Students Fast to Protest Bombing

Occidental College freshman Jordan Parkhurst said he had tried fasting once before, in solidarity with several dorm friends observing Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.

But he didn’t do well, the 19-year-old said glumly, and gave up after only a few hours.

This time, though, is different, Parkhurst said Wednesday as he and about 130 other Occidental students--and others on as many as 16 campuses nationwide--launched a coordinated, 56-hour fast to protest the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.

“I’m trying to show that I love my country, but I don’t like what we’re doing in Afghanistan,” Parkhurst said after signing a list--under the heading, “Yo’ fasters!”--at a low-key noontime rally on the Eagle Rock campus. “I know I’ll make it this time.”

The water-only fast, which began at 9 a.m. Wednesday and is scheduled to end at 5 p.m. Friday, was initiated by Occidental students and picked up by peace activists at a smattering of universities and colleges across the country, from Humboldt State to Boston College. The fast is timed to coincide with a National Day of Action against the war that is planned for Friday at many campuses nationwide. About 70 students signed up to fast at Pomona College, and others of the Claremont Colleges reported that dozens of students were participating.

But protesters at some of the colleges may have been so quiet as to go unnoticed. At UCLA and Princeton, for instance, officials said that there had been no publicity about the fast and that they had no idea whether students there were taking part. More than a month into the military campaign in Afghanistan, the fast is one of the few cross-country anti-war efforts--a vivid contrast to the anti-war activism of the 1960s.

After an initial round of rallies and vigils in response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, college students, along with other Americans, have been at “a bit of a loss about what to do next,” said Julie Reuben, a Harvard education professor who is writing a book on student activism.

“Reaction has been very muted” at Harvard and elsewhere, she said. “I think many people just don’t have a clear sense of what the issues are yet with this war.”

But contrary to public perceptions, Reuben said, early demonstrations against the war in Vietnam also were small and isolated, and only later, as more youths were drafted, grew into the large-scale protests that most now remember.

For now, even at Occidental, some students are content just to observe the activism. As a parade of speakers politely denounced the U.S. bombing and expressed solidarity with Afghan civilians on Wednesday, about 200 students sat on the grass near the Johnson Student Center at lunchtime, eating sandwiches and sushi.

Students collected green armbands that marked them as fasters or supporters. Forty professors, about a third of the faculty, have endorsed the fast.

Spencer Jackson, a 20-year-old English major, said he came up with the idea for the protest to help young people show that not all Americans are united behind the military campaign against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Jackson recalled the onetime U.S. support of Bin Laden and other forces fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, saying it was hard to make the case that the current fight is one of good versus evil. How do we do that, he asked, “when the evil are people we were financing less than 15 years ago?”

But he and others said they welcomed other ideas, and invited those who disagreed with the day’s themes to address the crowd as well. “Thanks for fasting, and if you aren’t fasting, thanks for just listening with an open mind,” organizer Robert Wallace said.

Not all those who listened were supportive, though. Andrew Pappas, a 19-year-old majoring in diplomacy and world affairs, took the microphone to say that though he found his fellow students’ idealism “refreshing,” he also found it naive.

Comparisons to Vietnam were wrong, Pappas said. “The war in Afghanistan is being fought with a moral imperative.” Only one student, and that one politely, challenged him as he walked away.

Across the narrow concrete plaza, Leonika Hannan, a Muslim student from Bangladesh, sat watching, a little amused. Her parents live in Islamabad, Pakistan, where her father works for UNICEF; her mother has just been evacuated--reluctantly--because of possible angry reaction to the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan.

Hannan said she applauds the good intentions of her fellow students but has doubts about the protest’s effectiveness.

“I think it’s great that they want to fast, but I don’t think they’re going to accomplish anything,” she said. “Why do they think the government will listen?”