remembering aaron bushnell, matt nelson, & other martyrs
NOTE / CONTENT NOTICE:
This post discusses self-immolation, a sensitive subject that could be distressing to some readers.
It is written with deep empathy and respect for those who engage in this extreme act of protest, but does not endorse self-immolation or any form of self-harm.
Dear Reader,
This past Wednesday, September 11, Matt Nelson lit himself on fire outside of Boston’s Israeli consulate.1 He is the third person in the past year to do so in protest against the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Before his self-immolation, Nelson spoke in a live-streamed video:
“My name is Matt Nelson and I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. We are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.... We are slaves to capitalism and the military industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care. The protest I’m about to engage in is a call to our government to stop suppling Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the ICC indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government.... A democracy is supposed to serve the will of the people, not the interests of the wealthy. Take the power back. Free Palestine.”
It’s difficult to articulate the depth of my feelings when I hear the news of such excruciating and extreme forms of protest—the mixture of admiration, horror, grief, and other emotions I can’t quite name. Such demonstrations are wake-up calls out of the “murderous familiar”2 that force us to confront the failures of our society. As I process Nelson’s self-immolation, I am reminded of a poem I wrote in March in memory of Aaron Bushnell.
It’s a messy and difficult poem,3 in which I mourn Bushnell while interrogating my fixation on the death of a white American during a genocide that has claimed thousands of Palestinian lives.4 I conclude that Bushnell was deeply aware of his white privilege and intentionally leveraged it. He knew his death would attract attention, and he used that visibility to highlight the atrocities committed against Palestinians that have been egregiously overlooked. This, in my opinion, is one of the purest acts of selflessness.
aaron bushnell
I belong nowhere in a world carved by colonial hunger
where book burners are flayed for futile attempts at warmth
because paper and ink carry more importance
than their flesh and bones
where the rumble of hollow stomachs
will be misconstrued for aggression
where the foreign waters touch the shores
of skeleton cities that native hands cannot
where dead civilians drain yellow under tanks
while soldiers drain martinis
where 1,410 white bodies carry more weight
than 29,782 brown ones —
aaron bushnell knew this.
how very brave to sacrifice his white life
to force attention on hundreds of thousands of brown ones
how very brave to sacrifice himself again in death
by denying his body a resting place
until apartheid ends
how very brave to conceive of a future so many of us cannot,
to say,
if the people native to the land consent,
I wish for my ashes in to be scattered in a free Palestine"I am sorry to my brother and my friends for leaving you like this. Of course, if I was truly sorry, I wouldn't be doing it. But the machine demands blood. None of this is fair.
"I wish for my remains to be cremated. I do not wish for my ashes to be scattered or my remains to be buried as my body does not belong anywhere in this world. If a time comes when Palestinians regain control of their land, and if the people native to the land would be open to the possibility, I would love for my ashes to be scattered in a free Palestine."
-- The Will of Aaron Bushnell5
May all the martyrs’ souls find rest, may their sacrifices bear the sweetest of fruit.
إنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون
Yarali, Zahra. “Third Man ‘self-Immolates’ to Protest Israel’s Gaza Genocide, US Complicity.” TRT World, September 14, 2024. https://www.trtworld.com/us-and-canada/third-man-self-immolates-to-protest-israels-gaza-genocide-us-complicity-18207692.
And an unfinished one, though I don’t know if it ever can or should be refined.
The language of the seventh stanza, in particular, is intentionally blunt and meant to evoke discomfort.
Bhat, Sadiq. “Will of Aaron Bushnell Says His Ashes Must Rest in Liberated Palestine.” TRT World, March 2, 2024. https://www.trtworld.com/americas/will-of-aaron-bushnell-says-his-ashes-must-rest-in-liberated-palestine-17195541.