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Life in the Fast Lane
The heated discussion over dems-talk regarding tomorrow’s solidarity fast has caught my eye – and judging by my inbox, the eyes of many other Dems. After reading claims that a fast will provide action to augment the Dems’ words and debates over the Dems’ endorsement process, I have made my own decision.
I will not fast tomorrow.
If Friday’s fast were about solidarity with Harvard’s workers, then I firmly believe my decision would be different. I can’t improve on the words of Eva Lam in LegCom’s new report on the status of Harvard’s workers when she writes, “Harvard students' very comfortable lives are made possible by the Harvard employees who clean our buildings, cook our meals, and keep our campus safe, and we owe them the highest possible standard of respect and fair treatment.” Amen.
The fast tomorrow, however, is about solidarity with Harvard’s hunger strikers, not with Harvard’s workers.
The hunger strikers present a difficult story. The purpose of a hunger strike, as one of the many dems-talk emails remarked, is to threaten your opponent with a very slow and very public act of suicide. Gandhi went on a hunger strike to protest his nation’s continuing colonization. Alice Paul went on a hunger strike to protest the disenfranchisement of American women. Inmates at Guantanamo have gone on hunger strikes – and have been force-fed as a result – to protest their nebulous incarceration. Whether or not you agree with these individuals, you must recognize the severity of their situations. The threat of suicide was neither used nor taken lightly.
Increased wages, union membership for more guards, and improved grievance procedures are all important to the lives of people who are themselves important to the lives of all Harvard students. But I flatly reject that these issues merit a student taking his or her own life. Human life – whether Harvardian or not – is worth far more than a raise of $2/hour and the addition of 32 guards to the local union. But the hunger strikers are threatening to kill themselves over such demands, so I will not join in solidarity with them.
And if, on the other hand, the hunger strikers have no intention of taking their hunger to its fatal conclusion if their demands are not met, then their strike is merely symbolic. That would unconscionably weaken the grave threat of a hunger strike, putting it on par with a walk-out or a protest rally. This hunger strike, therefore, is lose-lose: either students die, or students make a mockery of the most serious type of protest.
Filed under: hunger strikes • posts for which I apologize due to their length
Hi Kyle, (For
Hi Kyle,
(For transparency's sake, I'll put this email up in the comments section of DemApples, too.)
Thanks for the response. As before, I will not support this hunger strike, though I'm very glad that you're not willing to kill yourself over this.
That being said, the idea of refusing food until hospitalization seems comparable to committing partial self-immolation. That is, you're willing to set yourself on fire, but you have a friend nearby with a fire extinguisher to put you out before you can do any real harm. In this case, your friend is a nurse at UHS, and the fire extinguisher is an IV needle, but the principle is the same: the hunger strike is about show, not substance, and that cheapens the concept of a hunger strike.
To be clear, by no means do I think the solution to this "cheapening" is to actually go all the way and starve yourself to death. I think you guys should just end the hunger strike now and find a different way to protest: one that doesn't compromise the most effective -- and most serious -- method available to protesters.
Thanks,
Max
Hi Max. A few questions for
Hi Max. A few questions for you.
1) $2 an hour extra means an extra $4000 over the course of the year, more for people working overtime, which is many of the workers. That's 1/6 of their current salary of $24,000. If that money means they can afford the medication they need, or to send their kids to college, is it worth it then?
2) What strategy would you suggest the strikers use instead?
Max, just wondering: when is
Max, just wondering: when is a hunger strike acceptable? I can sort of gather it's acceptable for you when it's sincere - but what makes you think the Harvard hunger strikers are insincere?
First, let me address the issue of the graveness of the threat. I don't think that it's "slow suicide" - Kyle can tell you more about this than I can, but the hunger strikers have been and will be under medical supervision, and I don't think they're going to resist hospitalization when medical staff determine it's necessary. They are not going to kill themselves for the sake of killing themselves. But I also don't think it's merely symbolic. You could experience this for yourself if you did the fast tomorrow, but if you don't want to - which I certainly respect - I'll tell you from my experience in the past week that giving up food for one day is uncomfortable, and giving up food for two days really sucks. The hunger strikers are doing something exponentially more dangerous than that. If they get to the point at which they have to be hospitalized, they'll have some pretty severe health problems - nothing I'm qualified to describe to you, but I suspect you'd agree that the hunger strikers are subjecting themselves to a risk that's much greater than merely "symbolic." They aren't doing this for the glamor of activism; they're doing it because they believe in the cause enough to put themselves in tremendous risk. I don't see why we should deem them insincere if they aren't going to go as far as death.
