Fasts and Hunger Strikes: is there a difference?

Mia Farrow has embarked on a 21-day fast to “show solidarity” with the people of Darfur. "I'm just an actress. I'm not presuming anybody will care whether I starve to death or whether I go on a long hunger strike or what. But it's a personal matter. I can't be among those that watch - and I honestly couldn't think of anything else to do," she said. Both Farrow herself and the media sometimes call her action a fast and at other times a hunger strike. Is there a difference?

The type of fast that Farrow has embarked upon is often called a “political fast” to distinguish it from medical fasts (to cleanse the body of toxins, prepare for a medical procedure, lose weight) and religious fasts (Ramadan, Yom Kippur, Lent. . . .) Both fasts and hunger strikes involve abstaining from food. Insofar as its purpose is to draw attention to a cause and to rally the support of the faithful by jeopardizing the health and perhaps life of a beloved public figure, a fast has much in common with a hunger strike.

The difference, I think is subtle but important and perhaps best examined by looking at Gandhi’s fasts (he went on 17) and the fasts of Cesar Chavez.

Gandhi described four reasons for fasting: (1) To express his own deep sense of sorrow at the way those he loved had disappointed him; (2) To atone for the misdeeds of the people he lead; (3) A last-ditch attempt to stir deep spiritual feelings in others and to appeal to their moral sense and (4) to bring quarreling parties together.

He also defined when fasting was appropriate: (1) Fasts could only be undertaken against those people he loved; (2) fasts must have a concrete and specific goal, not abstract aims; (3) The fast must be morally defensible in the eyes of the target; (4) the fast must in no way serve his own interests and (5) the fast must not ask people to do something they were incapable of, or to cause great hardship.

Gandhi said about fasting:

“Fasting is an institution as old as Adam. It has been resorted to for self-purification or for some ends, noble as well as ignoble.”

“A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer.”

“A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind, and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free.”

“What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner.”

“My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.”


Like Gandhi, Cesar Chavez was willing to sacrifice his own life so that his work would continue and to ensure that violence would not be used. In 1968 Chavez went on a water-only, 25-day fast. When asked about his motivation for fasting, he said, “A fast is first and foremost personal. It is a fast for the purification of my own body, mind, and soul. The fast is also a heartfelt prayer for purification and strengthening for all those who work beside me in the farm worker movement. The fast is also an act of penance for those in positions of moral authority and for all men and women activists who know what is right and just, who know that they could and should do more. The fast is finally a declaration of non- cooperation with supermarkets who promote and sell and profit from California table grapes.”

Chavez fasted again in 1972 for 24 days, and in 1988 for 36 days. Speaking again about his motivations for fasting, Chavez said that farm workers everywhere were angry and worried that would not be a victory without violence. He fasted to prove that is was possible to win without violence. He said, “We have proved it before through persistence, hard work, faith and willingness to sacrifice. We can win and keep our self- respect and build a great union that will secure the spirit of all people if we do it through a rededication and recommitment to the struggle for justice through nonviolence.”

Turning specifically to the problem of pesticides, he continued "The evil is far greater than even I had thought it to be, it threatens to choke out the life of our people and also the life system that supports us all. This solution to this deadly crisis will not be found in the arrogance of the powerful, but in solidarity with the weak and helpless. I pray to God that this fast will be a preparation for a multitude of simple deeds for justice. Carried out by men and women whose hearts are focused on the suffering of the poor and who yearn, with us, for a better world. Together, all things are possible."

We would discuss fasting in lesson six of the Class of Nonviolence when we discusses Gene Sharp's list of 198 methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion. Sharp identified three types of fasts. The fast of moral pressure is undertaken to persuade a third party (St. Patrick fasted to urge the Irish king to deal fairly with the slaves, for example.) The hunger strike is considered coersive, especially when it is threatened to the death, which could cause civil unrest. The third type of fast Sharp calls the Satyagrahic fast, which requires spiritual preparation and is intended to convert an opponent. 

Here is a video about Mia farrow's fast. What do YOU think?

