Armed with a sweater, coat, and hat, Bryan Mercer, CC ’07, seemed to be preserving all the energy he could in the stiffening cold. As one of the five Columbia students engaging in a hunger strikers, Mercer is fighting a lot more than the weather. As the heat escaped from his peppermint tea, Mercer spoke calmly but resolutely about the personal background that motivated him to go on strike.

“I spent most of the semesters living off campus, living in Harlem, living in Brooklyn,” he said. “Having experiences and interactions with people throughout this city showed me the range of the types of people, and their needs and desires and aspirations. ... I’ve seen this neighborhood gentrified, and my own neighborhood in Florida gentrified. I’m not upset because it’s new people, white people moving into the neighborhood—the upsetting part is displacement.”

Mercer is writing his thesis about gentrification and the production of racial and class categories.

“We thought, what does a hunger strike entail? We wanted our bodies to be prepared, to last as long as possible, because we know that this administration is slow to change,” he said. When asked about the specifics of his preparation, he replied,

“I’m a cigarette smoker, so I quit smoking. Going to see doctors, talking to the nutritionists. ... I spoke with a woman who went on a 40-day water fast. We’ve received a range of advice.”

He said that the vigil on Wednesday was “a beautiful moment.”
“I’m very optimistic,” he said. “I have to seek nourishment on something.”

Seo Hee Im can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.