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Radio host Joe Madison is on a hunger strike for voting rights

2022-01-05 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

It was Monday, Day 57 of Joe Madison’s hunger strike — no solid foods, he’d vowed, until Congress passes laws protecting the voting rights of all Americans. I’d called the SiriusXM radio talk show host at his home in D.C. to see how long he thought he could keep this up.

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Madison is 72 and has battled cancer. With a hunger strike, he’s taking a risk.

“This is not a time for business as usual,” he said. “The way I see it, we are coming to the end of the second Reconstruction in this country, and the voting rights gains of the 1960s are under attack just like they were under attack in the post-Reconstruction era following the Civil War.”

“The first time, it was Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. “This time it’s James Crow, esquire, and the Proud Boys. They are relentless. We need everybody on the battlefield for this one.”

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According to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Laws Roundup, more than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access were introduced in 49 states during the 2021 legislative sessions. At least 19 states have already passed 34 laws restricting access to voting.

“These early indicators — coupled with the ongoing mobilization around the Big Lie (the same false rhetoric about voter fraud that drove this year’s unprecedented wave of vote suppression bills) — suggest that efforts to restrict and undermine the vote will continue to be a serious threat in 2022,” the Brennan Center report said.

Two bills would help stop the threats to voting rights: the Freedom to Vote Act, which would ensure minimum national standards for voting and prevent partisan actors from interfering with elections or canceling the results, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would prevent discriminatory practices and rules in voting, especially in states where discrimination is persistent and pervasive.

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Both bills were passed by the House but held up by Republicans in the Senate.

But why a hunger strike?

A group of college students from Arizona had come to D.C. in December, trying to follow Madison’s lead by staging a hunger strike for voting rights outside the White House. They lasted 14 days before becoming too weak to walk. One of them declared that the hunger pains felt like knives being poked into her stomach.

“When people see me or anyone else who is willing to sacrifice their bodies for the cause, hopefully that will inspire them to do something,” Madison told me. “Do anything, just get involved.”

There was a photograph of Madison on his website, taken 30 days into his protest. He was shirtless, with a sagging chest and gaunt face. He didn’t look like he could last till the next morning. He was subsisting on bone broth and juices, he told me. His weight had gone from 194 pounds to 171. He was using a walking stick to steady his gait, he said. Other side effects included insomnia, dizziness, nausea and chills.

“When I told my wife that I’m going to do this, she said, 'My goodness, you’re not 30 years old anymore. This could be harmful,’ ” Madison recalled. He and his wife, Sharon, will have been married 45 years on Jan. 15. They have four grown children. “She said, ‘So you’re telling me that you are willing to die?’ And I looked at her and said, ‘Yes.’ And that ended that conversation.”

But other conversations had begun. Several people were asking: How far is the nation willing to go to save a democracy under attack by autocratic, if not fascist, sympathizers?

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In July, a protest for voting rights led by Black women resulted in nine arrests — including the arrest of the Congressional Black Caucus’s chair, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). That caught Madison’s attention — he and Beatty had attended high school together in Dayton, Ohio.

In August, the Revs. Jesse L. Jackson and William J. Barber II were among about 200 people arrested outside the U.S. Capitol while protesting on behalf of voting rights. They were demanding lawmakers expand and protect the Voting Rights Act by the 56th anniversary of the legislation later that month.

But the date came and went without action.

In November, the National Council of Negro Women led a demonstration to push President Biden and congressional Democrats to pass the voting rights bills. They’d also hoped the lawmakers would vote to abolish the filibuster, a Senate tradition allowing unlimited debate that can be deployed to prevent or delay a vote on a measure brought before the chamber.

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On Nov. 8, Madison announced that he was going on a hunger strike.

“I was thinking, what can I do to stand in solidarity with them?” he said.

This was not his first time taking such action. In the mid-1980s, he fasted during a cross-country March for Dignity in South Africa. In the 1990s, he joined with civil rights activist Dick Gregory and fasted for more than 30 days to protest slavery in South Sudan. In 1994, he and then-D.C. Del. Walter E. Fauntroy held a 22-mile walk protesting the shooting death of Archie Elliott III by police in Prince George’s County.

More recently, Madison has been using his radio show to advocate for voting rights, often interviewing historians and politicians about what is at stake. He believed he could no longer watch others put their bodies on the line and not join the cause himself.

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And he mistakenly thought there would be a resolution before Congress recessed for Thanksgiving.

“I let myself start thinking how good a tuna sandwich would taste,” Madison said.

But that didn’t happen.

Then, on Monday evening, Madison sent me a message.

It was a tweet from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announcing that the Senate would vote to amend the filibuster by Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 17, if — or when — the GOP stands in the way of the voting rights legislation.

What Martin Luther King Jr. said about the filibuster

Linking the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol with the need for voter protection, Schumer wrote: “Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness, an effort to delegitimize our election process, and the Senate must advance systemic reforms to repair our democracy or else the events of that day will not be an aberration — they will be the new norm.”

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When we spoke, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was 14 days away. I asked Madison if he was ready to start dreaming of tuna sandwiches.

“I have no idea if the Senate will or will not do anything by that date,” he said, sounding like a man who has had his hopes dashed one time too many already. “All I know is that I do not want my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to go through what our ancestors went through.”