining, Freedoms GUARANTEED by our Constitution and Bill of Rights, serving our country not for personal gain but for the common good!!
WE are dedicated to making a difference once more.
We have served in all branches of military beginning with the Revolutionary WAR and continuing in every conflict to include more recently from beaches of Normandy, in jungles of SE Asia, to conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, The Gulf War, Iraqi Freedom, all through the Cold War Period of 1945 - 1991, dedicating our lives to fighting terrorism in both Afghanistan and Iraq,
we now arise to serve again, fighting to reclaim our country and the principals upon which is was founded!!.

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03 October 2010

The Privilege of Voting

Judy Doucette 
Trust in God, and fear nothing... Gen. Lewis A. Armistead, CSA

A Veteran is someone who at one point in their life wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America', for an amount ' up to, and including their life'. That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country today, who no longer understand that fact!

This is definitely worth repeating.  November 2nd will soon be here. 

This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.  
  
 
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.'
Lucy  Burns
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.


Dora  Lewis
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. 


Alice  Paul
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.  


 
Mrs.  Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a  sixty-day sentence.
For  weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their  food -- all of it colorless slop -- was infested with worms.       
 

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? 
So, what will be your excuse for not exercising a hard won precious privilege??
Miss  Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York

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. 
       
Berthe  Arnold, CSU graduate
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.
   [ Is protecting of our liberties and way of life 'inconvenient'? for that is what not exercising your privilege to vote means]
  


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 American 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.
    
Conferring  over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S.  Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters,  Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence  Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul,  Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right)
 
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 for the Democratic, Republican Party or Independent   - Just remember to vote.
 
  

Helena  Hill Weed, Norwalk,  Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. Prison for carrying  banner, 'Go vernments derive their just powers from the  consent of the governed.'

History  is being made.  
  

  ARE you willing to be an active participant or continue as part of the voting apathy which prevails throughout the majority of American citizens? Continuing to stand by while allowing our elected officials to grab more and more power, tell us, The People, what is best for us, and much more?  It is your choice, which do your prefer??  This is the value of your vote!!



Jean McClellan-Chambers
Tea Party Patriots State Coordinator
AR Vets Coaliton
Vet 2 Vet USA
Arkansas Voter's Right of Recall
Arklahoma Veterans & Patriots
Founder & Regional Coordinator
Vet.2.Vet.AR@gmail.com
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