Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. I don't know if you saw this story over the weekend. It was a marginal story in the US, bigger in the UK, as the NBC News headline reported it. Richard Ratcliffe, husband of woman detained in Iran ends 21-day hunger strike. Why was this dad with the 7-year-old at home and a wife in another country detained on a hunger strike? The story says, Ratcliffe was pressuring the British to secure the release of his wife, UK charity worker, Zazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been detained in Iran since 2016 on charges of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

Human rights group say it's a trumped up charge, like others against dual UK-Iran citizens, meant to bring ransom or political leverage. Apparently, she just got sentenced to another year just for taking part in a protest in the UK, outside the Iranian embassy back in 2009. Her husband in the UK, began the hunger strike that he ended on Saturday. He said he gave it up because he wanted to end it with his head held high, not in an ambulance. He had begun to get worrisome pains in his feet, he said, after not eating for three weeks. He said their daughter, aged seven, needs him alive. There was that from over the weekend.

Maybe you heard the story last week, about five young climate activists who ended their hunger strike outside the White House,after President Biden at the COP26 Climate Summit, promised to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by 2030.

First, I should say, when that strike was a-week-old in late October, one of the five, Kidus Girma, 26, a climate activist and organizer, told CNN that a doctor who had been monitoring the strikers sent him to the emergency room for nausea, dizziness, and blurred visions. CNN showed Girma and his fellow strikers, using wheelchairs to keep them steady. Another member of the group, Abby Leedy, just 20 years old from Philadelphia, described to NPR, the physical pain that she felt five days into her climate hunger strike.

Abby Leedy: My hips and my knees were in so much pain and I just curled on the floor crying.

Brian Lehrer: There was that. One more for the moment, you probably heard that about a dozen New York City taxi drivers had been on a hunger strike for about two weeks, when the city agreed to a better deal to help them pay back their medallion loans, who as you probably know, their value had crashed largely due to city policy, throwing many drivers' lives and families into desperate straights.

Just in the last two weeks, these three hunger strikes have made global news headlines. Taxi drivers were heard all over the world, not just in Time Square, and there are several others going on right now around the world as well. Remember the anti Putin dissident, Alexei Navalny? He went on a hunger strike earlier this year. That was in the news for the way he was being treated in prison. Quite a move for a guy the Russian government, apparently tried to poison to death last year.

Those of you who were old enough may remember Bobby Sands, who died from hunger strike in 1981, protesting British rule over Northern Ireland. The most famous hunger striker in human history may well have been Mahatma Gandhi, 18 of them sometimes called fasts, sometimes called hunger strikes, to protest British rule over India.

There was a time that my next guest has written about that a team of prison guards forced a feeding tube down the throat of British suffragist, Sylvia Pankhurst, when she was hunger striking for a woman's right to vote. Mahatma Gandhi, Bobby Sands, Sylvia Pankhurst in the past, these hunger strikers in the news just right now, why hunger strikes? Why now? With me now Sharman Apt Russell, who wrote extensively about hunger strikes in her book, Hunger: An Unnatural History. Her latest book is Within Our Grasp Childhood, Malnutrition Worldwide and the Revolution Taking Place to End It. Sharman, so nice of you to join us. Welcome to WNYC.

Sharman Apt Russell: Oh, thank you. Good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: What's a hunger strike? How is it different from a fast, I think Gandhi often called his fasts?

Sharman Apt Russell: Right. Well, a hunger strike is really looking for an audience, it's using your body, the fragility of the body to go without food, to get attention from someone, to change someone's mind, to make something happen through your own suffering and through your own willingness to suffer and potentially die. You are striking against someone to get attention for a cause. We fast for spiritual reason. We fast for health reasons. You are similarly going without food, but you don't necessarily need an audience. You're doing it for yourself, or you're doing it for some other reason, than to gain attention for a political or a social injustice.

Brian Lehrer: What Gandhi did 18 times, you would call those all hunger strikes?

Sharman Apt Russell: I would. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: There's a difference between drawing attention to your suffering and actually, being willing to die. Why are some hunger strikers actually willing die?

Sharman Apt Russell: I think those who are willing to die, are at the point where they have very little options left. They are truly the powerless, so that often happens if you're in prison or if you are oppressed in such a way that you would rather die than endure these anymore, or you would rather die, than have that injustice perpetuated in the world. There's really very few options left to you, except to offer up your body and your suffering all the way to death.

Brian Lehrer: Does it seem to you there are more hunger strikes in the news recently, than they usually are? That's the premise of this segment.

