Colorado climate activist dies after setting himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court Building

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In an apparent act of protest on Earth Day, a Colorado Buddhist and climate activist set himself on fire in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., on Friday.

Wynn Alan Bruce, 50, of Boulder, Colorado, died of his injuries Saturday. The U.S. Capitol Police tweeted about the event and Fox News reporter Chad Pergram posted a tweet with video showing the National Park Service helicopter as it landed to airlift Bruce to a local hospital.

Dr. K. Kritee, a Zen Buddhist priest and senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote on Twitter Sunday that Bruce’s self-immolation was “not suicide.”

“This guy was my friend. He meditated with our sangha. This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for at least one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved,” Kritee tweeted.

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In an interview with The New York Times, Kritee said that “people are being driven to extreme amounts of climate grief and despair… what I do not want to happen is that young people start thinking about self-immolation.”

The modern-day version of self-immolation as an act of protest came into world view on June 11, 1963, in South Vietnam.

“An elderly monk called Thich Quang Duc sat down in the lotus position, crossing his legs. Some other monks poured petrol over him and then he set himself on fire and burned to death while sitting in this position,” Oxford University sociologist Michael Biggs told ABC.

The Buddhist monks were protesting their discrimination by the South Vietnamese government. The act was meant to capture the attention of the many foreign journalists working to cover the Vietnam War.

The act of setting oneself on fire to protest, although uncommon, remains a stunning event nonetheless.

In 2016, Arnav Gupta, 33, committed self-immolation in the Ellipse Park, just steps from the White House. And in the same year, Gulf War veteran Charles Richard Ingram III set himself on fire outside the New Jersey Veterans Affairs clinic, The Washington Post reports.

In 2013, according to NPR, over 100 Tibetans set themselves on fire in protest of Chinese rule.

And in 2018, David S. Buckle, 60, a prominent LGBTQ attorney known for his role as lead counsel in Brandon v. County of Richardson, the case portrayed in the film Boys Don’t Cry, set himself on fire with gasoline in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, The New York Times reports.

In an email to the Times, Buckle wrote:

“Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather… Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result—my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”

In an op-ed for The Washington Post titled “Self-immolation can be a form of protest. Or a cry for help. Are we listening?” author Petula Dvorak writes:

“Self-immolation near the White House or on the steps of a government building is not the final, selfish rage of someone committing a mass shooting. And it is not a lonely suicide by someone who simply wants to disappear.

These acts are an unmistakable protest, the loudest, most spectacular cry that people in pain can come up with. And we owe it to them to listen.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. Speak with someone today.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. (After July 2022, this emergency number will change to 988.)