Fasting: reflections on solidarity and collective action

Kathe Kollwitz

Last week I joined an international Fast for Freedom in Gaza. Along with many others, I refrained from eating and drank only water for about forty hours. Our purpose was to show solidarity with the people of Gaza’s struggle for freedom from occupation, apartheid, and relentless slaughter, and call further attention to the Israeli-US blockade of basic necessities that clearly aims to eliminate them, including murdering them in cold blood when they attempt to seek what little aid is available, in the desperate effort to fend off starvation.

Hunger affects 1 in 11 people in the world, including in wealthy countries like the US. Famine impacts large numbers of people in Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere. All of this is human-caused or human-worsened: Earth, despite our severe stressing of the climate, is more than capable of feeding everyone. It is the injustice of human societies that keeps so many from the sustenance they require.

Deliberate Starvation

What is particularly stark about starvation in Gaza is the degree to which it is caused by a policy of blatant deprivation, without the slightest pretext of any origin other than deliberate policy, or any purpose besides eliminating the Palestinian population.

This imposed starvation not only subjugates the Palestinians but humiliates the people of the world, who have repeatedly tried, and who keep trying, to break the Israeli-imposed, US-backed and financed blockade that prevents entry of necessities including food and other basic means of survival.

It is a form of torture to be made to watch the torture of your fellow humans, especially children, without being able to do anything; to be forcibly held in place by an iron grip when all you want to do is reach out and stop the suffering.

We saw this iron grip throttle the latest attempt by the Freedom Flotilla’s ship Madleen to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza earlier this month, when Israeli military forces illegally boarded the ship in international waters, detaining a small crew of internationalist activists and confiscating the aid destined for starving Palestinians. Egypt, which despite history and rhetoric is aiding Israeli aggression, likewise prevented the overland March to Gaza, where thousands planned to carry food aid to the Palestinians.

This starvation policy aligns with the Israeli government’s stated intent to take over the entire Gaza strip and erase the Palestinian population. In this they are abetted by the shameful material support of the US, European, and a few other governments—a minority of the worlds’ countries and peoples, though, sadly, a majority of its economic and military power.

Fasting and Choice

A planned, voluntary, finite period of choosing to go without food could never approximate the suffering of forced starvation, nor is it meant to. It is, rather, a way to bring a different sort of attention to this emergency, for the world, but especially for those fasting. It’s a way of focusing our attention more sharply.

For me, one key result of this fast has been to make me more sharply aware of the helplessness I feel as I see that the immense level of popular opinion that has swept the world, condemning the genocide and the US support for it, is not enough. It makes me more insistent in asking the question: What can we as a world majority do regarding this manifestly undemocratic, might-makes-right situation?

The world majority has acted strongly since the start of this latest, most intensive and deadly stage of the Israeli-US occupation of the land of Palestine. We have held continual multitudinous demonstrations and constantly petitioned legislators. Legions of people, and thousands of national and grassroots organizations, have held action after action.

The UN General Assembly and Security Council have repeatedly voted for a full ceasefire and the International Court of Justice has condemned the genocide, as have many governments and other international bodies.

As a Jew I want to note that all these calls are not for vengence against Israel, much less against Jews, but for ceasing the slaughter and finding a fair, reasonable solution for all concerned. I have frequently heard Palestinians themselves say the same.

Unfortunately while declarations and resolutions abound, for the most part these have lacked teeth, especially in the case of governments where material action such as sanctions could actually make a difference if carried out and enforced. We see the extent to which the accusation of antisemitism, a spurious charge that actually endangers Jews, is used as a weapon to keep governments and institutions from effectively opposing occupation and genocide.

Rini Templeton

Clearly, these continual demonstrations of millions against the slaughter in Gaza are not enough. And yet, I, along with Left activists and organizers everywhere, continue to believe that the solution lies in collective action.

Do we simply need more such actions by more people? Will a few more millions participating in more demonstrations, and more attempts to break the blockade by land and by sea eventually tip the balance? Can we pressure enough governments and international entities to finally take steps that have a material effect on the interests behind the occupation and genocide? Will more and bigger demonstrations stop Trump and Netanyahu from starting a war with Iran?

Maybe.

Numbers?

In 2003, we tried very hard to forestall George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Yet for all the millions that turned out against it, Bush was able to ignore our voices and launch the disastrous invasion and occupation, seemingly with no consequence to himself or the capitalist interests profiting from the aggression. Even when the grotesque falsehoods used to justify the invasion were exposed, no apology, let alone a reversal of course, ensued. Instead, the tremendously destructive occupation and the struggle to expel it lasted eight years and killed hundreds of thousands.

The thing is, at present, no material force exists that can obligate the powerful to act, or to stop acting. At this time, we cannot directly force Bush, Trump, Netanyahu, or any of their ilk to listen to us or do what we say. In practical terms, other than (to a certain extent) during elections, leaders of the most powerful nations, backed by wealthy interests, are virtually unmovable, and the expressed will of millions of people and of the majority of the world’s governments and institutions have little effect.

The powerful always cite morality and humanitarian principles to justify their actions, to confuse, placate, and motivate their people and to cover up their own ruthlessness. Yet time after time we see that they are in fact innured to such principles, which means that our appeals simply do not work, no matter how loudly and often they are made, or by how many millions.

Of course, mass uprisings do topple governments and have done so repeatedly throughout history. But how do these actually happen? How can we purposefully act together to bring them about?

Having said that we can’t change their hearts, minds, or actions if they are set against it, we can at the same time be assured that our actions worry the rulers a great deal. In fact, they deeply fear us, not because of concern their guilt will be exposed–somehow those at the pinnacle of power have such a thick hide of entitlement they feel no shame or guilt–but because they realize better than we do that we actually do have the power to stop them, if we can just muster and wield it. Which is why they expend untold resources to keep us in check.