Guernica

Seventy-two years ago today, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, on April 26th, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica was carpet bombed by Fascist Italian and Nazi German forces. Three-quarters of Guernica was destroyed, and as many as 1,600 civilians were killed. The Spanish Republican government had commissioned Pablo Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at Paris International Exposition in the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Guernica, an 11 ft tall and 7.8 25.6 ft wide canvas, was installed in June. Picasso’s Guernica can be a springboard to a larger discussion about the tragedy of war, which we usually cover in lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence.

The peaceCENTER has two videos that go into immense detail about Picasso’s painting. “Pablo Picasso’s Guernica” (Kultur, 1999, 45 minutes) is only available on VHS. It is part of the “Discovery of Art” series and although dry, is thorough and informative. Easier to find – and much livelier – is the Picasso episode in Simon Schama's “Power of Art” (BBC, 2007, 1 hour.) We’ve just ordered a third film – “Treasures of the World- Guernica: Testimony of War,” (PBS Home Video, 1999) that we have been eager to review.

This 9-minute video is an excerpt from “The Bombing of Gernika: The Mark of Man.” It includes a strange and compelling animation at the beginning, plus interviews with three survivors of the bombing.

Death penalty videos

The death penalty has been added as lesson seven in the new 16-week “university” Class of Nonviolence. There are many good documentaries on capital punishment, but these two online videos would work well with this lesson. The first is an hour-long TV program hosted by the Harris County, Texas Green Party. In a classroom situation it would be useful to show the 9-minute documentary produced by Irish television that is embedded starting at minute 3:50. It tells about the European Union’s efforts to put pressure on countries, including the US, to abolish the death penalty. The second video is a lecture given by Sr. Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking” speaking at Utah Valley State College.

True Education

True Education
by Voltaire

A widow, having a young son, and being possessed of a handsome fortune, had given a promise of marriage to two magi, who were both desirous of marrying her.
"I will take for my husband," said she, "the man who can give the best education to my beloved son."
The two magi contended who should bring him up, and the cause was carried before Zadig. Zadig summoned the two magi to attend him.
"What will you teach your pupil?" he said to the first.
"I will teach him," said the doctor, "the eight parts of speech, logic, astrology, pneumatics, what is meant by substance and accident, abstract and concrete, the doctrine of the monads, and the pre-established harmony."
"For my part," said the second, "I will endeavor to give him a sense of justice, and to make him worthy the friendship of good men."
Zadig then cried: "Whether thou art the child's favorite or not, thou shalt have his mother."

This is an excerpt from Zadig, a comic novel by the French philosopher and poet Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the major Enlightenment intellectuals who prepared the way for the French Revolution. Zadig, ou La Destinée, ("Zadig, or The Book of Fate") (1747) tells the story of Zadig, a philosopher in ancient Babylonia. Most of the problems Zadig faces are thinly disguised references to social and political problems of Voltaire's own day.

The Class of Nonviolence is not, I think, a class about learning facts and memorizing lists but rather one of developing a sense of justice. Voltaire and his clever little alter-ego, Zadig, got it right.

Happy Earth Day, Edward Abbey!

The Class of Nonviolence, alas, does not address the environment directly – we typically stuff environmental issues into lesson eight, which is about animals. Another approach could be to look at the life and works of Edward Abbey, an author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues. He fits in well with lesson seven, on civil disobedience. Abbey’s Desert Solitaire has been called “The Walden of the Southwest"; we read Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” in this session. Abbey's most famous novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, centers on a small group of eco-warriors who travel the American West attempting stop uncontrolled human expansion by committing acts of sabotage against industrial development. To this day, eco-sabotage is called "monkeywrenching.” and the practice can be used to begin a discussion about whether destruction of property can be nonviolent and morally acceptable. According to IMDB, a film of this book is scheduled for release in 2010 – about time! The first of these two videos is a short intro to a 2007 documentary about Edward Abbey, A Voice in the Wilderness, available for purchase from Canyonlands Natural History Association; you can watch the entire film for free online at Green Treks.

