- Special Offers
-
Press Releases
For Immediate Release
July 25, 2006Contact: Jessica Saturley, 802-295-6300 x106, jsaturley@chelseagreen.com
Wilson 22 Days Into Fast to Bring Troops Home from Iraq
Today marks the 22nd day of author and activist Diane Wilson’s indefinite hunger strike to demand that American troops be sent home from Iraq. A founding member of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Wilson is participating in the organization’s Troops Home FAST that began on July 4 in front of the White House. The rolling hunger strike involves more than 5,000 people from the U.S. and 22 foreign countries.
She is staging her hunger strike near the White House in LaFayette Park.
Wilson, who has engaged in several hunger strikes in her history as an environmental activist, is drinking only water. Temperatures in Washington hit triple digits last week, and she has suffered the consequences, growing weaker each day. “My goal is to bring the troops home,” she says with determination. “[Iraqi] bodies are on the line every day. And so are the bodies of the U.S. soldiers. So shouldn’t we be putting our bodies on the line? Shouldn’t we be as serious about making peace as some people are about making war?”
“We can’t just lay down like a mat and let this administration walk all over us,” she says. “You know that line about ‘all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing?’ We have to do something to stop evil.”
While most of the fasters, including celebrity activists Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Willy Nelson and Bonnie Raitt are participating via the website, www.troopshomefast.org Wilson and her fellow fasters, including Cindy Sheehan, retired Army colonel Ann Wright, and CODEPINK co-founder, Medea Benjamin have set up headquarters in Lafayette Park outside the White House gates.
Clad in bright pink attire, the majority of fast participants only enacting a symbolic day-long hunger strike, the protesters buzz around our nation’s capitol, attending Congressional hearings, meeting with Senators and Representatives, handing out ice cream to the homeless, and generally drawing a lot of attention to their cause.
As Wilson begins the third week of her fast, she says her energy level is low but her resolve is strong. “The fate of our nation is at stake,” she says. “Anytime I have any reservations about putting myself at risk, I think of the children in Iraq and the children we’re sending off to war. What I'm doing is nothing by comparison.”
Typically, forty days is considered the outermost limit of a survivable fast.
A former shrimp boat captain and a mother of five, Wilson is the acclaimed author of An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005). She had no intention of becoming an activist, but when in the mid 1990’s she read in her local paper an EPA report that listed her county as the most polluted in the nation she took action. When she learned that the five large chemical plants located in Calhoun Co., including Formosa Plastics were dumping chemicals into the soil and water, killing her bays and her neighbors, she had no choice but to fight back. It is with this same courageous spirit that Wilson is now embarking on this hunger strike in front of the White House, demanding that President Bush bring American troops home from Iraq—FAST.
“I don’t know how long I can fast, but I’m making this open-ended.” Wilson says. “I plan to take this as far as I’ve ever taken anything in my 58 years. I fear our future is at stake, and I’m ready to make a major sacrifice.”