Centennial of Women Voting in California

[mswyrr]

Centennial of Women's Vote in California is 2011: Berkeley Celebrations Planned

By Steven Finacom
Tuesday March 01, 2011

In June of 1908, as Berkeley prepared to ceremonially lay the cornerstone of a new City Hall, a group of local women registered a protest. They weren’t against the building itself, but wanted to use the occasion bring attention to the cause of Women’s Suffrage, the campaign to achieve voting rights for women.

California—and most of the United States—did not, at the time, grant women the vote.

The Berkeley Political Equality League, under the leadership of Mary McHenry Keith, proposed placing a letter to the future in the cornerstone.

“We…hereby commit the cause of Equal Suffrage for man and woman to the judgment of future generations, in the confidence that in after years whoever shall read these lines will wonder that so late as the year 1908 the women of California were political serfs; they were taxed without representation, governed without their consent, and classed under the law with idiots, insane persons, criminals, minors and other defective classes…We, about to die, greet you, the inheritors of a better age, men and women of the future Berkeley, equal before the law, enfranchised citizen; co-operating in all public service.”

The all male Town Trustees ultimately looked askance at the proposal and the letter wasn’t included in the City Hall cornerstone. But this month, 103 years later, Berkeley’s early equal rights crusaders will finally have the last official say.

On Tuesday, March 8, 2011, the Berkeley City Council will proclaim a resolution in that same City Hall commemorating the 100th anniversary of women winning the vote in California in 1911, calling it a “triumph that has been partially forgotten or ignored, and has for too long been denied its rightful place in the history of our state.”

The resolution is sponsored by Susan Wengraf and Linda Maio, the two women who currently serve on the nine member City Council.

How women won the vote in California will be a focus of both statewide and local celebration and educational activities over several months. Activities will climax in October, the anniversary of the October 10, 1911, statewide election when women won the right to votes by a narrow margin.

( full text )

Just had to share this! One hundred years of California women voting! Wooot. The lovely image at the top there is an example of the rather sophisticated ad campaign suffragists in California waged -- it used the cutting edge graphic style of Art Nouveau. As you can see, the woman in it is posed before the place where the Golden Gate Bridge would be built about twenty years later! It was already iconic then, and the image was meant to speak to the state pride of male Californian voters, particularly those in the Bay Area.

Not surprisingly:

[the_future_modernes]

Houseboaters being 'socially cleansed' from Olympics area

River Lea residents fear licence could rise from £600 to £7,000, but British Waterways says increase only option

Houseboat residents near the Olympic development site in east London are accusing British Waterways of an attempt at "social cleansing". They say proposed changes to rules for living on the canals before the 2012 Games could force hundreds of people from their water-based homes.

British Waterways, which manages 2,200 miles of canals and rivers, has put forward changes to the mooring rules on the river Lea, in east London, that could increase the cost of living on the waterway from about £600 to £7,000 a year. Residents see the move as a deliberate attempt to drive them away.MORE