Yeah, wouldn't you like see the Republicans make Ted Kennedy stand up there for days?
Posted on 04/20/2005 8:59:28 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN PABLO - On the fourth night of her front yard hunger strike, Diana Ponce lay delirious under the carport, fighting off the chill under a fuzzy blanket emblazoned with the Mexican flag.
Neighbors sat clustered around her on white plastic lawn chairs. Children smacked at a yellow volleyball in the street. Toddlers tricycled past fence-strung banners that read "Tenemos Que Unirnos" -- We have to unite.
Outraged by recent news accounts of vigilante Mexican border hawks, the 32-year-old San Pablo woman took to the streets -- really, her driveway -- on two lawn chairs pushed together. Ponce, a diabetic, is fasting there for a week.
"How dare they call us terrorists," she said.
She refused not only food, but also water for the first two days of her fast, which ends Thursday.
Worried friends and family finally convinced her to drink fluids. Now she's sipping a kind of children's Gatorade that her husband, Feliberto Diaz, serves her before he leaves in the morning for his gardening job.
Ponce can be stubborn, relatives say.
"Once she gets into a certain cause, she really goes all the way," said her sister, Christina Gastelum.
Earlier this month, Ponce read a newspaper account of the Minuteman Project, a loose band of armed volunteers gathered in Arizona this month to catch illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border.
President Bush has called them vigilantes, but the administration has taken no action. The group is slated to speak in front of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus next week, according to the Associated Press.
"How can the government in 2005 allow this, let people take the law into their own hands?" said Ponce, whose father came from Michoacan. "Why do they need to be armed?"
Ponce discussed a protest with her husband and her three children.
"I told him, I need to do something," Ponce said.
She considered a demonstration at the border, but then took a cue from March4Education, a Bay Area activist group. Besides walking 70 miles to Sacramento last year to protest school budget cuts, members starved themselves in Oakland and Sacramento.
Ponce marched with them, but missed the hunger strike. This time, she saw her chance, she said.
She took a week off as a manager at Century Theatres in Pleasant Hill. At home, she built her lawn chair platform, piling it with red plaid and denim comforters.
Each night at dusk she holds candlelight vigils, occasionally filmed by a TV crew. She sleeps outside on the improvised divan, in a spot usually reserved for her 1953 Fordomatic, the barbecue or, on really hot days, her free-standing pool.
She knows there are more conspicuous places for a protest.
But Ponce said she wanted news cameras to show the world her neighborhood -- a tightknit Mexican-American enclave of families with children, all of them with inalienable rights.
"And I figured the government can't get involved if it's my own property," she said.
To her right, a statue of Guadelupe clasps her hands in prayer, wooden rosary beads dripping from her plastic digits. Fatima beams in a gilt white robe, a trio of doves at her feet. A bust of Jesus flashes Ponce the peace sign.
About 8 p.m. Monday, as Ponce lay weak, the mini-congregation lit long white tapers, saucered by red plastic cups to catch the wax.
Friend Lisa Ramirez began the prayer:
"Our father, who art in heaven ..."
They repeated the prayer a second time in Spanish.
Ponce gripped a pink teddy bear, the tag dangling from its left ear. Someone turned on the TV to watch the news, but there was only the mustache of Dr. Phil.
Ponce drifted in and out of sleep. Soon, her husband would light a fire and let out her dog, Vega, a pit bull-German shepherd mix, to guard her.
Through her homebound protest, Ponce is following not only her conscience, but the stars, she said.
The day she read about the Minutemen, her Gemini horoscope (after warning her of troubles with strangers, authority figures and traveling) ended with an edict:
"Help a cause you believe in."
Take her this article from the San Francisco Gate, have her read it, then tell her to get a freakin' clue:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2005/04/20/cstillwell.DTL
or let her starve ... sounds like she was a mental case to begin with.
[[has the world been turned inside out or is it just my imagination?]]
What you are witnessing is modern day liberalism. The criminals are now the victims, and the victims are now the criminals.
Yeah, wouldn't you like see the Republicans make Ted Kennedy stand up there for days?
Deport her.
Maybe the illegals will get so PO'ed at America they'll leave.
Leave? Dream on... They won't leave as long as the candy store is open and the candy is free.
and may I say, probably starting with the Miranda decision and snowballing since.
At least her starvation, unlike Terri's, is voluntary, her own choice.
She should keep fasting for the next six months to protest this outrageous attempt to protest American sovereignty. Go for it Diane! Viva la Raza!!!
Deport this enemy of America.
This ain't nuttin. A REAL protestor would douse themselves with gasoline and reach for the zippo!
Hmmm, this article isnt biased, is it?
Glad to see someone draw attention to this obvious bias and propaganda tool.
I imagine she's got a voodoo doll tucked in there somewhere in case none of the hokus pokus stuff works...
I had forgotten all about that. There are hunger strikes -- and then there are Al Sharpton hunger strikes.
So much confusion on this issue.
Yes a lack of insulin will eventually send a diabetic into a coma if they continue eating, and don't take insulin, but it will take quite some time.
On the other end If a person takes insulin, and doesn't eat, their blood glucose level will drop, to the point they will pass out, if they don't immediately get glucose into their system they are DEAD! This can happen in a short time.
Some of us are fortunate, we can tell when our blood sugar level starts going low, others don't notice until it gets very low.
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