Figure 1 – Suffragette who had survived prison being taken home. From the US LOC and in the public domain.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the nineteenth amendment. How poignant that one hundred years later we are locked in a titanic struggle for the franchise with democracy itself in the balance! How striking that the Resident at a celebration of the nineteenth amendment at the White House today took the occasion to insult Michele Obama, the most popular woman in the United States, and he did it with this usual approach, if you cannot say something articulately, say it inarticulately three times.

Peaceful protestors, seeking fundamental human rights, being dragged off in the streets at the President’s orders. We have seen it all before. 

Whisper – each Christmas  the U. S. Postal Service delivers ~ 500 million pieces of mail. The hypothetical 316 million pieces of mail associated with universal mail-in voting pales by comparison. 

Whisper – this is the same U. S. Postal Service that the Trump administration trusted to send out the ~ 139 million stimulus checks this past spring.

The government sought to intimidate and humiliate suffragettes in the early 20th century. Many were imprisoned and endured dark, unsanitary, rat-infested conditions and contaminated food. They were manhandled, forced to perform prison labor, and intentionally incarcerated with the general prison population. After their mail was withheld they went on hunger strikes and were brutally force-fed through nasal tubes. Figure 1 shows one such victim finally released from prison. THEY FOUGHT FOR OUR LIBERTIES! So, indeed, remember the women, who fought for the suffrage and VOTE!