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GUESTS: John Foran, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Ellen McClure, 2nd year student at UCSB, on hunger strike

UC Santa Barbara students engaged in a hunger strike will head north today to San Francisco to attend a meeting of the UC Regents. They will be there to continue their protests and demand that the University of California end all ties to nuclear weapons design laboratories. Beginning a week ago, UCSB students, in solidarity with other students system-wide, began a fast of solid foods that they vow will not end until UC regents abandon managerial ties to Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. Citing moral and environmental concerns, students are objecting to the UC system’s involvement with both labs on the grounds that they help develop and maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. One student on hunger strike has already been hospitalized for an illness related to her fast but has since been released and has rejoined the hunger strike. UCSB staff and faculty have been supportive of the hunger strike as they held a rally yesterday for the student demonstrators.

For more information, visit nonukeshungerstrike.blogspot.com, and www.sbantiwar.org/hungerstrike/.