Remembering & Celebrating Fire Inside II:

Remembering & Celebrating the Fire Inside

Following the traces of Aaron Bushnell 1999-2024 Peace Anarchist for an Immediate and Permanent CeaseFire to the Permawars

My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide.

https://westernfriend.org/magazine/on-weapons/ten-days/

Hours before lighting himself on fire, Bushnell posted a Twitch link on his Facebook page with the caption: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, “What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?”” 

Who is Aaron Bushnell?

Bushnell was a cyber defense operations specialist assigned to 531st Intelligence Support Squadron. He died on a First Day. He had been on active duty since 2020. Air Force: “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends …”  

A WOMAN CONCERNED ABOUT WAR

Pacifism Sparked Her Fiery Sacrifice

BY JEAN SHARLEY Free Press Staff Writer

Mrs. Alice Herz, 82, walked last week in protest against the violence in Selma. She walked for peace and civil rights everywhere, her friends said. In Detroit. At the United Nations, Herz wrote and talked and tried to make people listen.

“Can I do something?” she often asked her daughter Hel- ga, a Detroit librarian “What can I Helga Herz do?” she asked her friends.

“SHE FEELS the country which she loves is in danger,” Helga Herz said Wednesday.”She thinks a purely power policy based on overwhelming strength is morally wrong and will have disastrous results. She fears war and the suffering it will bring.”

People listened but were not stirred.

Tuesday night at 9 o’clock Mrs. Herz poured cleaning fluid on the shoulders of her coat and turned herself into a flaming torch. Passersby beat out the flames as she lay in the street.

She thought the sight of a Buddhist-like sacrifice on the corner of Cakman Blvd. and Grand River might make people think. She lay in a semicoma Wednesday in Receiving Hospital, with third degree burns on her neck. face and head. She is in critical condition, but may live, doctors said.

ON THE WAY to the hospital, Mrs. Herz, of 96 W. Ferry, told the Fire Lt. riding in the ambulance with her. In her purse was a note protesting “the use of his high office by our President L.B.J., in trying to wipe out smaller nation.” Miss Herz is a librarian at main branch of Detroit library. Mrs. Alice Herz: “I did it to protest the arms race all over the world;” of war and her personal experiences in her actions.

“SHE IS responsive to reality and aware of her actions.” Said here daughter. Her mother worked for President Johnson’s re-election, but increasingly felt “grave misgivings” about Vietnam and U.S. foreign policy. The two, daughter and mother, came to Detroit in 1943 after fleeing Hitler’s Germany. They first lived in France, where Mrs. Herz wrote articles for a Swiss newspaper.

They lived for months in French and Cuban refugee camps before coming to Detroit.

“I cannot speak for my mother and she has not been able to talk to me.” Miss Herz said. “But I know there was more than just remembrance of Jewish persecution,” 

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