Hope

Happy election day to all! I am so excited to see how things will turn out tonight, and have no qualms about expressing my support for Barack Obama. However, this is not a political blog, and I greatly respect everyone's right to vote the way they feel is best. The most important thing is just to VOTE. I don't understand how some could take such an important right so lightly. We are so blessed to live in a Democracy and to have our voices heard. SO VOTE PEOPLE!! Especially you women. I was reading an article about the fight for women's suffrage and what amazing women like Lucy Burns and Alice Paul did to achieve a right that so many of us take for granted.

Here is an Excerpt from this article by BY JULIE ALBRECHT ROYCE:
(read the entire article here.)

Women must not take right to vote for granted.
"In 1918, women picketed President Woodrow Wilson for what is now our birthright. Wilson had them arrested on the bogus charge of blocking traffic. They were convicted, incarcerated and tortured at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. The first night in prison, Lucy Burns was beaten, and while bleeding and gasping for air was chained to the bars of her cell so that her feet barely touched the ground. In an adjacent cell, Doris Lewis was knocked unconscious when her head was smashed against an iron bed. Her cell mate, believing Lewis was dead, suffered a heart attack. Alice Paul embarked on a hunger strike and was removed to solitary confinement in the prison's psychiatric ward. To avoid the criticism that would surely accompany a starvation death, Paul's jailers snaked a tube down her throat and poured in raw eggs. It required five people to immobilize Lucy Burns so she could be force-fed. When she refused to open her mouth a feeding tube was shoved up her nostril. The actions of Paul and Burns inspired their fellow suffragettes to join the hunger strike. President Wilson solicited a psychiatrist to have Paul declared legally insane and institutionalized -- a quick fix to a thorny problem. Fortunately, the doctor, a man of integrity, told the president of the United States that "courage in women is often mistaken for insanity," and that although Paul was brave and intelligent, she was not crazy. Word of the women's ordeal was smuggled to the press. Continuing demonstrations pressured Wilson, and on June 4, 1919, seeing no other honorable resolution, he urged Congress to append the 19th Amendment to the Constitution to guarantee women the right to vote."

I am so proud of these women and feel grateful for the right they fought so hard to pass on to me.

And, as an artist, I would be remiss not to mention all the amazing work that has come from artists truly moved by this campaign. A few of my Favorite Barack Obama Posters are below.
Enjoy!

By geministudio at Etsy (available here.)

Shepard Fairey's Obama Poster

by David Choe

Poster by Brad Kayal

Another by Shepard Fairey

A collection of Hypercat's Obama Posters