now.” He criticized the United States’ political system and its enabling of the conflict in Gaza. “How many Palestinians were killed that I allowed to be branded as Hamas?” Mena asked. “How many men, women and children were struck with a missile co-signed by the American media? Cosigned by ‘Samuel Mena Jr?’ I joined this industry to serve the people of the state of Arizona that I call home. And now, I understand the reality that is maintaining face for the American Empire.” A half-hour later, he raised a flame- covered arm to the sky, screaming “Free Palestine!” Then, he was just screaming. “It became so distracting that you lose a sense of language,” Mena says. Protestors and police rushed over to help, dumping water on Mena’s arm. Cops surrounded him. Together, they waited 20 minutes for an ambulance, which took him to a hospital. He assured everyone that he wasn’t trying to die. “I have things in my life that I want to continue to do,” Mena says. “I’m very happy in my life and comfortable in who I am.” At the hospital, he assumed the arm was a goner. It looked like “a zombie had its way with it” and “fucking hurt,” Mena says. “I’m just looking at this thing, like, ‘Gosh, feed it to the dogs.’” Instead, Mena began an intensive rehabilitation program that involved washing his arm, treating the wounds and a variety of physical therapy exercises. At one point, as Mena’s arm swelled to gargantuan proportions, doctors performed an escharotomy, making a long incision down his arm to relieve the pressure. He remained in the hospital for a month, the first two weeks of which he spent on suicide watch. Teams of psychi- atric and therapy staffers made constant visits. Eventually, they determined he was no longer a risk to himself. “Very quickly, it became evident that my case was unique. That it was a form of protest,” Mena says. There “wasn’t any reason for them to be worried.” Reassuring his doctors was far easier than reassuring his family members, whom he’d kept in the dark. Mena admitted that his actions were “kind of crazy” and says his family didn’t fully understand them. Eventually, according to Warnock-Estrada, Mena’s family rallied to support him, visiting him in the hospital two weeks after he was admitted. It was hard on them, Mena says. (Mena declined to connect New Times to members of his family for this story, saying they were uninterested in speaking.) His siblings told him his protest had given them nightmares. “The situation kind of brought up really bad memories for my mom,” Mena says, “because she had a sister with mental health issues and this really kind of rattled that situation back up.” Other relationships have been harder to repair. Mena has been in contact with some former colleagues at Arizona’s Family, while others have not spoken to him because “I’ve protested our employer.” One friend of Mena’s still hasn’t spoken to him and is “still kind of working through it,” Mena says. Warnock-Estrada, who witnessed the entire livestream, was initially in a state of shock. But she’s “not mad at Sam,” she says, and is writing an article on Mena’s protest from her perspective. Mena says he’s happy to unpack his decision to self-immolate for anyone who wants to ask. That includes the U.S. Secret Service. When Mena first checked into the hospital, police informed him that Secret Service agents would seek him out to talk about what he did. A month later, Mena checked out and boarded an airplane back home. The Secret Service never did stop by. Did it make a difference? Mena’s recovery was long and painful. Ultimately, his family sped it along. Mena’s sister was scheduled to get married in early November, and he was eager to be discharged in time to attend the ceremony. He checked out just in time to make it, but his haste meant he was unable to get his medications in time. To get back home, Mena went 18 hours — including a five-hour layover — without pain medications. When he got back, he crashed on his bed in his Phoenix apartment, only for his cat, Chonk, to jump on his arm. “I yelped,” Mena says. The next day, Mena called his family to make a much-needed trip to ValleyWise Health to get those meds. Mena is now confronting the reality of the next stage of his life. Shortly after the news of his demonstra- tion broke, Mena was publicly fired by Arizona’s Family. “Mena worked as a news photographer for KTVK/KPHO but was off duty and not in Washington on station business. Arizona’s Family expects its newsroom employees to conduct them- selves with neutrality and objectivity,” the station wrote on its website. “Mena is no longer an employee.” Mena figured his firing would happen. Before leaving for his trip to D.C., he’d put copies of his work for the station on an external hard drive. He also returned a book he’d borrowed from a coworker. Mena says the company’s insurance policy covered his care through the rest of October, although he had to change insur- ance plans after that. When reached by New Times, Arizona’s Family Executive News Director Sybil Hoffman said, “Arizona’s Family does not comment on personnel matters.” Now, Mena attends two-hour-long physical therapy sessions three times a week, hoping to regain full mobility in his left arm. Spotted purple and red wounds, which Mena calls “dragon scales,” span from his fingertips to below his shoulder. To the touch, the arm feels like a “rubber shoe,” Mena says. Most of the time, it’s covered in hospital-grade tan dressings. In addition to rigorous physical therapy, Mena continues to work on his documen- tary. He’s eager to resume his career as a videographer and has applied for non- journalism jobs in video production. He’s seen openings at other news stations, but “I don’t think they would take me on if I applied,” Mena jokes. Whatever comes next, Mena feels confi- dent his message got across. At least among pro-Palestine activists in Arizona — whom Mena does not profess to know well — that’s the case. Imran thinks Mena’s protest “was a very honorable thing to do.” She says, “It’s a very sad thing when you see someone do such a strong form of protest,” but she calls it an “act of selfless- ness” that “shows how strong the media’s role has been playing in everything that’s been happening.” Mohye Abdulaziz, the founder of the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance, agrees. “I hope that he’s doing well. I hope that he’s recovering and he’s continuing to be a journalist and support his family,” Abdulaziz says. “Tell him this guy gives you much love.” Of course, pro-Palestine activists such as Imran and Abdulaziz hardly need to be reminded of the war in Gaza. Whether Mena was able to reach people who haven’t been paying attention — much less those who disagree with him — is much less clear. While dramatic and attention-grabbing, the purpose of self-immolation protests doesn’t always translate to the average person, Coburn says. “It does draw atten- tion to certain issues because people kind of clamor for explanations of why some- body might have done this,” he adds. But sometimes the act itself consumes all the oxygen. “We’ve had a lengthy conversation here about the act of self-immolation,” Coburn notes during an interview, “more so than we have about Palestine, Israel and the story of that conflict.” Warnock-Estrada says she was one of just a handful of people to make it to the end of Mena’s livestream. But Mena’s protest certainly generated headlines afterward, and a social media post in December announcing another livestream to explain his protest was viewed more than 3 million times — “not an insignificant number,” Mena notes. Many of the responses to that post, though, were very negative. That doesn’t faze Mena. “A lot of people on Twitter disagree with what I did or whatever. I could care less,” he says. “Point is, I had a conversation going. Through my action, I’m contrib- uting to this conversation, and I want to continue to contribute to this conversation.” Whatever form that contribution takes, it will no longer involve gasoline and a lighter, Mena says. Nor does he think anybody else should be willing to scorch a limb for a cause. He just wants to prod people to do “something.” “You can still do things in your life,” Mena says. “You don’t have to go out and light your arm on fire like I did.” Sam Mena’s self-immolation protest left him hospitalized for a month. (Photo by Danielle Cortez) The Fire Within from p 11
