Grief’s Connective Power in Resistance Movements
Grief weighs on us as a collective. As the national democratic movement has progressed or faced setbacks throughout the years, people have been taken from us—slain or made to disappear without a trace. Many of us have accepted this as a feature of the work of fighting for human rights and environmental justice. Far too many have been lost. We are mourning every month and crying for justice from an uncaring and exploitative government.
Some of us have been carrying grief for decades. I think of the farmers who went on strike at Hacienda Luisita years ago, how they haven’t obtained justice for the 13 who were ruthlessly murdered and are still fighting for their rightful land.
Some of us greet grief daily. I think of the spouses, siblings, parents and children of the forcibly disappeared. Without confirmation of a loved one’s life, closure and holistic healing can seem beyond reach.
The grief within organizing spaces is uniquely traumatic. People within these spaces are usually all too familiar with injustice. Yet the proximity of their involvement makes it especially disruptive. Trauma psychologists note that the degree of closeness to a traumatizing event impacts people differently: witnessing death first hand is more traumatic than hearing it on the news. Although, highly sensitive people can still be traumatized by second-hand loss.
What this means is that activists experience the grief of lost comrades at varying degrees, with varying levels of capacity to cope. How do we process grief? How do we deal with such heavy feelings in order to move forward—not just for the sake of the movement, but for ourselves?
Firstly, we need to change our perception around emotions, particularly difficult ones like grief. All emotions are valuable and part of the human experience. “Processing” a feeling doesn’t mean filtering it from our system, as if it were dirty and undesirable. There is no getting away from the mess and the dirt of the world, and it’s within the mess that we find the most important parts of ourselves. Can we learn to be nourished by grief instead of burdened by it? What if, like a seed buried in rich soil, we can grow roots within this darkness?
The losses we’ve faced within the movement could be urging us to retreat from the external, public-facing work of resistance to build stronger and deeper connections with each other. The desire to be seen for who we are in our grief leads us to reach out with vulnerability. These relationships in turn create spaces of safety, chosen families where people can rely on each other, grow in praxis together. Ultimately, it is these relationships which prepare us for radical resistance and grow a robust, diverse movement.
Facilitating these connections and cultures of care is deeply political work. It won’t happen overnight. It will need our dedicated effort. For a sustained culture of care, we need to reclaim space from the hyper capitalist environment to make a place where everyone is safe and welcome. Reclaimed land is necessary to care for one another because it precludes the internal space needed to hold emotional discussions. To “hold space” for another’s emotions is both a figure of speech and a literal political act of taking resources from the oppressor and using it for the movement.
Thus, we return to the issue of land, the issue which Hacienda Luisita farmers are still dedicated to. In the journey of honoring and following our grief, we will often be led back to the material issues which need our collective attention. As all justice work is tied to one another, taking care of oneself is taking care of the collective. We have to reclaim land for our farmers while holding space for each other and see those pursuits as one.
Grief may never fully go away, but it doesn’t need to. We just have to give space for the full expression of our loss and love, to welcome all the ways that it needs to be felt, and then to bravely open space for the vulnerability and care needed to ease the burden with each other.