Leftist college students at Arizona State University said they will go on a hunger strike if Congress doesn’t pass President Joe Biden’s radical “voting rights” bill.
The students participated in a 15-day hunger strike this past December to pressure lawmakers into voting for the Freedom to Vote Act, but junior Leila Winbury, who helped organize the strike, said this next one will be even “bigger.”
“We’re prepared to hold out indefinitely now that the holidays are over,” she told Fox News this week.
“I have seen the consequences of a broken democracy my entire life, so we’re willing to suffer the consequences of hunger striking rather than the consequences of the bill not passing,” she said.
The reason we went on #HungerStrike4Democracy was that our politicians were failing to act to save our democracy. If they fail to pass the #FreedomToVoteAct in the new year, we’ll be back. pic.twitter.com/FykfhPWrnq
— Un-PAC (@LetsUnpac) December 27, 2021
During their first hunger strike, the students of ASU’s un-PAC club started by protesting at the Arizona Capitol, and then moved to Washington, D.C. to protest at the U.S. Capitol building. They stopped the strike only after President Joe Biden announced he would make the Freedom to Vote Act a priority.
“The health toll was hard, a lot of us had low blood pressure, but we did have a doctor on site,” she said. “He took our vitals twice a day. In Arizona I was able to go back to my dorm. In D.C., we stayed in sleeping bags out front of the Capitol, and then once it would get dark, we would go stay in a hotel.”
We wouldn’t be in a place where @SenSchumer is committing to debate Senate rules change to pass the #FreedomToVoteAct by MLK Day without our #HungerStrike4Democracy. Hopefully we don’t need to put our bodies on the line again for the bill to pass – but we will if necessary! pic.twitter.com/SSJ7vqasZJ
— Un-PAC (@LetsUnpac) January 4, 2022
The Freedom to Vote Act is unlikely to pass the Senate, where Democrats would have to abolish the filibuster in order to ram it through. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have already said they will not vote to abolish the filibuster.
