Updated September 12, 2007

From May 9-17, 2007, over 40 individuals at four University of California campuses conducted the "No More Nukes In Our Name!" Hunger Strike.  Through this bold act of civil resistance and personal sacrifice, they demanded that the UC Board of Regents fully and immediately withdraw their management of the US government's two foremost nuclear weapons facilities -- the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The UC has nominally overseen these labs since their inceptions.  As the US government’s largest nuclear warhead contractor for over six decades, the university has provided a much-needed veneer of academic legitimacy to the creation of the world’s most destructive weapons.  At the time of the hunger strike, this long-salient issue had taken on an added urgency.

A few months prior to the hunger strike, the US Nuclear Weapons Council had announced that the UC-employed scientists at Lawrence Livermore would develop a new hydrogen bomb, under the auspices of the misleadingly-named Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program.  For its part, LANL had just broken ground on a new facility to manufacture new plutonium bomb cores -- the explosive triggers of modern nuclear weapons.  Together, these developments marked some of the US nuclear weapons complex’s boldest steps to resume full-scale nuclear bomb production since the end of the Cold War.  And the UC was squarely at the center of them.

Only a few days before the hunger strike’s commencement, further reaffirmation of fast’s timeliness came when the UC and its new corporate partners in the limited-liability firm Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, were officially awarded a $297.5 million federal government contract to manage LLNL through at least 2014.

And in the Persian Gulf, US nuclear-armed aircraft carriers roamed throughout the waters outside of Iran, ready to destroy the lives of untold thousands of people via UC-developed nuclear weapons on virtually a moment’s notice.

The set-up of the hunger strike was different at each campus.  At UCSB, a tent community made up of hunger strikers and their supporters formed in front of the campus administration building, Cheadle Hall.  At UCSC, the fasters positioned themselves in the campus’ Bay Tree Plaza throughout most of the nine days.  Berkeley fasters set up each day on a lawn outside of Sproul Hall, the campus administration building.  UCSF’s lone faster, Professor Tom Newman, went about his work as usual while also spreading the word as widely as possible among his colleagues, friends, family members, and students. 

 The hunger strike began based on the commitments of a small handful of people.  It soon burgeoned into the largest, most impactful coordinated action in the Coalition to Demilitarize the UC’s five-year history.  In the words of one UC Santa Cruz organizer, “At the teach-in today kicking off the hunger strike for UCSC, I saw faces I hadn't seen in meetings for months or longer, others I'd seen at protests but never at meetings, and still a few more that I'd never seen before in my life. People are coming out of the woodwork (for a few, even literally... this is Santa Cruz) to support or join this action.” 

Help came from many quarters, often unexpectedly.  Among numerous radio, TV, and print stories, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a feature on the front page of its California section.  UCSB faculty members sponsored a large rally for their campus’ hunger strikers.  Dozens of people helped gather signatures on petition, make classroom announcements, and brought the fasters water, juices, and supplements.  Over 200 people individually sent letters to the Regents.  Dozens more made phone calls and sent personalized letters of support to the fasters. 

A handful of individuals who had only vaguely heard about the action were inspired to join in in the middle, giving up food and putting their lives on hold until the action concluded. That conclusion came following a mass mobilization at the UC Regents’ meeting at UC San Francisco on May 17th.  Over 100 hunger strikers and supporters attended.  During the public comment period, several of the hunger strikers incited standing ovations via the poignancy of their remarks.   

Later, as the Regents’ discussion of the nuclear weapons labs was about to commence, several memorable exchanges occurred between some of the students strikers and several prominent Regents.  Beleaguered Regents Chairman Richard Blum mouthed “fuck you!” to a UCSB student, while Regent Norman Pattiz told the fasters “go out and have some lunch,” shortly before ordering the room cleared.  Thirteen people, most of them hunger strikers, were dragged from the room by members of the UC Police Department.  They were held in custody for roughly two hours on charges that, as of this writing, still have not been resolved.

 The hunger strike did not achieve UC nuclear weapons lab severance.  However, it marked what may be a historic turning point in the campaign to end the UC's nuclear ties.  Among the exciting projects it has fostered are renewed efforts by UC faculty members to scrutinize and oppose the weapons labs, a UC alumni funding boycott campaign that promises, new channels of communication between student demilitarization activists and certain members of the Regents.  The Regents meeting action was featured in a strongly sympathetic light by numerous prominent media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Democracy Now!. 