Sharman Apt Russell: There's a lot of hunger strikes in the news. There have been for a long time and the 20th century was enormous amount of hunger stripes because the suffragists, because of Gandhi, because they were so success. I think you have to say that social media allows for an even greater success in a hunger strike. The more you can get attention and now you can get world attention, things can go viral, hings can be heard all over the world. People have cell phones and people have access to the internet all over the world. In that sense, yes, I think that this huge movement of hunger strikes that started in the 20th century, which we used to call the Renaissance of hunger strikes, that's just grown even more in the 21st century.

Brian Lehrer: There's social media. Do you think the number of hunger strikes recently is also an indication that we're living in extreme times or that movements against injustice and for the climate protection, are becoming more determined?

Sharman Apt Russell: I think we are living in extreme times. People have always believed that in this case, if you look at these climate activists, say you're 18 or you're 20, you are going to be alive in the world in 2060, in 2080. The older generation were not, and we can hardly imagine what that's going to look like, but those young people have to imagine it and it is extreme. I think it's more based on science, more extreme than we've ever seen before.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we welcome your calls on hunger strikes in the news right now, or for that matter, in human history. (212) 433, WNYC, (212) 433-9692 for Sharman Apt Russell, Professor Emeritus in humanities at Western New Mexico University and associate on the faculty of Antioch, her book Within Our Grasp: Childhood Malnutrition Worldwide and the Revolution Taking Place to End It, is her new one. Her older book, Hunger: An Unnatural History, includes a chapter on hunger strikes. Listeners, have you ever taken part in a hunger strike? Maybe a climate hunger strike or the taxi worker strike, just recently or maybe something else? (212) 433, WNYC, or what do you think when you see one in the news? Has it raised your awareness, your level of sympathy toward a cause, your understanding of how extremely the issue must be affecting people? Did you experience a backlash? Maybe like, "That person is over the top. That's not why I'm going to develop a position on an issue, I'm being manipulated," or anything else? (212) 433 9692 or any questions about hunger strikes effects on justice or politics or the human body. For Sharman Apt Russell, )212) 433 WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I think your main interest, from what I've read of your work, is involuntary hunger, malnutrition in history, and today, from poverty and unjust distribution of wealth in the world. Why did you include hunger strikes, which are voluntary, in the book in which you did?

Sharman Apt Russell: Hunger in the human body is pretty fascinating, and I first wrote about it as very dark subject. I realized there's a lot of light to that dark subject. Again, fasting for health, fasting for spiritual reasons. I find tremendous inspiration in fasting for social justice. That is that tipping point of moving from voluntary hunger, where we're using our hunger for something, hunger for health, hunger for spirituality, hunger for social justice. At that point, midway in the book, it tips over into involuntary hunger.

I actually found that chapter on hunger strikes, a marvelous thing to write. I'm inspired by people who are-- It works as a metaphor, we hunger for something, we hunger for justice, and it's so liberal to put that powerlessness of the body, against something so powerful. It is the David and Goliath story, or it can be, to pit your fragility against the state or against something as big as global warming. I find it really affirming in a strange way, that people will do this.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote about the effects of hunger strikes on the body. We played the clip of climate hunger striker, Abby Leedy, after just five days, a woman 20 years old and described a couple of the others. Are there certain ways that they tend to go physically?

Sharman Apt Russell: It so much depends what your body is before the strike. If you're young and you're healthy and you have enough fat in your body and you're well-nourished with vitamins and minerals, you really can go without food for as long as two weeks without any kind of serious repercussions, but no one knows. Your body could suddenly respond badly to a hunger strike in the third day or the fifth day. It's very individual.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's [unintelligible 00:12:54] in Pound Ridge, who says they went on a hunger strike 50 years ago. [unintelligible 00:12:59], you're on WNYC. Hello.

Speaker 3: Hi, how are you? Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to say that 50 years ago, I was a student at Maynooth University in County Kildare, Ireland and a group of us went on hunger strike for two days, a 48-hour hunger strike outside the British Embassy in Dublin, to protest against internment without trial, which was brought into Northern Ireland just a few months earlier. We did a protest outside the British Embassy. I don't know if it changed anything, but we were young and felt that we needed to protest.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned Bobby Sands in the intro, the Northern Ireland hunger striker who actually died in 1981. Were you aware of him at the time?

