A Call for Mourning: How To Adapt to Our American Ruins

 Today is May 31, 2020- the United States is on fire. One week ago, May 25, 2020, the media of the United States generally accepted the statistic that 100,000 US American citizens – which does not include all that live in the United States, have transitioned from COVID-19. One month ago, we were told that at least 30 million United States citizens were unemployed- siphoning us into the worst economy of decade and possibly of our lifetimes. 

A year ago, May 31, 2019- “unsung heroes” of 9/11 received a memorial at the Memorial Glade in New York. We are part of a society that is (always) crumbling and acts like we cannot see the rubble. 

The Rastas call it Babylon, the capitalists call it their free market. We are in spiritual warfare. We are in spiritual warfare. WE are in a spiritual war. The logic of the few is not held by many and with that comes chaos, destruction, and despair. Within this, we laugh, we make love, and we save for the future. We produce and want the product to be protected. If we are here to enjoy it great, if we are not- they make sure someone else will. We’ve existed in these ruins, but not all of us have produced them. 

Not all of us have enjoyed the spoils of this extractivism, something Sylvia Wynter calls the overrepresentation of man, and others call it development. Yet, as for what has been taken and moved, we have also been taken and moved, and survived. Yes, in our new space- and now we want to thrive. But how?Well, we acknowledge we are here, together- but are we truly? Is it easier to say you concede than to actually lose? And what is to be gained when we say WE WIN? And who loses? For now, it’s true, we are ready and able to be in battle- but when we do not understand what the war is, how can we even try to win? 

This brief essay is a call to address our ruins. COVID-19 has left us remnants of people, places, and social behavior. It is going so fast, we have not caught all the names of those who have transitioned, we are not sure of all the places that will persist. For the privileged, every day on lockdown has been time to be silent and question if or what tomorrow will bring that’ll differ from the day before. As the news got faster, time got slower. Life continues to transition- so we all looked toward a “peak” so we could be free from our own mental prisons. You know, the “them, not us” safeguard society affords a few on the risk of losing others.

 So, when we were affirmed in what we saw, BIPOC losing life quicker than others to COVID and our most precarious workers actively being forced to reveal and not organize, we cried. We moved our arms and legs faster in the name of mutual aid. The ones who are used to winning wanted us to go outside, so they can enjoy their spoils. People continue to die from this move; our bodies are in the ruins. 

Today is the 8th day of the rebellions for George Floyd- although some dissenters also march for Breona Taylor, a Black woman, a public servant, a frontline worker, who was murdered by the police in her home, not all do. But all dissenters have chanted BLACK LIVES MATTER. Yet again, we meet the ruins of movement- folks have looked to celebrities to speak loudly for them, and have doubted their own strategies of survival for what they see as valid on Instagram. There are many who let the physical speak what they have collective memory of. The terror, the frustration, the excitement for some, their energy is based on collective fragmented memory. Alas, the work of recollection- this is the work we need to think about. For us, the ruins is our social contract. To understand why we are in ruins we have to open the archive and live as we know what happened and trust in where we are going. We can also look to thought of where we can go. 

When we speak words such as ABOLITION we mean total deconstruction, destruction, and renewal. For some of the others, this wage is a lot because they have not tapped into their own consciousness of collective memory. For us, we want to do more than avenge because we intend for our children and their children to no longer fight this war. We want the official shift, the promised paradigm- a world where our children are autonomous and seen to thrive. So, what do we think is #next? We mourn. We acknowledge that how we are is just not alive and create new life from this social death. To mourn is not futile- to mourn means we honor what existed and praise its transition. 

To mourn signifies a resistance to nostalgia. It is a call to feel pain and a suspension of time to embrace grief. To exist in the ruins means to stop reform and start renewal. Let us use the time to observe struggle of our past, to study for strategy toward new. Many questions we have in movement have been answered- with yes, not or not yet. Let us ask why not, yet and be ready to burn down so we can build anew. 

Od enobabor