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In the past three months, two people in the United States have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire.
Six years ago in 2018, after returning from a Veterans For Peace trip to Vietnam, I wrote an article called “Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In an Attempt to Stop A War?”
Now, six years later, in the past three months, two people in the United States have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire and stop U.S. funding to the State of Israel that would be used to kill in the Israeli genocide of Gaza. An yet unidentified woman, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 1, 2023. Three months later authorities have yet to release the name of the woman. Her condition was unknown as of mid-December.
This week, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, active duty U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while he was stating “Free Palestine and stop the genocide.” Bushnell died from his injuries.
Content Warning: Viewers may find the following video disturbing. It shows the moments leading up to and including Bushnell’s final act. The moment of self-immolation itself has been blurred.
As I mentioned in the article in 2018, many in U.S. admire young men and women who join the military and profess to be willing to give up their lives for whatever the U.S. politicians or government decide is best for another country—“freedom and democracy” for those who don’t have the U.S. version of it, or overthrowing self-rule that is not compatible with the U.S. administration’s view. Actual U.S. national security seldom has anything to do with U.S. invasions and occupations of other countries.
But, what about a private citizen giving up his or her life to try to stop the politicians or government from deciding what is best for other countries? Could a “mere” citizen be so concerned about politicians’ or government actions that she or he is willing to die to bring public attention to those actions?
One well-known and several little-known actions of private citizens from five decades ago provide us with the answers.
As American soldiers were killing Vietnamese, there were American citizens who ended their own lives in order to try to bring the terror of invasion and occupation for Vietnamese citizens to the American public through the horror of their own deaths.
While on a Veterans for Peace trip to Vietnam in 2014 and while on another VFP delegation in March 2018, our delegation saw the iconic photo of a well-known Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in June1963 on a busy street in Saigon to protest the Diem regime’s crackdown on Buddhists during the early days of the American war on Vietnam. That photo is seared into our collective memories.
The photos show hundreds of monks surrounding the square to keep the police out so that Quang Duc could complete his sacrifice. The self-immolation became a turning point in the Buddhist crisis and a pivotal act in the collapse of the Diem regime in the early days of the American war on Vietnam.
But, did you know that several Americans also set themselves on fire to attempt to end U.S. military actions during those turbulent war years in the 1960s?
I didn’t, until our VFP delegation saw the portraits displayed of five Americans who gave their lives to protest the American war on Vietnam, among other international persons who are revered in Vietnamese history, at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi. Though these American peace persons have fallen into oblivion in their own nation, they are well-known martyrs in Vietnam, 50 years later.
Portraits displayed in the Friendship Society Building in Hanoii, Vietnam.
Our 2014 delegation of 17—six Vietnam veterans, three Vietnam-era vets, one Iraq-era vet, and seven civilian peace activists—with four Veterans for Peace members who live in Vietnam, met with members of the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society at their headquarters in Hanoi. I returned to Vietnam in March 2018 with another Veterans for Peace delegation. After seeing one particular portrait again—that of Norman Morrison—I decided to write about these Americans who were willing to end their own lives in an attempt to stop the American war on the Vietnamese people.
What distinguished these Americans to the Vietnamese was that, as American soldiers were killing Vietnamese, there were American citizens who ended their own lives in order to try to bring the terror of invasion and occupation for Vietnamese citizens to the American public through the horror of their own deaths.
The first person in the United States to die of self-immolation in opposition to the war on Vietnam was 82-year-old Quaker Alice Herz who lived in Detroit, Michigan. She set herself on fire on a Detroit street on March 16, 1965. Before she died of her burns 10 days later, Alice said she set herself on fire to protest “the arms race and a president using his high office to wipe out small nations.”
Six months later on November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, a father of three young children, died of self-immolation at the Pentagon. Morrison felt that traditional protests against the war had done little to end the war and decided that setting himself on fire at the Pentagon might mobilize enough people to force the United States government to abandon its involvement in Vietnam. Morrison’s choice to self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President Lyndon Johnson’s controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm in Vietnam, a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh.