Speaker 3: Yes. I had just come back to Ireland. I had been teaching in Nigeria and I just came back to Ireland in 1980. He was among the eight hunger strikers over that period of time. He was the first one to die. Interestingly, he was elected as a member of parliament for Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The British government had to lower the flags to half-staff over the Houses of Commons because he was a sitting MP. Obviously, he didn't sit because he was in prison, but he was a member of parliament at the British House of Commons.

Brian Lehrer: Looking back, what role do you think any of the hunger strikes played in the ultimate Belfast Agreement for the status of Northern Ireland?

Speaker 3: I think with Bobby Sands and the other protesters, obviously, the British government eventually relented. What they were striking for, was that they were striking because they said they were political prisoners, that they weren't common criminals. The Prime Minister at the time, was Margaret Thatcher. She wouldn't recognize the right to be political prisoners, and so they, first of all, went on what was called the dirty protests, where they just wouldn't use the bathrooms and went on what was called the blanket. They wouldn't wear the issued uniforms from the prison, and then they went on hunger strike.

Eventually, it brought about, obviously, a lot of attention, not alone in Ireland, but in the United States. Ultimately, I think it weakened the British hand. I mean, it was many years later, but it did serve its purpose. That wasn't the only one. Obviously, we did a lot during the Irish fight for independence, back in 1919, 1920. The Lord Mayor of Cork also died, back in those days of hunger strike in prison, in Britain. There's a history of it in the Irish struggle.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your story, [unintelligible 00:15:51]. I really appreciate it. What were you thinking as you listened to those pieces of history, personal and more broadly, Professor Russell?

Sharman Apt Russell: Those are some of the great successes the Irish Republicans and the women suffragettes achieved. One thing I was thinking is the Irish Republican prisoners were fasting for something very specific, to be seen as political prisoners, not common convicts. That's one part of a successful strike, is to have something very specific in mind and also, to have a history of injustice around it, that people can immediately recognize. I was also thinking of Mahatma Gandhi, what he said about fasting, "I fasted to reform those who love me." That was not particularly true with the Irish at that time, the Irish political prisoners, but I think it's certainly true of the climate activists now. It's a communication, not only to who you're fasting against, but it's also, all those Irish people at that time, who loved those prisoners and what they stood for, and all of us, who love our young people and what they stand for.

Brian Lehrer: We have another one on Bobby Sands. Let's continue this part of the conversation.For the moment, Andrew, in Clearwater, Florida, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Andrew: How's it going? I just want to make a notation. One of the important things about Bobby Sands to realize, if you're not familiar with the Catholic faith, suicide is, of course, a mortal sin. The only exception, it's a mortal sin because the mortal sin is actually despair. Within the Catholic faith, the only acceptable means of suicide would be via a fast, via a hunger strike, if you will, but fasting oneself to death is the only acceptable means. I think that's very important because clearly, Bobby Sands was not experiencing despair.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew, thank you very much. That's a very interesting distinction that I did not know, between a hunger strike that might lead to your death and other forms of suicide, as perceived by the Catholic Church, according to Andrew. Is that something you're familiar with?

Sharman Apt Russell: Me? Yes, absolutely. I think that the Catholic Church came out absolutely saying that this was not a suicide because I think despair might lead you to a hunger strike, and I think at times you would certainly feel that. Going without food, really contains your emotions. It's very difficult emotionally and psychologically, but I think at the core of it, you do not feel despair. You feel your own power, maybe in very despairing circumstances, but it is the way for you to take hold of your own power, not to give in to despair.

Brian Lehrer: Historically, when do hunger strikes work, and when do they not, to bring about the political results they're looking for?

Sharman Apt Russell: First, you have to get attention. The prisoner who is, and I think there are probably people striking all over the world, who are not getting the attention. Someone has to care. They can care because they are ashamed by you, they can care because they suddenly feel pity for you. They can care because they feel threatened by you, by your death and it can be one prison guard, or it can be an entire country. It has to be an act of communication. You have to reach someone. It's not going to be successful if you're not reaching anyone. That's why newspapers and social media and radio, public attention is so important to the success of a hunger strike.

I think it has to, also be successful, it has to have a specific goal. It can't be just in war, but it has to be a specific action from a government or from an institution or from whom you're striking against.

Brian Lehrer: In the case of the taxi drivers in New York, it seems they believe the strike succeeded in bringing media and politician attention to their plight and their demands, which were otherwise getting, I would say, lost in the shuffle of so many urgent seeming news stories at the same time. I know you're not in New York, but have you seen enough about that to have an opinion about whether it was a difference maker in the taxi drivers case?

