Memorial for Aaron Bushnell
Plus a prayer to use at your home altar.
Inside: reflections on the state of the world, a memorial for Aaron Bushnell, and a prayer you can use at your altar.
Once, decades ago, when I was working in arts education I was on a field trip with some 5th graders, all of whom were Black and/or Latino. We were at the Getty Museum where, on a tour, we visited the recreation of the paneled room of a Louis the XV era baron. We sat in a circle on the floor and the white, male tour guide explained to us that the baron had built this lavish room because… he wanted visitors to know how rich he was. (eye roll)
“How did he get his money?” asked one little girl, who is probably now a human rights attorney.
The tour guide sat in silence for a moment and eventually said, “Tobacco, sugar, and cotton.”
He didn’t mention, of course, that it was on the backs of the people of the Global South, the likely ancestors of the students on the tour, that all the wealth displayed in that room had been created.
As I arrived to meet my friend Melanie for a coffee date the other day, they were scrolling the news when I showed up. “How are things?” I asked them.
They just screamed and shook their hands in the air. “Yeah,” I said, “Me too.”
On the garden patio of Stories Bookstore and Cafe, we drank our hot chocolates and talked about the state of the world. It was on the day of the Flour Massacre in Palestine when 150 starving people were murdered by the Israeli military as they were waiting in line for bread.
People in the Global North (specifically in the US) have been kidding ourselves for a long time that electoral politics will solve the problems we’re facing. The Get Out the Vote Campaigns, the Bernie Bros, the AOCs, we hope, we canvas, rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, for the past 500 years, colonialism has been ravaging the world. Slavery, genocide, ecocide, Agent Orange, child labor, endless war. Relentless, soul crushing, brutality on an unimaginable scale that never stops no matter who is in the oval office…
…and we, myself very much included, have been too comfortable to do the things that are truly necessary to end all of this indescribable horror.
I believe that is why the self-immolation protest of Aaron Bushnell has affected many of us so deeply, even as his death is only one of over 30,000 in Palestine alone (not to mention Sudan, the Congo, the Rohingya, Ukraine, and on and on).
I’m not grieving Aaron Bushnell because his life was worth more than all of the other people who have lost their lives to senseless slaughter, I’m grieving his death because I know that his sacrifice was justified and his level of outrage appropriate to the horrors we’re witnessing.
I’m grieving Aaron Bushnell because the image of him in his army uniform screaming, “Free Palestine! Free Palestine!” while a cop aimed a gun at him is an image for what I think we’ve all been feeling for hundreds of years.
Angry and horrified and outraged and scared enough to light ourselves on fire, because that level of outrage and horror is justified, but simultaneously living in a world where heads of state eat ice cream while speaking about the famine of millions of people and news headlines screech about what Taylor Swift did at the super bowl.
Do you see what I mean? The heartbreaking tragedy of Aaron Bushnell is that he was willing to suffer in flames to dissent against the Evil Empire and even that ultimate act of resistance was just rolled into the chemical cotton candy of the news cycle.
My grief is over the lost life of such a righteously committed young person. And my grief is for all of us who witness it and don’t know how to stop the pain.
Lately, I’ve had dozens of conversations with people about how bad things are. And how they’re likely to get over the coming years. We live on a finite planet, and the horrors front line communities have been experiencing at the expense of the priviledged, are creeping closer and closer. Soon they will be at the door.
I say this not to scare you. I know most of you have acknowledged this to yourselves already. We’ve avoided looking at it for as long as we can, and many of us will continue to avoid looking at it (and part of my grief is the denial of so many people I know and love, I imagine part of what led Aaron to do what he did is the loneliness one feels seeing all these horrors and having people you care about dismiss it)…
… but the truth is that the same necrotic systems that are profiting from the genocide in Gaza are the ones that have created the climate collapse. There is plastic in YOUR liver because of these same systems. The Necrowolf isn’t just at the door, it’s already gnashing away at us.
Aaron Bushnell could see all of this, and he was trying to wake us all up.
But the tragedy is, and what’s crucial for us all to remember, is that we needed Aaron to live. The Necrostate is only too happy for everyone who disagrees with it to die.
Living in care is an act of resistance.
Weaving new life ways is an act of resistance. Loving against the difficulty of it is an act of resistance that has the power to change the world.
I know it’s scary. I’m scared too. The collapse of Necro Empire is here, and it’s already brutal, and has been for centuries.
But we need to live, joyfully. If Aaron would have held a dance party that raised $1000, that money he raised might have been enough to keep a kid from dying of starvation.
Even if he only did that, that one kid would have been worth living for. Every living being working towards the Care World is a treasure we earthlings can’t afford to lose.
Part of the reason I went back to school is because I could feel winds of change stirring.
Integrating political critiques into my work about magic and witchcraft didn’t feel enough. And of course, that’s the point. Under the Necrostate, nothing we do is ever enough.
I hear that a lot of you are feeling this too in your own lives in different ways. A dissatisfaction. A revulsion, to carrying on as if everything is normal and fine.
I don’t want to put a silver lining on this post, like “and here’s how you can turn all this blood and suffering to your favor,” but I do want to breathe some hope into this space, something to give us courage…
Remember, that the Necrostate is death. It’s composting. And as the world around us decays and dies, the soil is ripe for new growth. Let’s turn our attention to what we want to create.
We get to place love and care at the center now. We get to place beauty and imagination at the center and dance in the new world together, dance on the grave of the Necrostate.
Our rituals will hold us together. Our rituals of grief, and our rituals of love.
Let our rituals sew connection, beauty, biology, movement, and magic.
You are alive right now for a reason. The world needs your contributions, your vision, your voice, your care, and your love.
We are in this together. We won’t let Aaron’s sacrifice be forgotten. And we won’t let our brothers, sisters, and cousins in Palestine or anywhere in the world suffer alone.
We will stand together and stay together, and we will midwife a new world together. We are doing it now.
None of us are alone. YOU are not alone. We stand together: witches, Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, artists, scientists, mothers, ancestors, children. Everyone who lives in devotion to life and justice throughout space and time is with us now.
Here’s a prayer you can use to honor the passing of the martyrs at your altars. A prayer weave webs of connection and care across the realms and beyond the veils…
May our love bless, shelter, and shine the way
For all who’ve been torn from this world in violence
[Speak their names: Aaron Bushnell]
May the Weavers welcome them
into a matrix of care
Send it across space and time O beings
into this world the next and beyond
Dedicated to dignity, freedom, justice, and joy
Our fires shine
Life through the veils
[Speak the names]
Holy Mystery of Inspiration and Just Causes
In action, in prayer, in deed
We will remember you
and keep your altar lit
Until all souls dwell in love
P.S. In honor of Aaron’s wishes and of Mystery Cult’s care for the people of Gaza, I am opening my next full moon circle on Sunday, March 24th, 5pm PST, to all who would like to attend, and offering all donations to UNRWA. Last time we made $2000 for Anera. My hope is this time our magical gathering will generate meals for a thousand children, so be sure to invite all your friends!