Second, on the issue of this being about the hunger strikers - I assure you that it is not. I am not fasting tomorrow solely because I think it's really freaking awesome that people like Kyle are starving themselves - I promise I like my food more than that. I am fasting tomorrow not in solidarity with the hunger strikers alone, but in solidarity with their cause. In fact, I confess to some doubts about the prudence of a hunger strike - but the decision has been made, it's out of my hands, and now I'm going to support the campaign in any way I can short of severely endangering my health, because I don't have nearly as much courage as Kyle or the other hunger strikers. This hunger strike is about the workers, and guard after guard has thanked those who are hunger striking and those who come to vigils and rallies. It's not about the hunger strikers; it's about the guards. Same goes for the fast. I understand that with all the attention given to the particular issue of the hunger strike today, you might think that we're developing a martyr complex about the strikers - and we've been doing our job wrong if that's the impression you've gotten, because the hunger strike and the solidarity fasts are fundamentally about the workers.
One other thing: solidarity fasts are also a good way of raising consciousness - when I fast and wear a patch that says 'Ask me why I'm fasting,' it's a much more effective way to tell people about the issue than all of my irritating mass emails.
Finally, since you were gracious enough to quote me, let me remind you that the obligation to treat workers with the highest standard of respect doesn't just fall on Harvard, the abstract institution - it falls on each and every one of us, because we're the direct beneficiaries. And so I understand if you don't want to fast for any reason; I won't question you on that. But please do know that when I wrote those words, I didn't just mean that we as individual students have an obligation to support our security guards in word over open email lists; we have an obligation to support them in deed as well. So please sign the petition (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/slam/petition6) if you haven't already, and please come out to the rally at 1 PM tomorrow outside of Mass Hall if you're free, and please come to the vigil at 9 PM tomorrow at Hillel if you can make that too. Just don't quote me as saying that you can fulfill your obligation to repay Harvard workers by sitting around and agreeing in principle.
Eva, I find a hunger strike
Eva,
I find a hunger strike acceptable when the cause of the strike is worth the sacrifice of the striker's life, and when other means of protest have been exhausted. I'll believe you on the latter part of that definition if you tell me that the workers' rights movement has tried everything else, but I don't think you can convince me on the former part: these issues are simply not worth a student's life.
My blog post originally had another paragraph that I took out for fear that it was too snarky on a serious issue. It read:
"Like the good reform Jew that I am, I take a break from eating my steady diet of woefully unkosher ham-and-cheese for one fast day each year. I fast out of repentance towards a God who -- to my knowledge -- has yet to spend the night guarding the Yard or any of the Houses to support a family on a less-than-living wage. So if the Dems asked me to give up a day of food for the workers I see all the time, I would gladly agree."
This is to say, I'm perfectly willing to fast when the cause is right. But when the cause is supporting this hunger strike, that's not up to snuff.
Also, I reject your statement that hunger strikers have a courage that you or I lack. Discretion is the better part of valor, and it takes discretion not to threaten to kill yourself over the sort of issues being argued today. Similarly, I'm not at all surprised that workers would appreciate the hunger strike on their behalf. But perhaps they're not thoughtfully weighing the serious consequences of a failed hunger strike against the benefits they stand to receive from its possible success.
Hunger strikes are not for consciousness-raising. They are for a last-ditch attempt to get out of a desperate situation. Anything less compromises the effectiveness of hunger strikes as a method of serious protest.
Again, I'm willing to fast for a day in support of Harvard's workers. But I will not support students who publicly threaten suicide -- and that is the manner in which Friday's "solidarity fast" has been publicized.
As a way to perhaps find the
As a way to perhaps find the halfway point between "I am willing to die for my cause" and "yet another protest", I propose that hunger strikers should instead break a leg. They should then threaten to break the other leg if, in set amount of time, demands are not met. At no point is the student's life seriously at risk, but it manages to send a strong message without cheapening the value of a hunger strike.
In fact, the message would likely be taken more seriously by the university.
</sarcasm>
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I am one of the hunger
I am one of the hunger strikers. I am not committing slow suicide.
However, I am not eating until the administration supports security guards demands or until I have to be hospitalized. This is not on par with Guantanamo detainees or Gandhi. We are not starving ourselves to death.
We are instead putting the health of Harvard students on the conscience of this administration. This is not suicide and it is not comparable to the hunger strikes you mention. (Keep in mind that I do not speak for all hunger strikers; this is how far I am committed to go and others may choose differenty.) However, it is more grave than a protest or rally and that is because this issue warrants more than a protest or rally. I hope you agree.
If you still cannot stand in solidarity with those tactics, I would love to know why, feel free to email me personally and we can talk about it.