Sharman Apt Russell: I think it's wonderful. I just think that they built on such a history, they're going back to the women's suffragettes and to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and climate activists. That's the wonderful thing, if you have a successful strike, that it comes from the heart, that's about a real issue that is a clear injustice and that there's clearly something that someone can done. For those taxi drivers to build on that and to succeed, it's great. What a good ending.

Again, sometimes you get what you want, but you still have to be vigilant to make sure that all the promises are kept. Of course, they're going to have to continue to be vigilant about that.

Brian Lehrer: The story that I started with at the top, it's been 20 minutes, so maybe a lot of listeners right now didn't hear it. Richard Radcliffe in the UK, who went on a hunger strike for three weeks in support of his wife who was detained in Iran, unjustly, he says, he gave up the hunger strike, that he didn't die. They have a seven year old daughter at home. When you hear a story like that, does it mean he failed and the Iranian government is laughing at them now?

Sharman Apt Russell: I don't think so. You're talking about it. I know about it now. He's gotten press, he's shown a spotlight on it. No, I don't think it's failed at all because now, we know about it. Lots of times, Gandhi also stopped before his death or stopped before he became weaker, but it still made an impact because the British government know he might do it again. No, I don't think that's at all a failure and I certainly respect someone who has a seven-year-old daughter, who was saying, "Well, I've gone as far as I can."

The climate activists, the young people in Washington are saying, "Well, we're getting weak. We still have rage. We still have more things we want to accomplish. This has brought attention, now we want to go on and do the next one, but we want to recover first."

Brian Lehrer: Julie in Hastings on the climate hunger strikers, Julie you're on WNYC. Hi.

Julie: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much and thanks for doing this segment. The young people in DC brought such attention, I just wish that the media had covered them more while they were striking. I wanted to do a shout out to my member of Congress, Tumalo Bowman, who stood literally next to them and did a video and posted it, while they were doing their action and was quite eloquent in that clip.

The other thing is I thought, "Well, maybe this wouldn't be so relevant," that is to say that one of the five young people is Catholic and did it out of his Catholic faith, I thought, but because these has already come up here, it reminds me of the fact that the ways in which official Catholic policy going back 60 years, is with the progressive on things like climate change, not with a progressive on Tinder issues. It's kind of mixed, if it's complicated, but in that sense, it is. Then also, your conversation with the author, Cesar Chavez because Chavez was doing it for a labor issue and he broke his fast at mass with Bobby Kennedy. Again, just that angle on it, of the Catholic Americans who do it for things like labor rights and environmental rights.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and flowing from there, Catholicism, not in spite of it. Julie, when you said at the beginning that you wish the media had given more coverage to the DC climate hunger strikers, do you play that out in your head, how that might've gone or what it might have changed? If we assume that there's already a lot of attention to the climate, I know a lot of people would say the media are not covering the climate enough and I would generally agree with that, but Cap 26 was going on, there was attention to that and the hunger strikers were on there fast at the same time. What do you think that would have changed in the public's mind? Would it have made people who are unsure about how far climate policy should go, to change our energy systems, things like that, think more sympathetically about it? How do you think coverage of the fact that here are five people on a hunger strike would change anything?

Julie: I think when you say there's sentiment, it affects people's hearts. I think more these young people that a lot of us, urbanites, we say we would remind us of the kids in our suburbs. I think it would touch people's hearts such that people who think it's overblown, it might affect them a little, but I think more those of us who might help us get off our depths a little bit more and maybe call Congress or something.

Brian Lehrer: Good stuff, Julie, thank you very much for your call. Yusuf in Newark, you're on WNYC. Hi, Yusuf?

Yusuf: Hey. Hi, Brain and good morning. Thank you for this show. I really want to make a point on when you ask the question, when does a hunger strike works or what doesn't work? I think to me, hunger strike only work in front of people that have the humanity, people that have a sense, people that understand. I have an example, a few years ago, I think three or four years ago in Togo, where there was uprising. People were against this party that'd been there from father to son for 54 years, who were in the country. People stood up and there were massive arrests, what we call political prisoners.

There was this man, he was a parliamentarian and he went through a hunger striking to US embassy in Togo. When he was having this strike, all the politician did, people embodied, they came out publicly, like a radio in market. They said, "That guy has no sense, he has no idea what he's doing." One day they came there by force, like forcefully removed him out of the US embassy.

Compared to New York, you see people here have a sense of humanity. The dude understood that what this taxi drivers are doing is right and they have to do something and they went ahead and did something. To me, it only works where people have humanity.

