#mourningourdead — Public Fediverse posts

Vigil for Aaron Bushnell
and the 30,000+ People Killed in Gaza
Sunday, March 3, 6:30 p.m.

Gather by the Craven Street Bridge on the Wilma Dykeman Greenway by the river in Asheville to share words and silence in remembrance. That’s the same, now-sacred spot that we held a Public Mourner’s Kaddish in the early days of the genocide against Palestinians, and more recently, a remembrance for Tortuguita on the one-year anniversary of their murder-by-cops in Weelaunee Forest.

We’ll set up a DIY altar and gather around it. Bring flowers, candles, art, banners, and other mementoes to add to it.

We’ll have a few printouts on hand of “Memories of Aaron Bushnell as Recounted by His Friends” for folks to read excerpts aloud, and hold space for sharing thoughts and feelings, other readings, and/or songs/music.

Come as you are; bring your full self. And wear a mask for the collective care of all.

— self-organized by some AVL anarchists,
in love and rage 🖤💔🪬🍉🔥

#ArtOfRemembrance
#ArtOfResistance
#MourningOurDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#MendingTheWorld
#UntilAllAreFree

All anarchist(ic) spaces should routinely include grief altars.

So it lit a fire in me to see this one today at a @stopcopcity, @defendatlantaforest, and Palestinian solidarity afternoon of five workshops in so-called Asheville, NC, thanks to @12basketscafe lending its space and the @pansy.collective weaving it all together.

One candle on the altar burned for the whole seven hours, gently illuminating a banner behind it asserting that Palestine will be free. That flame seemed a carrier of the radical traditions, wisdoms, and solidarities in the room, and danced and flickered as if in tune with the joy and sorrow among us. The roses did what they do best: tend to broken hearts. Or as rebels have long said, “We need bread, but we also need roses!”

As we were all pitching in after the last workshop to clean up the space—where routinely, mutual aid breaks bread, as it were, through the community meals and so much else that happens there—I noticed the altar builder meticulously and reverently dismantling it. They gently picked up petals and leaves, and told me that they were going to set up the altar again at tonight’s fundraiser party.

If we can’t dance, it’s not our revolution. But if we can’t mourn and honor our dead, too, and remember that we only grieve what we love, and we love and fight for life and freedom fiercely and beautifully, then it’s not our revolution either.

#RebelliousMourning
#TryAnarchismForLife
#MourningOurDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#UntilAllAreFree

Mourning our dead—who herself did so much to mourn via her music against the often-murderous violence of the Catholic Church, colonialism, anti-Blackness, patriarchy, fascism, and more—as seen wheatpasted in a bunch of public places around so-called Asheville, NC.

There’s such strength in this image, with eyes so intent on seeing and confronting hard truths, underscoring her own lyric, “I’m proud to be a troublemaker.” And yet there’s a sorrow to this image, to those eyes, that almost unwittingly makes one start replaying other lyrics of hers, tape-loop style, in one’s head: “To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”

Others have already said this, but it hits me every time I see this outdoor “altar” to Sinéad O’Connor / Shuhada’ Sadaqat: she, like other brave feminist truth tellers and healers, should have been honored in life, not relegated to a social death during life, nor had life made so hard and repeatedly abusive that death came too early.

May her memory spark a blessed revolution.

(photo: black-and-white headshot of Sinéad facing directly at the camera, with eyes wide open and no smile on her face, pasted on a buffed-gray, formerly graffitied wall)

#ArtOfResistance
#ArtOfRemembrance
#MourningOurDead
#MendingTheWorld

Love and solidarity to all those at Club Q last night.

Love and solidarity to all the friends, families, acquaintances, and community members who know and/or knew someone who was at Club Q in Colorado Springs.

Love and solidarity to all my fellow queer and especially trans folks.

Rage and grief and rage over the five beautiful people who didn’t make it out of QClub.

May Their Memory Spark a Blessed Revolution.

#MayTheirMemoryBeABlessing
#MourningOurDead #FightingForTheLiving
#TransgenderDayOfRemembrance
#WeMustLoveAndProtectEachOther
#CommunitySelfDefense #LoveAndRage

(photo: our solidarity with each other—all of those of us that the fascists want to disappear—must be visibly rock-hard solid; as seen in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal this summer)