Apparently, unbeknownst to Morrison, he chose to set himself on fire beneath the Pentagon window of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
A photo shows the portrait of Norman Morrison at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy in Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara remembered Morrison’s death:
Antiwar protests had been sporadic and limited up to this time and had not compelled attention. Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965. At twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window. Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me in the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.
I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone—even with my family. I knew (his wife) Marge and our three children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as the criticism of the war continued to grow.
Before his memoir In Retrospect was published, in a 1992 article in Newsweek, McNamara had listed people or events that had had an impact on his questioning of the war. One of those events,McNamara identified as “the death of a young Quaker.”
One week after Norman Morrison’s death, Roger LaPorte, 22, a Catholic Worker, became the third war protester to take his own life. He died of burns suffered through self-immolation on November 9, 1965 on the United Nations Plaza in New York City. He left a note that read, “I am against war, all wars. I did this as a religious act.”
The three protest deaths in 1965 mobilized the anti-war community to begin weekly vigils at the White House and Congress. And every week, Quakers were arrested on the steps of the Capitol as they read the names of the American dead, according to David Hartsough, one of the delegates on our 2014 VFP trip.
Hartsough, who participated in anti-war vigils 50 years earlier, described how they convinced some members of Congress to join them. Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) became the first member of Congress to do so. After the Quakers were arrested and jailed for reading the names of the war dead, Brown would continue to read the names, enjoying congressional immunity from arrest.qz
Two years later, on October 15, 1967, Florence Beaumont, a 56-year-old Unitarian mother of two, set herself on fire in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Her husband George later said, “Florence had a deep feeling against the slaughter in Vietnam… She was a perfectly normal, dedicated person, and felt she had to do this just like those who burned themselves in Vietnam. The barbarous napalm that burns the bodies of the Vietnamese children has seared the souls of all who, like Florence Beaumont, do not have ice water for blood, stones for hearts. The match that Florence used to touch off her gasoline-soaked clothing has lighted a fire that will not go out—ever—a fire under us complacent, smug fat cats so damned secure in our ivory towers 9,000 miles from exploding napalm, and THAT, we are sure, is the purpose of her act.”
Three years later, on May 10, 1970, 23-year-old George Winne, Jr., son of a Navy captain and a student at the University of California, San Diego, set himself on fire on the university’s Revelle Plaza next to a sign that said “In God’s name, end this war.”
Winne’s death came just six days after the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University student protesters, killing four and wounding nine, during the largest wave of protests in the history of American higher education.
At our 2014 meeting at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society office in Hanoi, David Hartsough presented Held in the Light, a book written by Ann Morrison, the widow of Norman Morrison, to Ambassador Chin, a retired Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations and now an official of the Society. Hartsough also read a letter from Ann Morrison to the people of Vietnam.
Ambassador Chin responded by telling the group that the acts of Norman Morrison and other Americans in ending their lives are well remembered by the people of Vietnam. He added that every Vietnamese school child learns a song and poem written by Vietnamese poet Tố Hữu called “Emily, My Child” dedicated to the young daughter that Morrison was holding only moments before he set himself on fire at the Pentagon. The poem reminds Emily that her father died because he felt he had to object in the most visible way to the deaths of Vietnamese children at the hands of the United States government.
In other parts of the world, people have ended their lives to bring attention to special issues. The Arab Spring began on December 17, 2010 with a 26-year-old street Tunisian vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire after a policewoman confiscated his food street vending cart. He was the only breadwinner for his family and had to frequently bribe police in order to operate his cart.
His death sparked citizens throughout the Middle East to challenge their repressive governments. Some administrations were forced from power by the citizens, including Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for 23 years.
In the United States, acts of conscience such as taking one’s own life for an issue of extraordinary importance to the individual are viewed as irrational and the government and media minimize their importance.
For this generation, while thousands of U.S. citizens are arrested and many serve time in county jails or federal prisons for protesting U.S. government policies, in April, 2015, young Leo Thornton joined a small but important number of women and men who have chosen to publicly end their lives in hopes of bringing the attention of the American public to change specific U.S policies.
On April 13, 2015, Leo Thornton, 22 years old, committed suicide by gun on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. He had tied to his wrist a placard that read “Tax the 1%.” Did his act of conscience have any effect on Washington—the White House or the U.S. Congress? Unfortunately, not.
