A group of five young climate activists are entering their ninth day of a hunger strike to demand that Democrats in Congress pass meaningful climate legislation as part of the Build Back Better agenda. Hunger strikes have a long, varied history as a tool to fight injustice and demand rights—but this climate strike is unique in the way it shows a gap between generations.

Hunger strikes put the body through immensely difficult, painful, and life-threatening conditions. One striker, Kidus Girma, 26, was hospitalized over the weekend. Doctors allowed him to return to the strike only after keeping an eye on him overnight.

“I’m honestly feeling pretty terrible,” one of the strikers, Ema Govea, said on Thursday. “I’m really tired and can’t walk very much.”

Govea was stationed in front of Congress on Thursday with her fellow hunger strikers to urge progressives to hold the line against Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to force a vote on the infrastructure bill. She turned 18 just a day before the strike began.

“This is a very, very hard experience, and it’s been a lot harder than I thought it would be,” she said. “It’s been very tiring and physically and emotionally draining. I’m a person where it’s hard for me to not be able to walk anymore, to not have my autonomy or energy. I like to be able to do things and be working as much as I can. It’s been really hard to be away from home now. It’s my senior year of high school, and I should be in class right now with my friends. That’s been really hard. I’d love to go home.”

Historically, the efficacy of hunger strikes has depended on a few specific factors. Hunger strikes are often considered a protest of last resort. That makes them a particularly effective form of political protest in prisons, which is where many of history’s most high-profile hunger strikes have taken place, from incarcerated IRA members in Belfast in the 1980s to Black political prisoners in apartheid South Africa to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay during the Obama administration.

Read the full article about hunger strike by Molly Taft at Gizmodo.