Global Hunger Strike Begins

CLIMATE REBELS TO HUNGER STRIKE FOR A WEEK OR UNTIL SPEAKER PELOSI SITS DOWN TO DISCUSS CLIMATE EMERGENCY

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Washington D.C., November 12, 2019 - Following a global rebellion that mobilized tens of thousands in mass civil disobedience, climate rebels will go on hunger strike in the nation’s capital this Monday unless Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with them to discuss the climate breakdown that threatens the collapse of human civilization and the possible extinction of our species.

The rebels will begin their hunger strike by storming Pelosi’s office in Washington D.C. on November 18. Then they will stop eating until Pelosi meets with them for one hour on camera or after one week. “Meet us or leave us to starve while you jet to your Thanksgiving feasts and cocktail parties in the glow of a burning world,” the hunger strikers say in a letter delivered to Pelosi this morning. “It is with a heavy heart that we will deny ourselves our basic needs. May our pain finally sound the alarm.”

In Pelosi’s words: “There is no time left to deny the reality of climate change, or to turn a blind eye to the impact it is having on our country.” Yet the top Democrats’ speeches ring hollow as she ignores the science and blocks action on the climate crisis, including the climate emergency resolution and the Green New Deal.

Giovanni Tamacas, a 20-year-old student in D.C. and international coordinator with the XR Global Hunger Strike, said: “We are hunger striking because we have no choice. We are being taken to our deaths. Greedy governments and corporations have criminally and catastrophically failed to tackle the climate emergency. Our shortsighted governments are too systemically corrupt to stop mass starvation, societal collapse, and human extinction. We are therefore demanding citizens’ assemblies to enact a just transition for all of humanity.”

In August, Tamacas went on a solo ten-day hunger strike in front of Congress and the White House that has inspired many to strike with him next week. “I did cry. And I did feel extreme frustration and hunger and just overwhelming feelings of sadness at times,” said Tamacas. “But at the end of the day I remembered what I was fighting for and that’s what kept me going.” Tamacas’s mother is from Vietnam and his father is from El Salvador, countries that are reeling from the climate crisis.

Twelve rebels will go on hunger strike in Pelosi’s D.C. office. Sixteen more will go on hunger strike in California, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. They will call on those in power to enact Extinction Rebellion’s demands, including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025.

The hell that awaits all of us is already here for many of us. Indigenous people across North America continue to suffer from the ecological breakdown unleashed by white colonial settlers. In Alaska, melting ice makes it increasingly hard for indigenous people to find food. Many of those leaving their homes in Central America are escaping the drought and extreme weather that has made their lives unbearable. Many have been imprisoned in the US. Some have gone on hunger strike to protest the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment they are forced to endure.

Around the world, more than 200 rebels in 16 countries are preparing to hunger strike on Nov 18th, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, India, Australia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. New hunger strikers are signing up each day.

Globally, the threat to food security is enormous. For thousands of years human agricultural has evolved in stable climate and weather ranges. Global heating is now destabilizing the conditions that allow crops to support billions of people with fiercer droughts, storms, heat waves, wildfires, and more acidic oceans. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that 820 million people already suffer from hunger and starvation. The mass disruption of agriculture would imperil billions of lives. Our hunger strike will symbolize the hunger that grips the world today and threatens to consume it without rapid and transformative action.

The climate crisis is also forcing millions to migrate from their ancestral homes as water becomes scarce and desertification dries farmland. The World Bank estimates that climate breakdown could drive more than 140 million people from their homes over the next 30 years in three of the world’s most densely populated parts of the world — sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Many of those leaving their homes in Central America are escaping the drought and extreme weather that has made their lives unbearable.

Compounding the crisis, Western governments have proven incapable of handling mass migration, succumbing to extreme racism and nationalism, and propelling demagogues to power. Governments and institutions in the Global South, Europe and the U.S. are being destabilized by a small fraction of the climate refugees to come.

Extinction Rebellion’s hunger strikers will starve themselves for a week to force governments to confront the crisis and enact the US rebellion’s four demands. First, governments must declare a climate and ecological emergency and tell the truth about the climate and ecological breakdown by declaring a climate emergency. Second, governments must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025. Third, each country must establish a citizens look assembly to manage and ensure a just transition. Fourth, ensure a just transition that prioritizes those who are most affected by the climate crisis.

Hunger striking is historically a deeply-personal measure of last resort. It was used by Mahatma Gandhi in the Indian Independence Movement, Marion Wallace Dunlop in the women’s suffrage movement, US prisoners protesting solitary confinement, the students of Tiananmen Square, and other movements. The strikers will be supported physically and emotionally by their community of fellow rebels.

The Global Hunger Strike builds on the recent XR hunger strikers in Italy. On October 15 Italian hunger strikers secured a meeting with Italy’s Environmental Minister. In August, an Italian rebel, Filippo Guerrini, forced Bologna’s city council to accept all of the rebellion’s three core demands.

“They will not be able to ignore us anymore,” said 27-year-old Guerrini in Italy. “We will force the institutions to look us in the eyes and listen to our requests. This time we will choose the sacrifice, the individual sacrifice. We will stop eating. Our bodies will be their alarm clock.”

Extinction RebellionNovember 28, 20192019