Rebellious Mourning

But another part of the sadness comes from a different place. It is derived from the confrontation of a political and economic reality that, in truth, is easier to avoid. It is the realization that up to this moment of upheaval, much of my ability to transcend violence has not been my ability to confront or interrupt it but rather to ignore it.

Our grief—our feelings, as words or actions, images or practices—can open up cracks in the wall of the system. It can also pry open spaces of contestation and reconstruction, intervulnerability and strength, empathy and solidarity. It can discomfort the stories told from above that would have us believe we aren’t human or deserving of life-affirming lives—or for that matter, life-affirming deaths.

“You think we’re trying to take down the whole wall? It’s enough to make a crack . . . [in] order to imagine everything that could be done tomorrow.”

For if we can’t inhabit the essentials of what it means to be a compassionate human being, we surely can’t be the people capable of inhabiting communities of trust, reciprocity, and care.