Hunger strikers outside the Mission District police station are continuing a protest seeking the firing of Police Chief Greg Suhr, saying they're tired but determined.
“We’re getting pretty weak,” Edwin Lindo, a candidate for District 9 supervisor, said Thursday. Lindo briefly fainted on the second day of the strike, and an ambulance pulled up to the strikers on Wednesday morning to monitor their vitals.
Mayor Ed Lee responded to the hunger strike for the first time on Tuesday, saying the strikers had a right to protest but that he would not fire the chief and that he intended to allow current departmental reform plans to proceed. Suhr also responded and said he had no intention of resigning.
Lindo, however, was undeterred. Near the beginning of the strike he didn’t think he would last a week, he said, but is now speaking of Mahatma Gandhi’s weeks-long fasts in India. One woman who visited the strikers said she lasted 88 days, Lindo said, and he is adamant the group will fast until they fall.
“We will outlast them,” said Lindo. “I guarantee that.”