Hunger Strike for Gaza
Mike Ferner, former National Director of Veterans for Peace
Howdy Y’all,
I am headed to the Annual Socialism Conference in Chicago this weekend, so if anyone is gonna be there HMU and let’s connect in person.
I will be in the air during the next live broadcast of Redneck Gone Green, but don’t fret. Co-Host Shane Knight is gonna interview long-time social change agent Mike Ferner, former National Director of Veterans for Peace.
A friendly reminder that we broadcast live every Monday at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern on the Democracy at Work YouTube channel. So the show with Mike will be on July 7th at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern. I hope you agree that Mike is the perfect guest for the show immediately after “Independence Day.” You can join the conversation and make live comments on YouTube by clicking here
I encourage you to join us live if possible, which will allow you to make comments on YouTube. If not, remember that you can always access the recording (both video and audio) by becoming a subscriber on the Redneck Gone Green Youtube channel by clicking here.
Immediately below my signature is a bio for Mike and an essay on the recent Hunger Strike for Gaza he helped organize and participate in.
Onward to the world we deserve,
David Cobb (he/him)
The Redneck Gone Green
Why I put my pronouns in my signature
Mike is a former Toledo, Ohio city council member, Vietnam era veteran, author, peace activist, and a member of the POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy) collective. He was elected as an independent to the city council and proposed the creation of a small municipal utility to compete with Toledo Edison. He ran for mayor in 1993 with this as a major campaign plank, but lost by only 672 out of 92,740 votes cast.
In March 2006 Ferner interrupted the US House Appropriations Committee that was in the process of voting on $67,000,000,000 in military funding for the US war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
On June 30, 2006 he was arrested at the Jesse Brown Veterans' Administration Medical Center while participating in Voices For Creative Nonviolence's 320-mile "Walk for Justice" from Springfield to Chicago, Illinois. The arresting officer stated that wearing a "Veterans for Peace" T-shirt while drinking coffee at the center was protesting, and ordered Ferner to leave the premises. He refused, and was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and with weapons possession (a Swiss Army pocket knife).
In 2006 he published "Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq," recounting his trips to Iraq just prior to the U.S. invasion.
🇵🇸 Hunger Strike for Gaza: Veterans Lend Their Bodies to Break the Siege
In May 2025, Veterans for Peace—alongside numerous religious and humanitarian allies—launched a powerful 40-day hunger strike near the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. Their two central demands were loud and clear: Full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority and an immediate halt to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel
Mike Ferner framed the action as a moral imperative born from decades of witnessing war's toll:
“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides—too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Vietnam… Our taxes help Israel provide full health care to all its citizens while millions of Americans go without it… This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops.”
He told Truthout:
“Having seen what war does… I simply have to do more than hold a sign at a demonstration… Until Americans actually run their government and direct our wealth to sustain life, we will have to protest in the strongest ways possible.” (truthout.org)
📍 Context & Courage
The hunger strike began May 22 at the UN’s “Isaiah Wall,” with over 600 registered fasters restricting their intake to 250 calories daily—the approximate ration being denied to Gazans under siege.
Marine veteran Phil Tottenham, co-founder of the strike, emphasized the urgency and righteous grief fueling the act:
“The genocide pained me so much I wanted to do what Aaron Bushnell did but didn’t have the courage. ‘But what is the most we can do?,’ Tottenham asked.” (truthout.org)
Their act was steeped in both empathy and righteous anger—mirroring the motivations of veterans like Joy Metzler and Kathy Kelly, whose own moral trajectories were tested by witnessing starvation and state violence in Gaza.
🤝 Solidarity, Strategy, and Symbolism
The location—outside America’s diplomatic nerve center—was chosen to amplify their moral and political demands. Veterans for Peace members from across the country coordinated this peaceful direct action, symbolizing their refusal to sanction U.S. complicity in genocide,
Rev. Addie Domske of Friends of Sabeel North America framed the strike as an act of maternal obligation and spiritual witness:
“No one can be a good mother without acting on what they believe should be possible for their children… we commit—with our bodies—to interrupt that evil plan to starve our Palestinian kin in Gaza.”
Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, cited Irish Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire’s 40-day fast as kinship in sacrifice:
“We must follow Mairead’s lead, hungering acutely for an end to all weapon shipments to Israel… We must ask, ‘Who are the criminals?’ as war crimes multiply.”
🌍 Global Ripples & Tactical Leverage
The fast did more than accentuate U.S. responsibility—it also ignited international solidarity. From echoing efforts in Hong Kong, Ireland, and Germany, to meetings with UN envoys like Denmark's—veterans built pressure around diplomatic tables as well as public spaces Their actions underlined a worldwide movement demanding not only awareness, but policy shifts.
⚖️ Moral Clarity Through Embodied Sacrifice
Veterans, particularly Ferner, drew a stark contrast between their basic comforts and Gazans’ desperation:
“It only took 20 days… I didn’t have to sleep on the cold, wet ground… I drink all the clean water I want… With 6 other members of Veterans For Peace… we stand every day… with signs that read 'Feed Gaza!, We can’t say we didn’t know!'"
Ferner’s emphasized this was a critique of a violent systen:
“Our taxes help Israel provide full health care… while millions of Americans go without it, and we spend billions killing people.” (consortiumnews.com, veteransforpeace.org)
🕊️ Courage, Continuity & Call to Action
By Day 21, the strike entered its midpoint. Veterans and allies recommitted, confronting any sense of passivity:
“The international peace movement is not waiting on governments… The demands… remain: 1) Full humanitarian aid to Gaza… 2) No more U.S. weapons to Israel.”
Their embodied resistance stood as an invitation and challenge—“this is how we can stop the genocide.”
✍️ A Progressive Perspective
This hunger strike resonates for met on several levels:
Veterans Reinventing Patriotism — By leveraging their service and bearing their bodies, they reasserted the dignity of defending life, not empire.
Moral Witness as Strategy — Fasting transcends symbolism. It demands public attention, disrupts complacency, and breaks through the noise with authenticity.
Direct Linkages between Policy and Lives — By targeting U.S. weapon flows and aid pipelines, veterans drew precise lines from domestic budgets to battlefield death.
They decentered militarism, recentered humanity, and recast direct action as moral imperative—not spectacle.
Conclusion: Seeds of a New Solidarity
The Veterans for Peace hunger strike is a clarion call for accountability and conscience in global politics. It demonstrates that embodied dissent, rooted in lived experience, can pierce through cynicism and force policy reconsideration. As Ferner asserts: "This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops."