Insights
Celebrate women’s rights - and keep them going
It is insulting that one of the first
criticisms of Kamala Harris as Joe
Biden’s vice presidential pick was
the false claim that she “may be ineligible”
due to the fact that her parents were
not U.S. citizens when her mother gave
birth to her in the state of California.
Funny that while Harris
was actually running for
president against Biden and
23 others in the Democratic
presidential primary earlier
this year, the issue of her
“eligibility” to serve as
president never came up.
Clearly, the opposition
didn’t take her seriously
back then. Also notable
is the fact that Harris and
former President Barack
Obama, who both happen
to be Black Americans, are
the only two presidential
candidates whose “natural
born citizenship” has
been called into question by detractors.
For the record, you don’t have to be a
descendant of someone who came over
on the Mayflower to serve as president
of this country. You just have to be born
here, or born to U.S. citizens elsewhere
if at least one of the parents resided in
the United States or one of its outlying
possessions prior to the person’s birth.
I bring this up because Harris stands
on the shoulders of the thousands of
women who braved adversity to orchestrate
the ratification of the 19th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution 100 years
ago on Aug. 26. To date, this century-old
amendment remains one of the most
momentous leaps forward for women, as
it gave them the right to vote. Actually,
that’s not quite correct. Women weren’t
“given” this right. They fought for it
long and hard. It was, in every respect,
a battle.
This fight actually began in 1848, back
when women could not own property,
legally sign a contract, or control their
own finances. Because they couldn’t
vote, women had no leverage to make
changes to what basically amounted to
their position in society as “possessions”
of either a father or a husband. And the
idea of women voting was so preposterous
at the time that even attendees of the
6
first-ever women’s rights convention in
Seneca Falls, New York that year could
barely pass a suffrage resolution among
themselves.
It took 72 years of organizing, picketing,
marching, hunger strikes, and being
beaten and jailed in order to convince
the men holding power in
the nation’s capital that it
was in their best interest to
allow women to vote. Some
of their arguments were
less than admirable: white
supremacy and temperance,
for example. In 1913, seven
years from the finish line,
suffragists Alice Paul, Lucy
Burns, and fellow members
of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association
paraded along Pennsylvania
Avenue toward
the White House the day
before President Woodrow
Wilson’s inauguration. Police
officers did nothing as men attacked
them. Nearly 100 women were hospitalized
because of their injuries. Still, they
persevered.
In January 1917, as Wilson was about
to begin his second term, suffragists
decided to picket outside the White
House every single day until the 19th
Amendment passed. When the U.S.
entered World War I that April, the
picketing was seen as unpatriotic (sound
familiar?), despite the women’s suffrage
movement supporting the war effort.
They were often attacked, arrested and
jailed for weeks or months at a time.
In jail, they were subject to horrendous
conditions and beatings (and probably
more) by guards. It would be three more
years before this fight would bring about
the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Even then, voting was mostly a white
woman’s privilege. But it was a start.
Those efforts on the suffrage battlefield
served as the catalyst for women
around the United States to be able to
shatter the political glass ceiling on state
and local levels. Yet to date, only four
women have been able to crack the national
political vault: Geraldine Ferraro,
Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton and now
Kamala Harris.
Here on Guam, Cynthia Johnston
Torres and Lagrimas L.G. Untalan were
our trailblazers - the first women to win
seats in the Guam Legislature back in
1954. They too faced adversity, having
eggs thrown at them at rallies and being
accused of selling their bodies for votes.
Today, Guam is the most progressive
entity in the entire United States with
regard to women in politics, as we have
our first Maga’håga, the honorable
Lourdes Leon Guerrero, and a twothirds
majority female Guam Legislature.
While women have come a long way
in the last 100 years, the treatment of
Ms. Harris proves we still have a long
way to go. The United States, as no
one needs reminding, has yet to elect
a woman president. In that regard, we
are behind 29 countries that Wikipedia
reports as currently having female heads
of state.
A USA today series by Nicole Carroll
highlighting the Women of the Century
from the 50 states and U.S. territories
mentions activists Cecilia Cruz Bamba,
Beatrice Flores Emsley, and Agueda
Iglesias Johnston (Cynthia’s mother)
from Guam, and Judge Ramona Villagomez
Manglona from the CNMI as other
trailblazers in our region.
The headline of Carroll’s report notes
that “Women of the Century didn’t succeed
despite adversity, but often because
of it.”
Here’s hoping that Kamala Harris and
many other women around our nation do
the same this year.
Jayne Flores is the director of the
Bureau of Women’s Affairs and a longtime
journalist. Contact her at [email protected].
Harris stands on the shoulders of the thousands
of women who braved adversity to orchestrate
the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution 100 years ago on Aug. 26.
rom the
comment box
Guam:
Where America’s
next war begins?
wonder if people are thinking that
I hitting Guam will be like hitting
Hawaii in WWII. Good thing I’m not
a military person because I would
think that if I were to target any
place and had just one chance before
retaliation might eliminate me and my
country, I think I would go for multiple
targets, all key and all at once
because there might not be a second
chance.
—Sylvia Stake
Nothing really new regarding
China especially in the past 5-10
years. Seems like China keeps on
doing what they’ve been doing and
keep getting away with it. Not so sure
China can afford to go to war with
the U.S., especially considering it still
owes China $1.1 trillion in debt.
—Rob Wolford
can safely say that it would not be
I only a war between China and the
United States but it will rapidly turn
into a world war. Everyone would
be the losers’ friends and enemies.
The leadership of these two powers
should realize we are not living in the
20th century where wars are fought
conventionally. We are living in the
21st where nuclear arms are part of
national armaments on both sides.
Cooler heads must prevail.
—Win J. Thomas
They talk only about China’s arsenal
and what they will do to the
U.S. and Guam, but they know what
will happen to them if they should
ever do something like that. China
knows that it will be the end of their
country. So, this war will not happen
and they know it.
—Frank San Nicolas Muna