By MAUREEN AUMAND
First published: Friday, February 28, 2003

As you read this, there is a woman fasting in public in downtown Albany. This has been true since Dec. 5, the last day of Ramadan, and it will be true every day, every night until March 8, International Women's Day.

This is happening not because of some preordained religious obligation, some novitiate requirement, some imposed penance. Each faster has been personally, freely, uniquely drawn to fast, driven by a common imperative: the hunger and thirst for peace.

Who are we, compelled by the dozens to form a continuous chain of 24-hour fasts at the Women's Building at 79 Central Ave. in Albany?

We are mothers and grandmothers, sisters and wives. We are your co-workers: health care providers, teachers, lawyers, state employees and administrators, artists, writers, students, researchers, librarians, scientists and homemakers. We do not share a common religious frame; we are diverse in background and age, and we do not, in most cases, even know each other. We have not, in many instances, ever considered ourselves activists.

Yet our stories are the same. During the past few months, during our national administration's drive toward war, each of us has become singly, increasingly heartsick.

Each has spent great amounts of time and energy reading, reflecting and researching. Each has come to the same conclusion. The imperative for war with Iraq is a fallacious and manufactured one. It represents a misreading of history, a step forward into a maelstrom of more war, greater terrorism, less security for our children and grandchildren. It trumpets a drive to claim the world's resources as our own, an imperialism inconsistent with American foundational principles.

It will blindly and voraciously consume resources for the purpose of death and destruction that sorely need to be spent for the purpose of sustenance, in the name of justice and equality.

Each of us has concluded that the blood that would be shed in such a war -- our sons' and daughters', the children of the already long-suffering, innocent Iraqi people -- would be shed in vain.

During the course of our fast, a journal is being kept. Page after page reveals and resonates with the depth of commitment that has inspired and is sustaining this fast. Though each entry in this journal is unique in voice, common threads run throughout.

"Not wanting my children to inherit such a world ... I have chosen to fast because fasting has long been recognized as both a spiritual practice and a form of political protest. ... We can draw strength from spirit in our efforts to oppose the war," writes Judith Fetterly, an English professor at the University at Albany.

Beth Illingworth, a mother and a Presbyterian minister, notes that in the face of such an awful threat, the "silence of ordinary Americans is coming from a sense of helplessness," and that "by taking part in this fast, we are affirming that we are not helpless."

Faced with what she sees as the consequences of the threatened war against Iraq -- deaths of thousands of innocents and the escalation of global violence -- Nadya Lawson, co-president of the Holding Our Own women's foundation, is "outraged at our political leadership," who strike her as "lacking the conscience to see." She says she is fasting with the hope that "giving voice to our conscience will give them, finally, the power to speak."

"Fasting is not an intellectual, an ideological action -- it is a way to feel things on a gut level, realize at a heart level," another woman writes.

Still another writes, "I fast to help myself stay awake in the face of the proud ignorance that marks this war."

"Depriving ourselves, if but briefly, of home companionship and food, we seek deeper understanding," writes Fetterly. "It is our hope that with this understanding will come clarity of focus, engagement of heart and mind, the will to struggle and persist, to make our voices loud, strong, united ... until we are satisfied."

Maureen Aumand lives in Colonie. She can be reached by e-mail at womenagainstwar@ureach.com.