Hunger Strikes

[Ben]

Can someone please explain these to me? I have simply never grasped the concept.

I just read an article about a bunch of DREAM Act proponents going on a hunger strike. My reaction was, "so what?"

Obviously these do work with certain types of people, like University administrators, since it seems hunger strikes occur at colleges more than anywhere else. Maybe I'm just a big meanie, but I simply don't care one way or another about someone who of their own free will says, "I'm not eating until someone gives me what I want!"

[MicroBalrog]

THe idea is that if you're willing to suffer for your cause, it lends you more legitimacy. Sort of like how Ghandi did it.

[Ben]

"I'm going on a hunger strike because you raised my tuition $500" doesn't lend anyone legitimacy, it just makes them spoiled whiners. Maybe I could learn to be more sympathetic if more hunger strikers had a worthwhile cause.

[MicroBalrog]

"I'm going on a hunger strike because you raised my tuition $500" doesn't lend anyone legitimacy, it just makes them spoiled whiners. Maybe I could learn to be more sympathetic if more hunger strikers had a worthwhile cause.

Yes, but people who protest for a non-worthwhile cause always look silly, that's why it's called a non-worthwhile cause.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

I like hunger strikes. Lots of people who could stand to lose 20 lbs or so.

[lee n. field]

Can someone please explain these to me? I have simply never grasped the concept.

I just read an article about a bunch of DREAM Act proponents going on a hunger strike. My reaction was, "so what?"

Obviously these do work with certain types of people, like University administrators, since it seems hunger strikes occur at colleges more than anywhere else. Maybe I'm just a big meanie, but I simply don't care one way or another about someone who of their own free will says, "I'm not eating until someone gives me what I want!"

Done "right" it provides a steady stream of martyrs for the propaganda cadre to exploit.  

It requires an oppressor who cares about being thought good, like the Brits.  Real Nazis or fictional Draka would probably laugh, thank you for the idea, and cage up a few more in public view to starve as an object lesson.

[vaskidmark]

In the past hunger strikes were tools to either punish those who controlled the actual lives of the hunger strikers (the Irish held in British gaols) or to gain sympathy for the downtrodden over those who were trodding down on them (Ghandi).

When prison inmates go on a hunger strike they know that their keepers are both legally and morally obliged to prevent them from suffering any serious injury.  If/when the prison administration force-fed the inmate it gave added legitimacy to the inmate's cause and "demonstrated" the authoritarian stance of the administration.  When the downtrodden go o a hunger strike they are also looking to legitimatize their position.  In that case the trodder-down has no legal obligation to preserve the health/life of the striker, but failing to give in just "proves" how far they are willing to go to continue trodding-down on those they are already oppressing/repressing.

Going on a hunger strike to be allowed to continue to have a commodity paid for by taxes on those who either do not or cannot access that commodity themselves is just plain stupid.  Nobody is legall or morally obligated to fund the education of these idjits, so if they starve themselves to death it will at best prove they were too stupid to have benefitted from an education to begin with.  If one dies, will there be another to step in and take his/her place?  And if two or more die, will anybody really be moved to continue paying taxes to pay for fools like them to attend school?  (Notice I did not say "pay to educate them" or "pay for them to learn" - as apparently those are not the objects the strikers wish to achieve.)

Looking at this from the perspective of how this impacts the issue of illegal aliens - let me just say that any activity initiated by the illegal aliens to reduce the number of illegal aliens gets my full support.  Since this issue of going on a hunger strike is connected with the aim of achieving a political goal, I suggest that any attempt to intervene by using public or mental health subterfuges (involuntary commitment to a hospital/mental health facility) is a violation of the hunger strikers' First Amendment rights and must be prevented at all costs.  Where is the ACLU and their pre-emptive petitions for injunctions?

stay safe.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

a real hunger strike separates the men from the boys  can have a similar impact to those burning monks in vietnam

think of bobby sands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands

[taurusowner]

I hope it's about a 40-50 day hunger strike.  Maybe make it a week long water-strike too.

[White Horseradish]

a real hunger strike separates the men from the boys  can have a similar impact to those burning monks in vietnam

think of bobby sands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands

I usually think of Dr. Charles Latif Hyder. He was on a hunger strike in 1986, but nobody in US noticed it. He lost some weight and claimed credit for getting US to work on nuclear disarmament. Nobody noticed. He got all depressed, returned to his original weight and died of a heart attack.

[vaskidmark]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004BAAS...36.1677W

After 1983, Charles' devoted his full energy to exposing the threat of nuclear weapons and reactor by-products in the biosphere. His was a very public crusade with a seven month fast in Lafayette Park, Washington D.C.

A fast is not necessacarily a hunger strike.

Heck, our morning meal is named after the fact that we "fasted" overnight.

stay safe.

[White Horseradish]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004BAAS...36.1677W
 

A fast is not necessacarily a hunger strike.

Heck, our morning meal is named after the fact that we "fasted" overnight.

stay safe.

See, that's what your lying capitalist media told you. Soviet TV said it was a hunger strike. 

[vaskidmark]

See, that's what your lying capitalist media told you. Soviet TV said it was a hunger strike. 

Can't be a hunger strike unless you have some political goal to achieve by undertaking it.

Feeding your piehole may be difficult in Soviet Russia, but it's not a political goal.

For as we all know, in Soviet Russia you get fed to the people for breakfast.  At least on Thursdays.  'Cause everybody knows Thursday it's Soylent Green.

stay safe.

[White Horseradish]

Can't be a hunger strike unless you have some political goal to achieve by undertaking it.

Hyder had a political goal - nuclear disarmament.

For as we all know, in Soviet Russia you get fed to the people for breakfast.  At least on Thursdays.  'Cause everybody knows Thursday it's Soylent Green.

stay safe.

Nope. Two words for ya - blood sausage.  

[stevelyn]

It doesn't work if one does not care if you starve yourself to death.

[vaskidmark]

It doesn't work if one does not care if you starve yourself to death.

I think you are saying that the goal of a hunger strike is either death or the political goal.  One has to be willing to die for one's goal.

Hyder just went on a weight-loss diet.  Seven month's fast & he's still alive proves it was not a hunger strike as we use that term.

Just being pedantic.

stay safe.