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Faces of the Voted: The Rockaways, Queens

“People are voting in the dark. There are no lights, there is no heat.”

It was how NPR’s Robert Smith described the situation at the polls early this morning, in the Rockaways, Queens, which is in one of the regions hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy’s wrath. Of the 38 polling stations that had to be relocated in the borough, 23 are here — in tents, outdoors, running on generators, and some without heat at all.

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explore-blog:

New York State Demonstration Voting Machine circa 1900. We’ve come a long way technologically – do your share of pushing cultural progress forward as well by showing up to vote.

Women of Protest: A Feminist History Refresher  

It wasn’t until 1920 that women were granted suffrage, but it was 1917 when members of the National Women’s Party — Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others — picketed outside the White House, burning copies of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches and demanding the right to vote. What resulted — mass arrests (most for “obstructing traffic”), unlawful imprisonment and bloody beatings — became known as the Night of Terror, though it’s fair to say most among my generation don’t know it.

The Night of Terror took place on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Workhouse Prison, in Occoquan, Virginia, ordered his guards to teach the suffragists a lesson. For weeks, the women’s only water had come from an open pail. Their food had been infested with worms. But on this night, some 40 prison guards wielding clubs beat the women senseless — grabbing, dragging, choking, kicking and pinching them, according to affidavits recounting the attacks. 

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