In a Country Far, Far Away
For the most part, I had a good weekend. The ominous cloud overhead, unfortunately, was all the news streaming in from Iran in devastating sound bites. It’s a news story that renders one helpless. I feel bad, first, for not knowing enough about the situation, but I feel even worse that I can’t do anything. What in world could I do from my little home in southeastern, PA? I changed my Twitter location to say that I’m tweeting from Tehran. The reason for this being that the Iranian Powers that Be are trying to stop people from blogging and tweeting about protests. The more people they have to shut down, the more difficult the task. I don’t really think that’ll help, but it made me feel better. But maybe I’m not supposed to feel better, maybe no one is.
I am moved by the bravery and dedication displayed again and again by the Irani people. I can only hope (HOPE) that I would have it in me to do what they’re doing—to protest knowing I could be beaten badly or lose my life. “Give me liberty or give me death.”
It is only in the presence of people willing to go to such extremes that realities change. Below is a speech given by Susan B. Anthony with regards to her arrest. She voted in the 1872 Presidential election and was arrested for it. The right to vote is an essential one, and one that was not automatically given to black people or woman living in the United States. They fought (and fought) to make it happen. The Iranians are not fighting for the right to vote. They are fighting for the right to an honest election and to protest in peace. It is a fight I hope and pray that they win.
Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.
For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity.
To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.
Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.
Susan B. Anthony - 1873