San Jose, CA – On February 27, over 100 people gathered at a candlelight vigil in San Jose to honor the life and sacrifice of Aaron Bushnell.

Aaron Bushnell was an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force who self-immolated on Sunday in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. His death was an act of protest against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Bushnell's final words were, “I will be no longer complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine.”

On the front steps of San Jose's Martin Luther King Library, community members laid out candles, flowers, Palestinian and Yemeni flags, and a sign reading “Rest in power and peace, Aaron Bushnell.”

Members of the public were invited to speak in an impromptu open-mic program. People from a wide variety of backgrounds shared the impact that Bushnell's act of protest had on them, including veterans, students, healthcare workers and journalists.

Harry Adams, a U.S. Air Force veteran who served during the Vietnam War, spoke about Bushnell's courage in refusing to be complicit in this ongoing atrocity. Adams has spent the last several decades of his life advocating for peace alongside other veterans.

Bojana Cvijic, a journalist who was previously a writer for San José State University student newspaper Spartan Daily, strongly criticized the mainstream corporate media for their obfuscation of Bushnell's act of protest. Many news outlets have omitted any mention of the genocide in Gaza from their headlines about Bushnell's death.

Tarentz Charite from Students for a Democratic Society encouraged the crowd to continue to protest against the genocide, saying, “We are not complicit in a system of death if we fight for a system of life. We are not complacent in a system of oppression if we fight for freedom.”

The vigil was called by San Jose Against War, a new grassroots anti-war organization in San Jose.

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