BY DIANE WILSON
The first hunger strike I did on a shrimp boat in Texas is kinda like that tree in the forest illustration. You know, does it make a sound if nobody hears it. I was hunger fasting on a shrimp boat and that was 1991 and I was still ignorant of the uses of cell phones, So there I was on a shrimp boat and a lot of folks were putting me thru the ringer on it. My mom and sisters and two brothers included. The only folks that knew about the hunger strike was the Formosa Plastics, a petrochemical plant, that I was fighting. So every day, here came the corporate officers in their black suits and they’d tell me how stupid I looked. Didn’t I realize how stupid I looked. Well, no I didn’t so I stayed there until the captain of the shrimp boat showed up and told me to get off his dang boat or he’d throw me overboard.
Amazingly, after 14 days I won everything I wanted on that hunger strike.
Now here I am on my 8th hunger strike in Washington DC and a hot day in Washington is whole lot like Texas minus the humidity. I had spent my first night in Washington dc on a porch swing, the wind on my face, and not a single mosquita around. Nobody rushed me to get up, I had an automatic alarm clock– old shrimping habits. Not counting the hunger strike, we have a pretty generous schedule. All us fasters and supporters were suppose to met at 10am under the trees across from the white house It is a lot more generous than the first codepink vigil back in 2003, pre Iraqi war, when we sat on stone cold bences in lafette park at 7am on very cold morning. Its not bad under the trees. We’ve got a bunch of Codepink banners left over from a hundred protests that we sit on and after a prayer and some singing, our day begins.
Visit the Codepink “Troops Home Fast” site

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