Quick Take
In lighting his own flesh on fire in a seemingly placid and sunny seaside college town where unredressed racial violence lurks beneath the surface, Thairie Ritchie bore witness to a world that is on fire and hurtling toward the abyss, write activists at Santa Cruz Black. He self-immolated while standing on the Black Lives Matter street mural, which cars heedlessly drive over every day in front of city hall in downtown Santa Cruz. The group offers a tribute to him and his message.
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Thairie Ritchie set himself on fire in a town that is less than 2% Black but prides itself on its liberal politics.
Even though we were not present at the moment Thairie self-immolated, we cannot unsee what he did. In setting himself ablaze while standing on the Black Lives Matter street mural in front of Santa Cruz City Hall, he demanded to be seen. Although we cannot speak for Thairie, we are obligated not to turn away but to bear witness to our brother, our son and our comrade – and to act accordingly.
Thairie is alive, and we say, with the fullest power of our being, “Live, Thairie, live!”
Yet, we understand that Thairie reckoned with the likelihood that he might not live and that most who set themselves on fire as he did perish as a result. We understand that his was a sacrifice not only of flesh and health, but also, potentially, life.
Thairie, who had held a candle at demonstrations and vigils to call attention to the horrors of the world that go unacknowledged, both near and far, chose as a potentially final act to shine fiery light on a statement, “Black Lives Matter,” that cars heedlessly drive over every day in front of city hall in downtown Santa Cruz.
We cannot – and we refuse to – ignore the message his act imparts.
The politics of self-immolation are a politics of martyrdom not only in the sense of sacrificing one’s life for a cause, but also, in the etymological sense of martis, from the Greek, for “witness.” In lighting his own flesh in a seemingly placid and sunny seaside college town, Thairie was bearing witness to a world that is on fire and hurtling toward the abyss.
It is hard to escape the rebuke in his act. On two acknowledged occasions since 2020 when Black Spring gave rise to visionary local abolitionist organizers like Thairie, the Black Lives Matter street mural has been defaced and desecrated. According to Santa Cruz law enforcement, in the recent 2024 case, however, destroying the Black Lives Matter mural is not considered a hate crime.
Down is up, violence is peace, might is right, genocide is defense, and police repression is safety. This is the world – one in which power inverts the truth, coercing submission – that Thairie labored to transform. He registered the contradictions of these horror-filled times in his fateful act, and his timing – precise, clear, and intentional – was a damning indictment. On a day meant to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., the White House, with all its plantation implications, was retaken by a demagogue who insisted that “Black Lives Matter” was “a symbol of hate.”
By setting himself alight, Thairie aligned himself with a tradition of Black leaders martyred for their vision of a more just world. Like his revolutionary elders who dared speak out against this nation’s unrelenting anti-Blackness, its genocidal foreign policy, the terrorism of the police and the immiseration of the working poor, Thairie sought to compel moral clarity where there was none.
What does it mean to keenly feel the pain and suffering of the world – to be woke, in the Black radical sense of the term – when others have willfully shut their eyes and adjusted themselves to injustice? In a widely circulated photo from 2023, Thairie takes a knee at the Black Lives Matter street mural where he returned this past Jan. 20. What was he bearing witness to?
In Santa Cruz, where unredressed racial violence is the truth behind the beautiful mirage that greets visitors, Thairie understood what lurks beneath the surface. In social media posts, he spoke about how “racism is very much alive here in ‘progressive’ Santa Cruz.”
In July 2020, Thairie posted a photo of a man giving a Nazi salute in order “to shed light upon the hidden institutional and systemic racism in our community.” In his efforts to create structures of community safety as a counter to policing, Thairie tirelessly worked to challenge the structural violence that conditions the status quo. That he was driven to set his body on fire in order to open our eyes must give us all pause.
Last spring, Thairie enacted solidarity through his steady presence at the UC Santa Cruz Gaza solidarity encampment. Always thoughtful and observant, he came onto the university campus to be in community, lend strength to the student struggle, and refuse the normalization of the U.S.-backed genocide that Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
There was beauty in Thairie’s indivisible commitment to justice. He understood, to quote from Assata Shakur, that “any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other peoples’ freedom as well. … Each time one of imperialism’s tentacles is cut off we are closer to liberation.” At least four people in this country have self-immolated to call for Palestine’s liberation, for an end to U.S. complicity in genocide, and to make plain the right of Palestinians to life.
As with these self-immolations, Thairie has spoken collective truths that have gone unrecognized. He has held up a mirror to the pain of the world and the pain we see and feel here in Santa Cruz but many choose to disregard. Two Fridays ago, Thairie opened his eyes, but he was already woke.
Wake up, Santa Cruz. Wake up, world.
Santa Cruz Black works to empower and sustain a thriving Black community in Santa Cruz County. The organization builds community, fights for racial and economic justice and works in solidarity for the liberation of oppressed peoples both locally and around the world. In an area that is ideologically white by design, subordinating the histories and realities of communities of color, Santa Cruz Black is committed to education that amplifies the presence, lived experiences and struggles of Black people.