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Hawkins Fasts with Troops
Hawkins To Fast July 4th in Solidarity with Hunger Strike Against the Iraq War |
(Syracuse, NY) Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for US Senator, is fasting for 24 hours on July 4th in solidarity with the beginning of a hunger strike to end the US occupation of Iraq.
The Troops Home Fast began outside the White House at 12 midnight on July 4th. The hunger strike’s demands are the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, no permanent US military bases in Iraq, and a US commitment to fund a massive reconstruction effort but with funds going to Iraqi, not US, contractors.
“Iraqis are fighting a US military occupation and corporate colonization of their country, which includes the construction of permanent US military bases and the pillage of billions of dollars intended for reconstruction by corrupt US contractors. We would fight back too if Iraqis tried to colonize our country. The US military and corporations can play no constructive role Iraq now, except to withdraw and offer reparations to the Iraqis for the damages our government and its corporate contractors have caused,” said Hawkins, 53, a former Marine who first participated in anti Vietnam war protests in 1967.
Among the fasters are Cindy Sheehan, Daniel Ellsberg, Dick Gregory, Willie Nelson, Alice Walker, Danny Glover, Dolores Huerta, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Ed Asner, Howard Zinn, Medea Benjamin, Col Ann Wright, and Representatives Lynn Woolsey and Cynthia McKinney. Some are fasting for a day. Others, including Sheehan, Ellsberg, Gregory, Benjamin, and Wright, are planning to long-term hunger strike until the Troops Home Fast demands are met. The full list of fasters can be found on http://codepinkalert.org/article.php?id=1030.
The Troops Home Fast, organized by Code Pink, will vigil outside the White House until August 14, when it will move to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, outside the President Bush’s Crawford, Texas home until September 2.
Two Green candidates joined the faster in Washingtion, DC on July 4. Michael Berg , running for Delaware's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, is the father of Nick Berg, the American hostage murdered in Iraq in May, 2004. Kevin Zeese , candidate for the Maryland seat in the US Senate, is co-founder of VotersForPeace , which promotes a pledge for voters to vote only for candidates who support a speedy end to the Iraq War.
The Green Party and its candidates have called for an end to the occupation and the immediate return of the troops, and have called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for misleading the American people in their justifications for the war and other abuses of power.
The war in Iraq, currently in its fourth year, has seen plummeting support among Americans. Despite this loss of public support, the Bush administration and Congress have shown little inclination to consider a withdrawal plan.
The Troops Home Fast hopes that the participation of thousands of conscientious people, including widely recognized celebrities, in the hunger strike will move the government toward withdrawal. The fasters note that the hunger strike is a mode of protest that was employed successfully by Gandhi in the movement to expel the British colonizers from the Indian subcontinent.
The Troops Home Fast is a major focus for the national antiwar movement this summer. The movement is planning large-scale nonviolent civil disobedience actions the week of September 21 if the government has not adopted a plan to withdraw from Iraq by that date.
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 *Website by David Doonan, Labor Donated to Hawkins for Senate Campaign* |
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