The following week, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation that would eliminate the estate tax applying only to the top 1% of estates. And no mention of Leo Thornton, and his decision to end his life over inequitable taxation, appeared in the media to remind us that he ended his life in opposition to another piece of favorable legislation for the rich.
Then years ago, in October 2013, 64-year-old Vietnam veteran John Constantino set himself on fire on the Washington, D.C. National Mall—again for something he believed in. An eyewitness to Constantino’s death said Constantino spoke about “voter rights” or “voting rights.” Another witness said he gave a “sharp salute” toward the Capitol before he lit himself on fire. A neighbor who was contacted by a local reporter said Constantino believed the government “doesn’t look out for us and they don’t care about anything but their own pockets.”
The media didn’t investigate any further into the rationale for Constantino’s taking his own life in a public place in the nation’s capital.
In the case of U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, Aaron told the world his reason: "I do not want to be complicit in the genocide of Gaza! Free Palestine!." His sentiments are echoed by hundreds of millions around the world who recognize the horrific Israeli genocide of Gaza. For U.S. citizens, it is our duty to keep pressure on the Biden administration to stop funding Israel's genocide of Gaza and violence in the West Bank.
To take on the harmful free trade policies that govern much of agriculture, U.S. farmers and their allies could find inspiration from what is taking place in Europe, perhaps going to D.C. to make their voices heard.
Dumping manure in public spaces, hurling eggs at government buildings, blocking major roads—the European farmers who have taken to the streets to challenge free trade policies sure know how to raise a ruckus.
Their public disruption also produced results.
French farmers, for instance, managed to persuade their nation’s leaders to ban food imports treated with thiacloprid, dedicate €150 million (~$163 million) annually to support livestock producers, and provide European-wide definitions for what constitutes lab-grown meat. German farmers also saw movement in their favor from their lawmakers on fuel subsidies. When protests reached Brussels—where the European Parliament was in session—European Union policymakers announced plans to cushion the blow from Ukraine grain imports and address bureaucratic red tape. Seeing such gains as only the beginning, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish farmers vow to remain in the streets.
Decades of promoting such free trade initiatives have not been kind to farmers, especially in Europe.
Thus far, the protests offer some takeaways for food and farm activists.
Specifically, not only can public disruption trigger real change, but there is room to push back against the disastrous free trade policies that have wreaked havoc on farm economies on both sides of the Atlantic. U.S. farmers and their allies should pay attention, perhaps thinking how to make protest part of our ongoing Farm Bill debate.
In Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—similar to the Farm Bill in the United States—governs most facets of the continent’s agricultural system, including financial assistance, environmental policy, and the regulation of exports and imports. Beginning in 1962 with France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands, the arrangement has grown along with the European Union to cover all of the organization’s 27 member states.
CAP policies began to change in the 1990s with the MacSherry and Agenda 2000 Reforms to promote “efficiency.” While Reagan railed against “government cheese” to point out the assumed wasteful nature of U.S. agricultural policy in the 1980s, in Europe, “wine lakes” and “butter mountains” were made into campaign slogans to cut public assistance for farmers.
And cuts took place— from 1980 to 2021, the total E.U. budget dedicated to agriculture went from over 60% to below 25%. Many policies were also eliminated, including export subsidies, production quotas in dairy, and price supports that were coupled to farmer income.
Such changes brought European agricultural policy into alignment with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) push for states to reduce government intervention into agricultural markets and increase production.
Decades of promoting such free trade initiatives have not been kind to farmers, especially in Europe.
In France, for instance, there were 389,000 farmers in 2020—almost 800,000 fewer than in 1980. Poland, which joined the E.U. in 2004, since 2010 has lost 13% of its producers. Overall, throughout Europe from 2005 to 2020, the continent has seen 37% of its farms go out of business. During that same time, production has grown, as only farms of over 200 hectares (approximately 400 acres) have increased in number.