For the first time in many years, student demilitarization activists have put the UC Regents publicly on the defensive with regard to their role as nuclear weapons proponents, profiteers, and technocrats.  The repercussions of this new campaign momentum are only beginning to manifest.

Despite many onlookers’ perceptions to the contrary, the hunger strikers’ critique of UC weapons lab management runs much deeper than any particular US policy or program, such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or even of the horrific threat embodied by nuclear weapons. For many of them, opposing UC weapons lab management is a matter of proactively addressing a tangible, very significant manifestation of a global, imperialist system predicated on extreme violence.  For others, it is a signpost of the continued – and increasing -- corporatization and militartization of the UC, an institution that purports to (but, in reality, doesn’t and never did) serve the public interest.  For still others, their concerns are rooted in earth-based consciousness, in the destruction nuclear weapons cause to indigenous people’s communities.

This page is intended to commemorate the bold and principled non-violent warriors for peace and justice who took part in the No More Nukes In Our Name hunger strike possible, who made this transformative action what it was.  In their own words…

Jason Ahmadi, UC Berkeley: I was always very careful not to call it a hunger strike.  At Cal we were calling it a fast to free the UC from nuclear weapons. The importance of the action being a fast and not a hunger strike was very important to me and the other fasters at Berkeley.  We felt that in non-violent resistance the strike is the last resort, and most of us were joining Chels and Will in solidarity and many of us did not even know either of them all that well at the time.  I feel that this fast was immensely successful.  We approached this struggle as not only an attempt to make a stand against the university’s production of nuclear weapons, but to bring about a positive change in ourselves through the fast.  In essence, we were cleansing both ourselves and the Regents in one simple action.  Beyond that, I feel that the connections made during that emotional week will last forever, not only in the political sense but in a deeply personal way as well.  You all know what I am talking about.

Maia Kazaks, UC Santa Barbara: My childhood influence of oldies music brought me through a very personal, but by no means individual, path to activism. The positive social effects of my celebrity inspirations like John Lennon, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan were encouragement to learn about injustices that governments knowingly and unknowingly inflicted on their constituents. I was an officer in our high school's Peace Group and participated in several peace marches and letter-writing campaigns.

As my mind was opened to countless new experiences and previously unthinkable ways to approach problem solving, I became interested in the environment and ecology. The emphasis in energy independence and alternative fuels brought me to nuclear energy. I was surprised only a little that our glorious country, with much influence in the world, could be so two-faced as to ignore important treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and continue manufacturing nuclear weapons. However, the bigger surprise was that I was helping to make them. I was disgusted that my voice was forced into supporting the UC system in their renewed affiliation with Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratories -- this fast was a strong way to connect my own body to the damage that MY university was causing, and a strong way to connect with other activists.

I will never forget the comfort that I found in the other fasters and supporters -- in the hugs and juice donations, but also in the literal warmth for each other. Allegra Swan loaned her comforter to me for nearly a week. Whitney Walberg, Kay Cuajunco and Andrew Culp were irreplaceable in their generosity -- the tent, the bunny, the mattress and the unending love. Of course, those talented souls who could keep our spirits up with guitar playing or joke telling (who could forget Adrian's observation that his colon had become a semi-colon?) were invaluable as well. Lastly, I am so glad I had Felipe Miranda to dissolve into tears upon after my interaction with some ROTC students and the 9th day of the fast. The students were being entirely insensitive and having lunch in front of the camp, and after I and the one supporter that was present asked them to be respectful, they began arguing with us over details of the US armed services principles and the importance of the a nuclear cache to the US's defense. After trying to discuss facts and our intentions, I began to see that it would be a futile discussion and waited for the ringleader to finish berating us. I told him that, in spite of our differing viewpoints, I love him as a fellow human. He laughed at me and said "Oh that's funny- I almost respect you because you said that." I like to think the hug I gave him, during which he let his arms hang limp and let loose a syllable of scoff, will be something he remembers from that day. He may not. But I know that I was strong enough, after over eight days of a liquid fast, to hold my ground and be patient and respectful. At least until they left, when I saw Felipe arriving and went to hug him and collapse a little bit.

