COLUMN ONE : Power and Politics of Fasting : Hunger strikes sometimes get results. At the least, they draw publicity. The dramatic and visceral threat of self-starvation can force both sides into a test of who blinks first.

As protests go, you can sit in, march, get arrested or leaflet but nothing works like not eating.

It’s dramatic, it’s accessible and, technically, it’s nonviolent. It can confer a certain heroism and provoke sympathy whether the strikers are underpaid farm workers or Irish Republican Army stalwarts.

At its most innocuous, fasting is an exercise in primal self-deprivation that we can all imagine. In its most intense stages, it brings the threat of self-starvation, which can lead to a deadly game of chicken, of who will blink first?

In other words, hunger strikes can rarely be ignored.

Once associated with respected civic activists or political prisoners, hunger striking--or fasting as some protesters insist it be called--has become the purview of most anyone with a cause.

While Chicano students were ending their strike at UCLA last week, Asian-American students were continuing a month of fasting in shifts at UC Irvine, where they are demanding an Asian-American studies program.

On the East Coast, an iconoclastic scientist in suburban Washington is a month into a water-only fast to protest the closure of his scientific fraud investigations office at the National Institutes of Health.

Earlier this year, Rep. Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio) staged a 22-day strike to protest Congress’ neglect of hunger issues and the elimination of the Select Committee on Hunger, which he chaired.

And last month, students at UC Santa Barbara held a one-week juice-only fast as part of a series of national campus hunger strikes to support HIV-infected Haitians being held by U.S. immigration officials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

*

Hunger strikers usually do not get everything they demand, and when the protest is over, the side being pressured rarely admits that it has capitulated. But whether or not fasters get everything they want, they often get something they covet--great publicity.

“It’s political performance art,” said psychologist Stuart Fischoff, who teaches media psychology and social psychology at Cal State L.A. “It’s not as dramatic as self-immolation, but it’s a close second.”

Dick Gregory is probably the nation’s most frequent faster. He has done it more times than he can count--300 he figures--to protest everything from the Vietnam War to street violence in St. Louis.

“In America, where more people die from overeating than under-eating, I don’t know anything that will get the attention of the masses faster than fasting,” said the 61-year-old activist. “People think you’re going to die. They know if they miss one meal, they’ll get a headache.”

A hunger strike can be particularly riveting when waged by students.

“It’s a very good strategy in terms of protest, because their health is involved,” said Leslie Lawson, who was dean of students at UC Santa Barbara during a 1989 campus hunger strike. “And you have a relationship with their folks who don’t want any harm to come to them. It really puts the pressure on.”

Of course, some protesters go too far.

Venice gadfly Jerry Rubin (not the member of the Chicago Seven) has gone on so many fasts to support nuclear disarmament/the homeless/boardwalk performers that he admits he no longer gets much attention when he announces one of his juice fasts.

“I could imagine a reporter saying, ‘Jerry Rubin on another hunger strike? What’s new about that? Tell me when he is eating,’ ” he quipped.

But even Rubin presses on. “I believe in it, it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “And there will always be some coverage, some media that I haven’t called 100 times before.”

*

There are no rules governing how to stage a hunger strike. Some fasters consume hundreds of calories in juices and other liquids. Others, such as the UCLA demonstrators, take only water. Occasionally, people take in nothing--”air fasts,” as one veteran striker calls it.

In 1988, Los Angeles teacher Annya Bell fasted 64 days to protest the lack of a contract. She lived on an odd mix of water, juice, herbal teas and a potion of maple syrup, cayenne pepper and lemon juice--all of which left her feeling “wonderful.”

To a certain extent, a hunger strike’s power as a psychological weapon is proportional to how far the striker is willing to go.

Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands, who waged a 66-day strike in 1981 while being held prisoner by the British, took only water until he lost consciousness and died.

The late homeless activist Mitch Snyder went on several well-publicized fasts, including one in 1984 in which he only drank water for 51 days. As his health deteriorated, the entire city of Washington waited anxiously to see whether the Ronald Reagan Administration--on the eve of the presidential election--would agree to Snyder’s demands for $5 million to renovate a homeless shelter in an abandoned federal building.

The fast ended in six hours of negotiations, a bedside visit from a federal official and a government agreement to renovate the building into a model shelter--but no promise of $5 million. By the time Snyder was rushed to the hospital, he had become front-page news and the subject of a “60 Minutes” profile.

“We’re now sitting in a $14-million renovated building--that’s how effective it was,” said Carol Fennelly, Snyder’s longtime companion and colleague who continues working with the homeless. Why did the Reagan Administration relent? “Because of ’60 Minutes,’ ” she said. “Reagan was a feeb, but he was a nice feeb. He didn’t want Mitch to die.”

Then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler conceded that Snyder “got some of what he wanted,” but she insisted that she had wanted the shelter renovated. “I wanted to help the homeless.”

Still, there is no doubt that officials were moved by Snyder’s intransigence.

“There was a question in the minds of some as to whether he would give up his life for this cause,” said Heckler, a Washington lawyer. “I took him seriously. The fact that he has taken his life since,” she said of his 1990 suicide, “shows how serious he must have been.”