Meanwhile, the ever-dwindling financial support for European farmers is made contingent on meeting various environmental and labor standards. Put simply, for assistance, farmers must do more to receive less. Aiding, not curtailing ongoing consolidation, 20% of Europe’s farmers—particularly large scale operators in terms of land and production—receive 80% of all payments.
Adding insult to injury, E.U. authorities allowed the import of cheap Ukrainian grain to assist that country in its ongoing war with Russia. This, as supply chain disruptions from that conflict drove up the prices that European farmers pay for inputs like gas and fertilizer. E.U. policymakers also are negotiating a contentious free trade deal with the South American regional trade bloc, Mercosur, which would invite agricultural export giants Argentina and Brazil to potentially undercut European producers.
U.S. farmers have experienced the same toxic mix of free trade promotion and increased concentration.
According to the 2017 Agricultural Census, the largest 4% of U.S. farms (2,000 or more acres) control 58% of all farmland. In 1987, that figure was 15%. Similarly, in 2015, 51% of the value of U.S. farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales, compared to 31% in 1991. From 1997 to 2017, about 200,000 farms, or 8% of operations, went out of business.
In terms of deregulation, the 1996 Farm Bill made periodic, ad hoc direct payments the primary way the U.S. government provided financial assistance for producers. Gone, but years later reintroduced in a significantly weakened form, were non-recourse loans that assured farmers a decent income if market prices dipped below a certain threshold. With such loans, decent incomes can be guaranteed without forcing farmers to increase production potentially in environmentally harmful ways as governments purchase products off the market to stock reserves. Dismissed by free traders, reserves can be drawn upon in the event of emergency and to address price volatility and speculation, as commodities can be released onto markets if prices go too high.
To take on the harmful free trade policies that govern much of agriculture, U.S. farmers and their allies could find inspiration from what is taking place in Europe, perhaps going to D.C. to make their voices heard.
In fact, U.S. farmers in the past did so. When free trade was in its infancy back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to D.C. to demand policy changes to address rising foreclosures and increases in input costs. These actions inspired the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) to bring activists together in D.C. last year, but mainly to make climate policy part of the Farm Bill.
Now, with the Farm Bill debate continuing at least through September of this year, pricing policy reforms could take center stage. Some farm groups, such as the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) with its dozens of member organizations, have made pricing policy reform central to their Farm Bill platform. In demanding parity pricing, policy instruments such as non-recourse loans could be improved to assure farmers decent prices and dissuade them from increasing production to make ends meet. Addressing concentration is also part of NFFC’s demands, with particular attention to an increased role for the government to finance land access programs and enforce antitrust laws.
Do such proposals challenge free trade? Yes they do, without a doubt. And as European farmers have shown, protest yields results. By adding some popular mobilization into the mix of our ongoing Farm Bill debate, maybe with the occasional rotten egg or manure load, farmers and their allies could push our lawmakers to make real changes for the benefit of our food and farm system. Let’s not just stand by as the people who grow our food endure yet more financial hardship.
It is disheartening to see the very tools of social change activism used by the civil rights movement getting ruthlessly dismantled thanks to the self-interest and greed of politicians and corporations.
Six Decades Ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington, turning the tide of public opinion and leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
That legacy of protest and advocacy continues today but it is under attack, which is why we must be honest and critical as we reflect on the current status of civil rights and activism in the U.S.
As always, during this time of year when we honor Dr. King’s legacy and plan to celebrate Black History Month, we see a great deal of platitudinal quotes and simplified portrayals along with an underlying tone of proverbial pats on our collective backs for a job well done, for progress.
Dr. King’s life was tragically taken in Tennessee, and now, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, representing the same state, chooses to tarnish his legacy by undermining the spirit of democracy and activism that he dedicated his life for.
As an activist and community organizer, collective action in the form of protest was Dr. King’s primary tool. What would he make of the government reprisals we see across the globe against protesters? As a gifted orator and preacher, he used his voice as a catalyst for mobilizing people and shifting culture. What would he say about the proliferation in censorship and other tactics of repression and regressive policies?
We ask these questions because by doing so we are able to pave another path toward justice and a world that truly upholds the legacy of the civil rights movement. The attacks on dissent and free speech that we are seeing today are heartbreaking, but there’s also the tremendous will of people who refuse to give up, a resilience and staying power that is reminiscent of the civil rights movement.