After everything that has happened, I am looking forward to a continued resistance until the UC Regents can no longer try to hide themselves behind bureaucracy and ties. This anti-nuclear movement has been going on for so long it astounds me how much the United States has mired itself in weapons business. I can only have hope for the future. With the amazing humans that I've met in my short but significant time in the nuclear abolishment movement by my side and in my arms, I feel this positivity renewed and reflected back upon me. The global connection and bonds between all humans has been my greatest discovery of this time.

Thomas Newman, UC San Francisco: I heard about the group of University of California students planning a hunger strike to protest UC’s involvement in the nuclear weapons business via an e-mail Tuesday night, May 8. “Good for them,” I thought. A new federal contract for UC to continue the role it has played for more than half a century as the sole developer of nuclear weapons in the United States would be considered by the Board of Regents who govern my university the next Thursday, and our complicit endorsement of these immoral, indiscriminate weapons has always bothered me. So when breakfast time came Wednesday I decided to skip it and think about whether I wanted to join these heroic students. I was really hungry by lunch time, but managed to hold off. Why not?

First, nuclear weapons are abhorrent. As a pediatrician, I’ve cared for desperately ill and dying children. Having visited the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, I have some sense of the horrific suffering and deaths the atomic bomb used there caused, even though it was only 1% as powerful as the H-bombs subsequently designed at UC’s Los Alamos laboratory. Visualize thousands and thousands of burning children, then move on to the radiation sickness with its fever, bloody diarrhea and vomiting that will slowly kill thousands more in the next few weeks and the cancers and birth defects that will follow for a generation. It’s not a pretty picture. What does it say about us as a university that we agree to join unwise decisions by politicians in Washington and employ scientists and engineers to design weapons with these effects?

Second, I firmly believe that the plan to design new nuclear weapons at the UC Weapons labs increases the chance that the weapons will be used. For any of us to be safe from nuclear weapons, we need to find a way to get rid of them. In fact, as a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the US is legally obligated to negotiate towards exactly that end. By instead pursuing new nuclear weapons, we undermine the nonproliferation treaty and send a message to the world that the weapons are somehow a legitimate means of seeking national security. This is lunacy and it is evil. George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, recently called for a world free of nuclear weapons. Spending billions of dollars on new ones, in addition to the $54 billion/year (almost twice the NIH budget) we already spend is not the way to get there.

Did my fast make a difference? Does anyone beyond my immediate circle of family and friends really care if I eat? That is certainly something I asked myself in my hungrier moments. But I talked throughout to some of the fasting students on nightly conference calls and they care. So I stick with it. They make me proud to be part of the University of California.

Whitney Walberg, UCSB: From the moment I arrived at the top of the stairs to the IV Tenant’s Union at the SB antiwar meeting, and saw all of the beautiful faces of the people that would soon become my family, I felt as if I belonged.  The hunger strike was one of the first collective acts of civil disobedience I have taken part in, and has been one of the most empowering experiences of my life.  I felt a connection to all the people around our tent city.  Even though I had just met most of the people involved, I felt like they knew me better than most, because they know that feeling I have, the feeling that tells me we have to do something about this.  I have to say I felt more nourished than ever, despite the lack of food.  The hunger strike fed my soul!  There was much criticism (some I still don’t quite understand) and people who didn’t agree with or like what we were doing, but I am very proud of the amount of awareness that was raised about the issue through the strike and camp out.  As a freshman entering UCSB, I really had no idea how closely knit my university is with the military, so I am glad that we were able to show other students. Although our demand has yet to be met, the UC Regents could not ignore us any longer, and they know this opposition isn’t going anywhere.  More than anything, the strike gave me hope for the future.  I was reminded of the power of the people, the power in me. With enough heart we really will make changes, but the struggle has only begun in my life, and I am glad to join.  I was reminded of the importance of joining together when confronting an enemy, in this case militarism at the university.  I felt the power of knowledge when I heard members of our tent city family speaking during the public comment periods and press conferences.  I realized I could find it on my own, all I have to do is look.  I gained skills and knowledge throughout the strike, but the most valuable are the friendships I have made.  I feel connected and hopeful to make the world a better place.