Severe physical problems are associated with hard-core fasting. “Your body stops metabolizing food because it doesn’t know when it’s going to be starved again,” said Snyder’s friend, Fennelly, who has undergone at least half a dozen strikes. She said fasting caused her thyroid to stop working.

When Cesar Chavez died this spring at 66, there was widespread speculation that his many fasts had weakened his body. But Dolores Huerta, vice president of the United Farm Workers, is not convinced. “I think Cesar worked so hard,” she said. “It’s hard to say why he died.”

Whether or not a fast is intended to defy death, it must look risky to be effective. Although the Irish Republican Army members jailed with Sands said they were ready to starve to see their status changed from criminal to political prisoner, most fasters say they do not like to invoke the specter of death. It’s too provocative.

When liberal congressman Hall decided to go on a water-only fast, he made it clear he was not fasting to the death--lest someone think his stance was irresponsible since he has a wife, two children and a job in Congress.

But Hall never specified how long he would go without eating, according to John Morrill, his communications director. Hall only said that he was committed to striking for several weeks. In fact, after some research, he had decided privately he could probably go about 40 days.

“He felt personally that it was important that people know he wasn’t going to fast until death, but at the same time that took a lot of the edge off,” Morrill said. “So it became clear to us that we could not specify a date. You have to make it somewhat mysterious to make it successful.”

Hall ended up going 22 days--until he got a commitment from the secretary of agriculture to hold a national conference and a series of regional forums on hunger. He also got a barrage of publicity.

In one of the oddest new forms of fasting, no one gets too hungry and the fast has time limits, the idea being to gain some of the drama without any of the risks. At UC Santa Barbara, students fasted for a week to protest the Clinton Administration’s refusal to allow HIV-infected Haitians into the United States. The students did it with the support of the school administration, which provided counseling on the effects of fasting.

At UC Irvine, a controlled fast that began May 6 has been so tame that it seems little more than a protracted demonstration. Five students fast in 24-hour shifts beginning at 2 p.m. each day. They camp out in a tent on the campus mall.

The protesters want to accelerate the pace at which the university is establishing an Asian-American studies program, including the hiring of two faculty members.

“We call it an educational vigil,” said 21-year-old economics major Charles Lee, a co-chair of the Asian/Pacific Student Assn. Lee said they decided a full-blown hunger strike would be too radical for the conservative campus. “The administration would be hostile,” Lee said. But the students decided partway was better than no way.

At first, Lee said, when he and his group told acting chancellor Dennis Smith of their plan “there was smoke coming out of his ears. He said, ‘Well, I won’t be held hostage.’ ”

But the university quickly decided to work with the students. The result is a rather amazing collaboration. The university allowed the protesters to fast if the students agreed to have first aid available, not allow women to camp overnight alone, have no drugs or alcohol and have a cellular phone and pager at all times.

“Both sides bought into the parameters,” said Randy Lewis, associate dean of students.

About 70 students have fasted in the tent. They have also distributed information on a proposed Asian-American studies program and collected 3,500 signatures of support. They have generated campus interest and publicity, but have succeeded in little else.

The recent fasts at UCLA and Irvine have raised questions about whether hunger strikes are being trivialized for issues that are not matters of life or death. But veteran protester state Sen. Tom Hayden says one cannot pass judgment on someone else’s cause.

Hayden contends that the students at UCLA felt they were seen as being inconsequential after the chancellor’s refusal to create a Chicano studies department. “There are people who would rather risk death than be treated that way,” Hayden said. “In so doing, they made the administration see them as whole human beings.”

Walter Stewart, the scientific fraud investigator whose office was recently closed at the National Institutes of Health, said he is not striking simply to get his office reopened--although he sure wouldn’t mind it. He said he wants to bring attention to what he alleges is the NIH’s inadequate response to dealing with accusations of scientific fraud. As of Wednesday, the 48-year-old investigator had gone 31 days drinking only water.

The issues here, he said, are the conduct of scientists and the government’s disposition of allegations of fraud--not the usual fare of hunger strikes.

Nonetheless, Stewart is serious about these matters and said non-scientists should be too. He invoked the time-honored mantra of hunger strikers everywhere in explaining what is driving him to overcome his hunger and fatigue: “It’s an issue of conscience.”

The Steps of Starvation

Hunger strikes at UCLA and elsewhere have raised questions about their use as a tool of protest. Here is a brief description of what happens to the body when it is deprived of food over time.

* When food is first denied, the body feeds on a starchy substance called glycogen, which is stored in the liver.

* As less food is taken in, energy drops. Heartbeat, pulse and blood pressure fall.

* The body begins to lose water and to feed on fat and muscle. Weight lost is composed of 50% water, 25% muscle and 25% fat. As water is depleted from the cells, the body shrinks. Fasters take on a gaunt, hollow-cheeked look.

* The human body can withstand a loss of 25% of its normal weight and still survive. Beyond that, life expectancy is 30 to 50 days. The body’s organs begin to waste away. Intestines wither, making it impossible for the body to digest food.

* Starvation has a devastating effect on mental health. There is fatigue and a loss of awareness of hunger. The person becomes confused, disoriented and irritable.