Self-immolations

There is a personal reason I take note of this phenomenon.

"[Journalist Samuel] Mena, of Phoenix, ignited his left arm — becoming the second person this year to set fire to themselves in the nation’s capital to protest Israel’s military actions in Gaza..." Yesterday, here in DC. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

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— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 8:33 PM

"Mena was a news photographer for Arizona’s Family, a Phoenix-based broadcast network...“Arizona’s Family expects its newsroom employees to conduct themselves with neutrality and objectivity,” the statement on its website reads. “Mena is no longer an employee.”"

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 8:34 PM

"Norman R. Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, burned himself outside the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War in 1965. Wynn Bruce, a 50-year-old from Boulder, Colo., who was described as a climate activist dedicated to Buddhism, self-immolated outside the Supreme Court on Earth Day 2022."

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 8:35 PM

"And Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old senior airman in the U.S. Air Force, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy and shouted “Free Palestine” as he burned in February. A man also died in September after setting himself on fire near the Israeli consulate in downtown Boston."

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 8:35 PM

"How many Palestinians were killed that I allowed to be branded as Hamas?” Mena wrote. “How many men, women, and children were struck with a missile cosigned by the American media?"

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 8:36 PM

"The smell of gasoline wafted through the air as police and other protesters rushed toward Mena. Rallygoers screamed for a medic while bystanders tried to put out the blaze with kaffiyehs. Mena was transported to a hospital for treatment of injuries not expected to be life-threatening..."

— Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 8:43 PM