Movie Monday: SUFFRAGETTE

We thought we might go this weekend to see THE 33, but then we decided no, maybe something else. We landed on SUFFRAGETTE, a tough, dark, historical film that tells the true story of a group of women in London fighting for women's right to vote. The fight in London had been peaceful for many years, to no avail, so finally the suffragettes decided they needed to ACT, not just talk. And so they threw rocks at store windows and set bombs in post boxes and burned buildings. They spent time in jail where they were treated horribly. And finally, finally, something happened to give them the platform they needed for change. (Go see the movie to find out what!)

It's not a fun movie to watch, but an important one. I'm so grateful for these women and women like them who made possible the rights I now enjoy. One cool thing they did at the end of the film was run a scroll of different countries with the year voting rights were extended to women. The last country on the list, Saudi Arabia, still doesn't have voting rights for women. According to the film voting rights have been promised just this year (2015). (Just for some perspective, it was 1918 for England and 1920 for the United States.) My favorite part of the movie was when they cut to the actual footage of the suffragettes marching in the streets of London. Beautiful and inspiring.