Increasingly, protest is becoming a less viable instrument for social change and holding powerful entities such as elected officials, police, and corporations accountable. From the persecution of Cop City protesters in Georgia to the widespread attempts to squash civil disobedience, a strategy that Dr. King came to see as the necessary tool of the oppressed, we are witnessing a crisis unfold for social change organizing.
Thanks to the lobbying power of big corporations and police unions, hundreds of anti-protest bills have been introduced in the United States since 2017 in nearly all 50 states to interfere in the long legacy of American protest, with policies ranging from dramatically increased civil fines for protesters and criminal penalties for specific forms of protest.
Last week, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), introduced S. 3492, a federal bill that would create penalties for protesters who block or “attempt” or “conspire” to block public roads and highways. The “Safe and Open Streets Act” would essentially make the long-held practice of collective action in our nation’s history a crime punishable by a fine of an unspecified amount and incarceration in a federal prison for up to five years. The pretext of safety and open streets cannot overshadow the potential abuse and selective enforcement that is inherent in this and other anti-protest legislation.
The Equity Alliance, a Tennessee-based grassroots organization that works to build Black political power and where Tequila is the CEO, finds bitter irony in the fact that Dr. King’s life was tragically taken in Tennessee, and now, Blackburn, representing the same state, chooses to tarnish his legacy by undermining the spirit of democracy and activism that he dedicated his life for.
How far have we come if more than five decades after Selma, we are seeing protesters against Cop City, a multiplex police training facility in Georgia, being charged as domestic terrorists?
But this is not unique to the United States; individual freedoms are getting abrogated across the world. Countries such as Argentina and many countries across Europe are also seeing a steady and consistent effort by their governments to prevent people from speaking up, taking action, and putting pressure on their elected officials to listen to the will of the people.
More recently, we have seen a worldwide crackdown on protests against the war in Gaza, which also runs counter to the principles that Dr. King espoused around global solidarity. A year before his death, he famously made a speech at Riverside Church in New York City entitled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” in which he not only denounced the war but also the censorship of free speech. Moreover, Dr. King sought international connections and solidarity with movements for freedom across the globe from anti-colonialist struggles in Africa to the movement for Dalit freedom in India.
The ripple effects of right-wing repressive policies that we are seeing today along with the attacks on dissent and the severe injuries caused by the overuse of “less lethal weapons” against protesters would also be deeply disconcerting to him. The violent attacks on protesters by police forces and individuals invested in upholding the status quo would likely serve as a reminder of the brutality that came upon civil rights protesters in Selma in 1965 and the violence inflicted on Black bodies by white individuals for hundreds of years. How far have we come if more than five decades after Selma, we are seeing protesters against Cop City, a multiplex police training facility in Georgia, being charged as domestic terrorists?
Defending Rights and Dissent, a D.C.-based organization that works to strengthen participatory democracy and the right to political expression and where Sue is the executive director, has been tracking the settlements from police departments in the aftermath of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising. Police departments from across the country have paid out over $113 million to protesters that were harmed by police. We imagine this underhanded admission of culpability would be troubling to Dr. King because, on the one hand, yes, protesters have more legal recourse than protesters had during his time, but this is yet another reminder of the unchecked power of law enforcement and the continued and disproportionate violence inflicted on Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
And yet despite all these setbacks to progress and injustice, we believe that Dr. King would have been heartened by the millions of people around the world who refuse to be silenced. This is encouraging and surely a vestige of the influence that he and so many other social change movement leaders of the past set in motion for future generations.
Realistically speaking, we know the euphemistic arc toward freedom has been more of a zigzag line across history. The struggle for freedom and belonging is part of human existence; it is an unavoidable part of life. However, it is disheartening to see the very tools of social change activism used by the civil rights movement getting ruthlessly dismantled thanks to the self-interest and greed of politicians and corporations.
This time of year as we make time to honor Black freedom fighters, we must commit to a truthful assessment of where we are in carrying the torch of justice that Dr. King set aflame for the world and recommit to reigniting it by pushing back on all attempts to repress people power.