“August 26th must be a voter registration holiday,” I said over the din of plates and banda music at Altadena’s neighborhood gem, El Patron. The fragrant aroma of enchiladas suizas wafted toward me. “Why?” Jenn asked. “Because it’s the day, 104 years ago, that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920,” I replied. It was a big deal globally and domestically.

Many of us are suffering from a kind of PTSD after “Reign of Error” at No. 45, especially because of the never-ending barrage of insane statements like how he should be on Mount Rushmore. Now we dare to hope that it will be the women who get him the sack he deserves.

Women’s Equality Day… Never heard of it? It simply meant that all women had won the “right” to vote in 1920, after a long, hard fight against the greatest voter suppression ever practiced. Just because we had the right to vote doesn’t mean many of us could. Jane Crow was still alive and well in the former slave states. There were dire consequences for women and men who tried to vote, including death threats – lynching is the worst form of voter suppression ever invented. The “softer” hurdles at the ballot box consisted of absurd guessing games and tests: “Boy, you have to recite the Preamble to the Constitution. You can’t do that? Then you can’t vote!”

Winning women’s suffrage was never easy, anywhere. The US campaign for women’s suffrage began in 1848; 72 years later, they finally succeeded. Gandhi observed women in the US and Britain from afar and derived many of his ideas for peaceful, non-violent social change from their example.

The situation was almost like a Zen koan: How do you win the election when you can’t vote for yourself to get it? And why did it take so long? Several factors are at play. Let’s start with…

• Ridiculous! Many American men are notoriously insecure about their “manhood.” Nothing has changed. In the 19th century, men feared that if women were allowed to vote, they would suddenly “wear the pants.” Women would go to work while men stayed home and took care of the house and children. Horrible! Today, some men are so cowardly that they feel “e-masked” when asked to wear a mask to protect themselves and others. Just imagine. And then there’s…

• Fear! If the society you live in tells you that your survival depends on a man to provide for you, and the only jobs outside the society don’t pay enough to live independently, then you choose survival. This obviously excludes social outcasts like single or widowed women. A person whose survival is threatened is the least likely to “cause offense” when it comes to social reform. This is one of the reasons why many white women opposed suffrage, mainly for religious reasons, but often also for, you guessed it, financial security. And let’s not forget that evergreen…

• Follow the money! While men claimed that women were “made” for housework, they were afraid of having to do the work when women had a role outside the home. Besides, if you can have a whole group of unpaid people do laundry, cook, childcare, sew, decorate, and care for the elderly, think of all that hidden free labor! And think of who benefits. The alcohol industry has invested, excuse the expression, millions of dollars to prevent women from voting because they feared that women would immediately vote for a ban on alcohol. Ironically, the amendment banning alcohol was passed before women were given the right to vote. After all, there was…

• Authority figures! Even respected men from the scientific and clerical world opposed women’s suffrage. Some preachers and scientists warned women that their ovaries would dry up if they voted. For a woman with 10 children, that didn’t sound like a threat. “Hey, I’m in!”

August 26th is Women’s Equality Day every year! This year we can celebrate 104 years of voting rights with Kamala Harris. As a mixed-race woman, she is black and of Indian descent and the first woman of color to run as a presidential candidate on a major party ticket.

I want to cry when I think of what their predecessors in the US suffragist movement would have felt if they could have seen this. Sure, the more famous white women would have been overjoyed, but even more overjoyed would have been Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and that woman of metal, Ida B. Wells. I call Ida that because she had a heart of gold, nerves of steel and ovaries of brass.

You would also be horrified if you knew how many people don’t vote. Ask everyone you know if they are registered. I have already found two people who had forgotten they had moved and re-registered.

When I think of Sojourner, Harriet, and Ida, a fantasy forms in my mind. If I had a magic wand and could change Mount Rushmore, I would put Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Ida B. Wells on it, while leaving room for President Kamala Harris. That’s a fantasy set in granite that I can support. Oh, and I would use the magic wand to make August 26th a federal voter registration holiday!

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