The First Wave and Eminent Domain

Last night, I got my protein in the form of delicious raw fish at a local sushi place. Today, there was cheese and sour cream with the baked potatoes at lunch, which was a little more protein than yesterday. But before all of that, last night, I caught the end of the Hillary Swank movie about Alice Paul. I had seen clips of that at The Henry Ford exhibit about American women's suffrage. That was the first I'd ever heard of the movie, and my friends and I joked about what it must have cost The Henry Ford to cast an Oscar winner in their video. We then saw a "visualization" of a slave riots with nothing but recorded voices, timed lighting, and cardboard cut-outs. Obviously, they blew the budget on Hillary Swank.

Since then, the image of her playing Alice Paul, tied to a chair, with a tube in her throat, stuck with me. I'm not sure I would have her strength, but thanks to her, I don't need it. Not here, in the United States, at least. See, she and other activists were arrested for pointing out, in front of the White House, the hypocrisy of not allowing women to vote. She then went on a hunger strike in prison. When meeting with the prison psychologist, she said that the hunger strike was an old tactic of Ireland. Someone would starve themselves in strike on the another person's doorstep and if that person did not acquiesce to the striker's needs, that would result in a stinking corpse on one's front doorstep. When she encouraged other activists in the prison to strike as well, she was force fed. A leaked tale of her treatment made it to the press and it made news everywhere. The same thing today would barely bat an eyelash, but back before there were a billion people on the planet, it added to the changing tides in America after WW1.

I'm not sure if the movie captured the elation of the moment when the last necessary state ratified the 19th amendment or if it was me. I remember looking at old LHS yearbooks from before 1920, with all of the very relatable 17 and 18 year old women, thinking about how they could not vote. I don't think I remembered that the voting age was 21 until only a generation ago, but the feeling, much like the imagery, stuck with me. The thought of not being able to vote strikes fear in my heart. I guess that would explain why my potentially deadly near-miss on Super Tuesday didn't really hit me until the Friday afterwards. I just knew I had to vote.

Since the age of 7 and the 1988 presidential election, voting has been important to me. I've so-far only missed odd-year elections, which really, I shouldn't shirk the way I do. I'm voting on Tuesday, mainly because of the two state-wide ballot initiatives to do with eminent domain. The last statewide initiative about eminent domain did not go the way I wanted it to go. Obviously, Californians do NOT understand the "personal property right" of "crapping in your yard and sculpting with it."