Fast action

Gandhi fasted more than a dozen times, once penitently when his people murdered police. He fasted for an end to Untouchability. He fasted more than once for an end to Hindu-Muslim bicommunal violence, and once he fasted against a British official for that man's accusation that Gandhi was promoting violence.

Cesar Chavez fasted many times as well, showing that the fast was not just a swami-guru phenomenon from India, but could be effective even in modern America. His most successful fast was his first, which was in opposition to, and in penance for, his own union members and supporters who were engaging in sabotage and other property destruction. "Thousands of farmworkers streamed to Delano to pledge their Loyalty to Chavez and vow allegiance to his nonviolent creed," noted David Cortright (2009, p. 92). At the conclusion of one 25-day fast for peace, Chavez accepted a piece of bread from Bobby Kennedy.

There are a number of considerations involved, including, but not limited to the following:

Will the fast be effective?

What will the effects be?

Do those likely effects work toward the goal of the campaign?

Is a fast likely to enhance a campaign or distract?

Can the campaign spare the energies of the faster?

If no one knows who the faster is, the effects will be minimal or nearly nonexistent. The faster or fasters need name recognition beforehand or it needs to be created. This takes media energy and is risky. If the fasting person is not particularly sympathetic--if the person appears mentally unstable or as though it is simply a publicity stunt--a cause can be hurt by such negative imagery. If a person unilaterally decides to fast for a cause and then expects others to publicize the fast, to work to support the fast, or to somehow draw attention to that person engaging in that action, supporters do well to think through it. There are not many Cesar Chavez or Mohandas Gandhi charismatic leaders who can engage in a fast and cause a good number of people to flock to them out of concern.

I've only engaged in one serious quasi-public fast that I started, and it was a learning experience. It was after communication with my action partner, Donna Howard, when we were both in jail awaiting trial for our Plowshare action of Earth Day, 1996. I wanted to draw attention to our judge's hostility toward international law, which was the basis of our legal opposition to the thermonuclear command facility we had partially dismantled. Donna and I traded days and passed off the fast back and forth, much like Cesar Chavez had passed his fast on to others. We continued for months, bringing in others in a Fast Friends community, people who supported Plowshares direct disarmament actions. I coordinated all the days via snail mail from my jail cell. It was very sweet, and it eventually became necessary to have multiple people fasting every day, including people from many states and even overseas. We failed to get the judge to either recuse himself or allow international law, but the experience was educational and empowering for all of us. We didn't expect nor did we seek personal approbation and in fact were delighted to step back and honor those who picked up the fast. We never tried to publicize the fast in mainstream media because that takes so much contextualizing for unknown people. Cesar Chavez is fasting? Everyone instantly understands. A couple of random Plowshares peaceniks are fasting? Are they nuts? Who cares? Let 'em croak! But our peace community totally got it and participated. It was more of a bonding action than a bridging action.

Fasting is powerful. It needs to be done carefully or the power can skew in unintended directions. Each culture conceives of the fast differently and each situation is unique. It needs serious appraisal before use.

References
Cortright, David. (2009). Gandhi and beyond: Nonviolence for a new political age. (2nd ed.) Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Our duty despite the evidence

Last night I went to a peace meeting and at some point in the discussion I raised my hand and was eventually called on. I started to talk about the use of media in promoting nonviolent struggle and how that helped recruit more sympathizers and helped lead to some victories. I was interrupted by a woman who has been an activist for as long as I have--decades--and she went into a long harangue about our failings, our lack of victories and achievements and that she had no hope and that organizing anything was not worth it. Since she had interrupted me, I continued to try to finish my thought for my final sentence, but she kept talking over me and someone said, "Listen to her, Tom." I did. Her statement turned that meeting around. When someone else tried to say something, she responded. When a group self-facilitates that poorly, so that amongst 25 or so in attendance one person is allowed to respond in turn to everyone, that meeting is victim of a self-fulfilling prophesy and is indeed not worth the time. When she responded to yet another person and the group allowed her to dominate it, I felt called to the kitchen to do dishes, which was a much better use of my energy.

Why would anyone hope and continue to organize when things were hard? Isn't that the time to sensibly give up? I think Cesar Chavez thought about that and made his clear and lifelong decision.

We are suffering. We have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause.

Chavez went on to say:

We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hunger on us, and now we hunger for justice. We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

Indeed, when the poorest of the poor, the most downtrodden with the least reason to hope, when those people decide, en masse, to get a job done, they succeed far more often than they fail. I'm glad Cesar Chavez didn't look around him at the overwhelming racism, poverty, injustice and decide not to organize.

I think of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) who keep struggling year after year against the obscene injustice of the religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan, whether they are Taliban or whomever. These women have been attacked physically, morally, emotionally, financially, and as mothers, wives and daughters. They have nothing. No money, no schools, no jobs, no social safety net and no power that is discernible or traditionally understood. Yet they never give up. Never. They oppose US and NATO occupation just as deeply as they oppose the violence and brutality of the fundamentalist Islamists who rule when the invading foreigners don't. They have no reason to hope. I'm sure the woman from last night's meeting would tell them to stop. I'm sure they would tell her to please be quiet and let the planning proceed. And I have enormous hope that RAWA will prevail against all odds.

Hope is our duty, despite the evidence, despite the string of hard results and losses. Hope, sometimes, is the only thing we have left.

To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope.
--Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Anyone who is working for a better world has hope. Anyone who has no hope should stay home or at least stay silent and allow those who have ideas and intentions to figure out what to do next. The sociologists who study social conflict and movements have pointed out again and again that the best way to recruit is to give hope, what they called raised expectations. We who come out in hope and dreams are not little children who need patronizing--or matronizing--protection from our own futile ideas of what might be possible. We need help, we need support, and we need everyone's contributions to the brainstorms that lead to new plans for change. Without everyone's creativity, we are poorer and slower to win.