(CIMC - Nov. 18) About 30 Chicagoans demonstrated at two downtown Chicago intersections to raise awareness about the case of an antiwar activist who burned himself to death in an antiwar protest.

The actions, held at the State Street and Michigan Avenue intersections of Chicago Avenue in the mid-afternoon, focused on Malachi Ritscher, a music connoisseur and political activist who doused himself with gasoline and immolated himself to death to protest the U.S.-led war and occupation in Iraq.

Activists distributed flyers describing the case and also held signs bearing assorted antiwar slogans. Each of the signs also bore a likeness of Ritscher's visage and the phrase "I heard you, Malachi".

"We're here because no one knows about Malachi Ritscher. He killed himself protesting the war, and we think that Americans need to know about this", said Jennifer Diaz, an organizer with the newly-formed "I heard you, Malachi" campaign, dedicated to raising awareness of Ritscher.

Ritscher's protest received scant mention in the corporate media in Chicago and in the United States. Notable exceptions include a Chicago Sun-Times column by movie reviewer Richard Roeper and brief traffic reports describing the protest as a suicide and as a delay for traffic on Chicago's Kennedy Expressway.

Ritscher's immolation took place on November 3, 2006, leading some participants to remark "Remember, remember, the third of November" -- a pun and homage to the famous nursery rhyme about the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot, set on the fifth of November, 1605.