Malachi Ritscher wanted to make a statement. A loud and radical statement. One that could not be ignored. To protest the war in Iraq, Malachi Ritscher, a 52-year old expirimental musician from Chicago lit himself on fire and burned to death for just that statement.
Ritscher's actions and statement from chicagotribune.com
At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 -- four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics -- Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.
Aglow for the crush of morning commuters, his flaming body was supposed to be a call to the nation, a symbol of his rage and discontent with the U.S. war in Iraq.
"Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country," he wrote in his suicide note. "... If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."
No doubt this act brings up thoughts of Buddhist monks fiery protest over the Vietnam war.
His actions almost went unnoticed until the Chicago Reader, an alternative newspaper put the story together. Then the questions came. Was Ritscher crazy or a martyr?
In a statement, Ritscher's parents and siblings called him an intellectually gifted man who suffered from bouts of depression. They stopped short of saying he'd ever received a clinical diagnosis of mental illness.
"He believed in his actions, however extreme they were," his younger brother, Paul Ritscher, wrote online. "He believed they could help to open eyes, ears and hearts and to show everyone that a single man's actions, by taking such extreme personal responsibility, can perhaps affect change in the world."
A 28-year old woman, Jennifer Diaz, is now organizing protests and vigils in his name.
Ritscher left a suicide note and in the last sentence he said, "Without fear I go now to God, your future is what you will choose today."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...