Our actions to date, heartfelt, multitudinous, and creative though they are, do not effectively challenge the military and financial might of the US, Israel, or their closest allies. Coming to terms with this is difficult, but it can open up possibilities for us, as shedding illusions tends to do.

How to make our collective power more effective?

If giant demonstrations, sit-ins, encampments, flotillas, and so many other actions aren’t enough; if petitioning representatives who are not truly obliged to represent us doesn’t work, how can we effectively counter the perpetrators of genocide?

We need to make it impossible for them to continue ruling us and dragging us toward destruction.

A tall order, yes, but if it were easy we would have done this ages ago.

What incapacitates the wealthy and powerful? Whatever effectively impedes their ability to keep controlling the world’s wealth, workers, and firepower, and doing whatever they damn well please with them.

This is not about trying to overpower them with their military weapons on their battlefields. We know the issue is not replacing certain individuals with others. Rather, it is about wielding our own power—ourselves, organized!—to make it impossible for them to maintain their deadly, destructive business as usual. And to set up our own ways of running things according to our thinking and interests.

To do this requires “only” that we trust our own power and our own thinking, and stop trusting theirs. That we realize that they need us to keep their system going, but we don’t need them in order to run things in keeping with our needs.

However, at this time in most places the current setup—the beast, the machine, capitalism, imperialism—governs most of the important aspects of our lives. Those in charge are squarely in the way of the world we want.

How can we become a more pointed instrument of change?

One way is with our presence; another is with our absence.

Absenting Ourselves

Let’s take the second, absence, that is, withdrawing ourselves. Refusing to play our role in the machine. The political strike, the solidarity strike, the general strike. Such tactics strike fear (pun intended!) in the powerful, who will do anything to keep the people from stopping society’s machines, which, after all, workers alone know how to run.

Refusing to protect and serve the beast

Some workers have particularly significant capacity to deny key material support to the beast in whose capitalist, imperialist belly we all live. For instance, the dock workers who refuse to load weapons of war.

What about the beast’s all-important enforcers–the police, the military, the national guard? Mass desertion from war by soldiers is common throughout history, often helping tip the balance in a conflict (as in the Czarist army during WWI or the US army during the Vietnam War). Soldiers desert out of disgust with their role as cannon fodder. Or they may reject the morality and politics of a conflict and the rulers who wage it, like the growing number of soldiers who refuse to serve in the Israeli Army.

Whether domestically or abroad, military personnel are the members of the working class who most directly defend the power of rulers. What if large numbers of them refused to attack their own people?

While they are subject to exceptional levels of brutalization to force them into this role, that a good number might resist it does not seem that farfetched. It likely has happened. If you know of any instances, please say so in the comments!

It is certainly something we can imagine. In Book Two of my Rainwood House Series, Rainwood House Burns, I have an activist character who is a deserter from the repressive forces of El Salvador.

Refusing our money and our participation

We can also withdraw our wealth through divestment campaigns, and our purchasing power through boycotts. Refusing to pay “war taxes" is another example.

And then there are the mass mobilizations where people absent themselves from their role in the system, like A Day without Immigrants (reprised several times since 2006) and Women’s Strikes against war and abortion bans, and for equality, wages for housework, and more.

I’m sure there are many other forms of meaningfully withholding the power of working people and leaving a vacuum the rulers can’t fill.

Presenting Ourselves

And how can we use our presence? We already see our potentially colossal power at major demonstrations, popular uprisings, and revolutions. However, because these tend to be limited to particular nations, they have not translated into the international mobilizing power capable of surmounting that which imperialist capital is presently able to command.

What is needed is not only to demonstrate our power but to wield it in an organized manner, to push it into many halls of power at the same time, to not just rage against the machine, but disable it and start running things our way.

Business as usual continues to exist because the working class follows routines and obeys orders out of inertia and fear. What if, for example, instead of going to work we all sat down to picnic and sing in the middle of all the main roads? What if we all pitched tents in the public squares, and sat down to talk? And figured out how share the available food so everyone has enough?

What if student walkouts expanded to school takeovers where, with the help of supportive teachers and community, students began holding classes on subjects they democratically determined are what they really need to know?

What if we went into all the Congressional offices and refused to leave? What if, once the old reps had run away in panic—minus the few who decided to join us—we sat down in the hallowed halls to have discussions and together make the decisions necessary to meet the needs of everyone—including using our resources for people, not war?

What if we surrounded the pipelines, refineries, and corporate offices of the fossil fuel industry with multitudes of people of all kinds, until they were forced to stop their destruction? What if we surrounded and took over the banks and forced them to pay out reparations and finance democratically chosen projects to rescue the planet?

Naive? Simplistic? Perhaps. Yet each of these things has already been done in the world, some of them multiple times throughout history, including in the US. We know they work, as do many other creative collective actions. That’s why the beast, the machine, makes sure to crush them as soon as possible.

How many such actions, with how many people, would it take to become too many to overpower? According to political scientist Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues’ study of hundreds of popular movements, when around 3.5% of the population actively mobilizes, serious political change happens.

Imagining Collective Happy Endings

We love stories where justice prevails. What if our movies and novels, instead of focusing on superheroes, police detectives and random characters pursuing individualistic solutions, were filled with inspiring stories that follow characters participating in movements for justice that successfully engage in such collective actions? Stories that instead of glorifying wealth, the police, and the military, explored exciting mass struggles like those suggested above, inviting us to identify with these characters and imagine ourselves in such situations?

These are the kinds of questions I think about in the slight brain daze I get while fasting…

Rini Templeton, JB