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Remembering Aaron Bushnell: How He Inspired People in the Military to Question U.S. Empire

Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-yt We remember Aaron Bushnell, the U.S. Air Force member who died last year in an act of protest outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. On a live-streamed video, Bushnell said he could not be “complicit in genocide” while the United States continued to support Israel’s war on Gaza; he then set himself on fire, screaming “Free Palestine” until he collapsed. Now just a year after Bushnell’s fatal self-immolation, we speak with an active-duty Air Force lieutenant who says she is inspired by Bushnell to seek a discharge from the military as a conscientious objector over the genocide in Gaza. “Any kind of contribution to the U.S. military inherently helps this machine of warfare and imperialism and oppression continue,” says Joy Metzler, who says many people in uniform suffer “moral injury” from their service. We also speak with Levi Pierpont, a friend of Bushnell who says Bushnell’s death was “life-changing” for him. Pierpont has since visited Palestine and become a peace activist. “I went from being someone who had grown up Christian Zionist and was very sympathetic to Zionism to realizing how it’s interconnected with the American empire and realizing how we need to stand against it as Americans, because we’re implicated in it,” says Pierpont. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

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