Hanging With Hunger Strikers

WHEN PEOPLE GO ON HUNGER STRIKES, there is always a reason behind it, a cause so great, so worthy that people are willing to fast for it. You hear about hunger strikes fairly often; usually someboldy in prison does it, or somebody outside the prison trying to get someone inside released. Just a couple of weeks ago Greenpeace environmental activist types were hunger striking, protesting the lack of progress at the United Nations environmental summit meeting in Warsaw. How did that turn out, anyway? The hunger strike, that is. Did anybody starve to death? Presumably it eventually came to an end, the strikers got a little sugar water back into their systems for starters, then recovered. Hunger strikers never actually starve to death, do they? You always hear in the media about people beginning and continuing hunger strikes, but you never hear about them ending them. The end of a hunger strike must not be as lucrative in advertising sales as the beginning or middle of one. The most prominent hunger strike now ongoing is on an issue which you do not normally think of in terms of hunger strikers; immigration reform. Somewhere, at least eighteen people are on food refusal in protest of the lack of an acceptable immigration reform policiy by the United States. President Obama met with these people yesterday, presumably because immigration is the big issues he is now involved with, trying to draw public attention to it. Two kinds of immigration reform come to mind; the kind which is very harsh on illegal imigrants, and the kind which is very lenient on them. Obama favors the latter sort, presumably so do the hunger strikers with whom he met. Its just hard to imagine anyone willing to risk death by starvation in order to kick people out of the country. The same fervant spirit just wouldn't be there. President Obama, while meeting with these people, declared his comeplete allegiance to their cause, and his intention of producing real immigration reform, including a reasonable path to citizenship for illegals already in the country. The people with whom Obama met have been hunger striking since November 12. Tat's a bit long. they must be losing weight by now, and very weak. While he was hanging with these fasting folks, did he by chance, or was he tempted, to pull out a nice warm sweet smelling sweet roll from the White House kitchenn? Or maybe a fresh hot aromatic pizza, and take a satisfying bite, and offer to share?