Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

Author:Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books

CHAPTER 8

Hope and Grief Can Coexist

Why write love poetry in a burning world?

To train myself, in the midst of a burning world,

to offer poems of love to a burning world.

—Katie Farris, Why Write Love Poetry

in a Burning World1

In October 2020, as the United States reached the milestone of having officially lost one hundred thousand people to COVID-19, the lack of commemoration was striking. While gathering often was not possible due to COVID restrictions, Kelly and other Chicago organizers felt that there needed to be some outlet for the grief people were experiencing—or, worse, not allowing themselves to experience. With society on the brink of full-blown fascism, many of us worried that a lack of memorialization played into a larger erosion of empathy that would ultimately empower fascists. In an effort to help people process and hold the moment together, in spite of the physical distance between them, Kelly’s collective, Lifted Voices, and others set out to plan a week of action and memorialization.

Taking into account that people could not safely gather, the group worked with friends and allies across Chicago on a weeklong event called “Signs, Shrines, Collages, and a Mixtape: A Remote COVID Vigil.” Participants were encouraged to make signs, shrines, and collages and to share photos of their work on social media using the hashtag #WeGrieveTogether. Scans of memorial artwork created by participants and volunteers were available online and could be printed for use in the creation of shrines and collages. Organizers dropped off signs outside the homes of people who wanted to photograph themselves with the artwork but didn’t have printer access. Activists also hung dozens of banners bearing the words “We Grieve Together” in neighborhoods across the city. The banners, many of which depicted the names of people lost to COVID-19, appeared on park fences, outside of schools, across a set of church doors, at the First Nations Garden, in storefronts, and in front of people’s homes. Young people from the Chicago Freedom School also carried out a banner drop—a protest tactic in which large banners are displayed in a public location—downtown. As organizers, we typically associate banner drops with disruption, and the same was true in this case, as organizers were disrupting the erasure and suppression of grief.

A lineup of activists also recorded speeches they would have given at an in-person memorial, and Chicago performing artist Ric Wilson cut those speeches into a mixtape called Let This Radicalize You as a loving nod to Mariame’s oft-quoted words, “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair,” which are also the inspiration for this book’s title. The week culminated in a noise action: a small group of activists gathered outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago and played the mixtape on a loudspeaker so those incarcerated inside the federal jail could hear it. The tape was also released online so that people could listen at home. Some of the speakers featured on the mixtape addressed the imprisoned people directly, condemning the system’s abandonment of them as COVID raged behind bars expressing solidarity with the people being held inside the prison.

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