Edward Abbey A Voice in the Wilderness

Edward Abbey Glen Canyon Dam

Peace Media Clearinghouse Launched Today

A Peace Media Clearinghouse launched this morning, a joint project of the US Institute of Peace Center of Innovation for Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding and the Georgetown University Conflict Resolution Program. You can find documentaries, films, shows, podcasts, songs, video games, and other multimedia about peace and conflict management; use them in your work as educators, trainers, practitioners, policy makers, or students; explore a wide range of topics, such as conflict prevention, nonviolence, post-conflict reconstruction, refugees, child soldiers, rule of law, religion, climate change and terrorism and search for multimedia by region, country, media type, and issue area. It looks like they have about 400 resources — many of them free — cataloged to date. This promises to be an incredible resource for those who teach peace.

The REAL Boston Tea Party

With all the coverage of tea parties it is an excellent teaching moment to talk about the revolutionary roots of the real Boston Tea Party and initiate a discussion about whether Britain could have been removed from the American colonies nonviolently. (This is one of Colman McCarthy’s discussion questions in lesson 6 of the Class of Nonviolence.)

There are several (relatively) new resources that discuss this very question. “The Real Revolution: The Global Story of American Independence” by Marc Aronson (2005: Clarion) makes a brilliant connection between the tea grown in India and taxed in Boston, a foreshadowing of the military-industrial complex described by Eisenhower almost 200 years later.

Mark Kurlansky’s “Nonviolence: 25 lessons from the history of a dangerous idea” (2007: Modern Library) .covers the nonviolent prelude to the American Revolution in chapter IV. It’s also available as an audio book, and this chapter is on disk 3, tracks 11-19 (or 3k-3s, depending on how your CD player reads the disk.) It’s 11 pages, just over a ½ hour of audio.

Ray Raphael wrote “A People’s History of the American Revolution" (2001: Perennial) tells the story from the view of the common people. The Boston Tea Party is covered in Chapter 4. Raphael’s web site has middle-high school lesson plans for each chapter.

To bring this right up to date, Thom Hartmann's essay, "The Real Boston Tea Party was an Anti-Corporate Revolt" can be read on Common Dreams.org.

This 3-minute Schoolhouse Rock video about the causes of the Boston Tea Party is fun and accurate.

Free Documentaries

Snag Films has hundreds of free documentaries, including the series "Women on the Frontline," from the TV news program. Each in this series is 12 minutes: the one shown here is about women in the Congo, where rape is a weapon of war. It would be a good supplement to lesson five of the Class of Nonviolence, where we discuss feminism, peace and power. Full length documentaries are also available: the selection is awesome.

The Hidden and Human Cost of War

On the American RadioWorks website you can listen online, download, or read the transcript of a story about a young American soldier, Sergeant Gray, who served in the Iraq war for a year, but died a strange death once he got back from Iraq. The story details his mother's search for the cause of death of her son, and learns that Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which he developed from abusing Iraqi prisoners, was the likely culprit that caused his death. There are also photos and stories of other U.S. soldiers who were involved in the treatment of Iraqi detainees. We typically discuss war in lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence, and this insight into the hidden and human cost of war is important to address. I learned of this site from the Internet Scout Report, a wonderful weekly mailing list out of the University of Wisconsin that has scoured the Internet for the best (mostly) educational sites since 1994.

Clarence Darrow

The 16-week “University” Class of Nonviolence contains a Darrow essay, “Resist Not Evil,” an early argument for restorative justice rather than the more typical vengeful justice. A temptation would be to augment this essay by showing a video clip from “Inherit the Wind,” the excellent play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, but this does not get to the heart of Darrow’s philosophy about justice. The perfect video is of Henry Fonda’s one-man show, “Clarence Darrow,” which was filmed for TV in 1974 and is available from Kultur Films for less than $20. It is a brilliant production (I saw him perform it in London) that covers the Haymarket trial, Big Bill Haywood, the Pullman strike, the Pennsylvania coal miners, the bombing of the LA Times and defense of the McNamara brothers, the Scopes trial, Leopold and Loeb and the Ossian Sweet trial, a landmark in the civil rights movement. The chapter called “Chicago Justice” includes Darrow's views on the death penalty: it would also go well with lesson seven of the Class of Nonviolence. The 81 minute video is neatly divided into segments of less than 10 minutes each and any one of them would work well in a class.