Brian Lehrer: It only works where people have humanity and you're saying the leaders in Togo, at that time, did not. Wow. Yusuf, thank you very much for your call. Sharman, I can imagine governments or others in power, if power is all they care about, digging in the face of a hunger strike. Like, "We're not going to be manipulated into changing our policies by one or a few people staging this kind of stunt." They might call it a stunt, no matter how threatening to those people the hunger strike might be. Is that a common reaction?

Sharman Apt Russell: Yes, it is. I'm also, again, thinking of all the hunger strikes going around the world that aren't getting public attention and that aren't succeeding, but that is part of the power of a hunger strike, is it can fail. It can fail and it can also end in death or in permanent damage. It's not like a given at all, it's a very risky thing to do emotionally, psychologically, physically. Again, that's part of its power, is that it is not fool-proof and it can be very damaging to the person striking.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry in Long Island City, wants to draw attention to another hunger strike that's going on right now. Hi Sherry, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling.

Sherry: Hi. Good morning. Radio host, Joe Madison is on a hunger strike. I heard about it yesterday on Al Sharpton's TV program, and he's doing it for the blocked debate on voting rights in the Senate. I just thought it was important for you to know.

Brian Lehrer: I should check that out. Do you know where he is? I'll look it up, but do you know where Joe Madison does his show and if he's maintaining his show, continuing to go on the air during a hunger strike?

Sherry: I think he is maintaining his show. I'm not sure where he's out of. He's on SiriusXM Urban View.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Sherry: I think it's his eighth day.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for that. I'm just looking at his Wikipedia page now, born 1949, alternatively known as The Black Eagle or Madison, American radio talk-show host, and activist. Active on Twitter, I see. All right, well, that would be a hard thing to do, to have to talk for hours for a living, Sharman, while you're on an eighth day of a hunger strike.

Sharman Apt Russell: Right, how worthy.

Brian Lehrer: Want to tell us before you go, the story of the British suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, who you wrote about in your book who got force-fed? I'm sure most of our listeners have never heard of her.

Sharman Apt Russell: Yes. That was at the turn of the 20th century, 1905, 1906. The idea that a woman could vote was just ridiculous and not popular at all. These women would go to jail. They were in prison for their political activism and there, they would hunger strike, and no one wanted a woman dying in jail, and so, they would force-feed them. It was pretty brutal. You put in a steel hoop in someone's mouth to widen it. You were forcing feed down the throat mostly then, sometimes the nostril, it could go into your lungs. A few women died from force-feeding, from asphyxiating food into their lungs. Their mouths were sore, torn, bleeding. They were struggling. It was inhumane. It was torturous and they would write about it.

Eventually, the government would release them, then arrest them again, release them, arrest them again, but it got a lot of public attention. These were women from all classes in England, and it goes back to you seek to reform those who love you. The British public did not want these women treated in these ways, and it made them aware of the injustice of their situation.

Brian Lehrer: It must be morally, as well as politically complicated, to decide to force-feed against their will, somebody who's on a hunger strike against your government's policies?

Sharman Apt Russell: That's a really complicated situation, yes. The World Medical Association says that force-feeding and a hunger strike is unethical. The American Medical Association is part of that larger body, but in America, for example, the Bureau of Prisons says, "No, we are responsible for people in our prisons. We're responsible for their health and so, if they go on hunger strike, say, against prison conditions, it's our legal right and our responsibility even to force-feed them."

Every hunger strike is different and, of course, you have to make sure that a hunger striker is lucid and knows what he or she is doing, knows the risk. I think the question for a doctor, whether to be involved in force-feeding is a very complicated one.

Brian Lehrer: Just to give some morale respect to fellow talk show host, Joe Madison, his show is on SiriusXM Urban View. He started his hunger strike eight days ago after the Senate failed to pass the Voting Rights legislation that it was considering. Despite the support of Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, still did not reach the 60 vote threshold. He said, "As a political protest, I am beginning a hunger strike today." That was eight days ago. "By abstaining from eating any solid food, until Congress passes and President Biden signs The Freedom to Vote Act or The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I repeat, just as food is necessary to sustain life, the right to vote is necessary to sustain democracy."

Hunger strikes in the news right now from New York to around the country, to around the world, we thank Sharman Apt Russell who wrote about hunger strikes in her book, Hunger: an Unnatural History. Her latest book is Within Our Grasp: Childhood Malnutrition Worldwide and the Revolution Taking Place to End It. Thank you so much for joining us.

Sharman Apt Russell: Oh, thank you. I enjoyed it.

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