Author Hunger Strikes in White House’s Shadow

By Neal 

AP reporter Brian Westley files a piece on hunger-striking political activist Diane Wilson, who is fasting near the White House since July 4 in order to protest the war in Iraq. Wilson, whose previous hunger strike against Gulf Coast memoirs was chronicled in her memoir An Unreasonable Woman, is one of many engaged in what’s been called the “Troops Home Fast;” published reports on the movement’s numbers vary from 2,700 to 4,000. Interestingly, the original press release for the fast namechecks Cindy Sheehan and Dick Gregory as “long-term hunger strikers” alongside Wilson, but there’s no mention of them in the latest dispatch…then again, Sheehan’s been busy buying land near the president’s ranch in Crawford to facilitate another round of protests planned around his vacation in August.