“…democratic politics is a response to the grief generated by the distance between the world as it is and the world as it should be.” Luke Bretherton, Resurrecting Democracy

When I first read that passage, I thought, how is democracy about grief? Anger at injustice yes, but grief?

As we find ourselves in a world that most of us could not have imagined just a few weeks ago, it is hard to know what to feel, let alone what to do. There are many ways to respond, but here I want to talk about two responses: grief, and collective action.

We are in the midst of overwhelming grief: many people are dying, sooner and more painfully than they should. People’s lives are being completely upended. And many more people will suffer, and will die in the U.S. and elsewhere, because of the failure to plan, and a deep and ongoing failure to place our collective capacities at the service of the common good. And this common good is so basic: life and death. As with any “crisis” in the U.S., this is a product of decades of systemic failures and disinvestment as well as immediate lack of leadership and coordination.

Americans have a terrible time understanding the complex system of our own individual grief. David Kessler (co–author with Elizabeth Kübler-Ross) notes the common misunderstanding of his work with Kübler-Ross that the stages of grief are linear, a point he discusses more deeply in this lovely conversation with Brené Brown. People in the U.S. often express that misunderstanding as “moving on” from grief, with the very strange notion that one passes through these stages in a linear way and then no longer feels anything about the loss of those close to our hearts. As Kessler says clearly in both interviews, denying the existence of grief is a way to contain our feelings. It is also a turning away from what it means to be human, separating ourselves from the pain and sorrow of the truth that all of us die, and all of us will lose those most dear to us.

Grief is painful, and there is no way to avoid that. But our individualism often turns us away from each other, into ourselves, whether our grief is for an individual, or for the damage that our broken political system is inflicting. The grief of losing a loved one can leave us feeling shattered, like our world has been broken apart and will never be reassembled. This is true: losing someone close to your heart requires you to remake your world, slowly assembling what sometimes feels like a parallel universe, complete with black holes and antimatter. For me the grief of this present moment feels similar.

In my communities, everyone is exhausted: trying to work, required to work and feeling unsafe, or recently out of work and not sure what comes next, trying to finish their studies in ways very differently than planned,  trying to hold institutions together through newly virtual spaces or old-fashioned telephone calls, while also caring for children and keeping them in touch with their teachers, or trying to just survive, in a world where nothing is what it was. People we know are dying, are sick at home and unable to get tested, have lost parents or friends or coworkers. Grief and exhaustion are all mixed together, and yet we can’t be physically together in our grief, and that too is painful.

We are also exhausted because we are grieving for a world that will not be the same again. We want to get back what used to be normal, even if there were parts of normal that weren’t so great. And we are only just beginning to realize that that normal world is gone, and what we will have once we emerge from this present will be utterly different. Maybe that world will be  better, maybe it will be much worse. Pushing the new world we are entering closer to the world as it should be will require that we work together, and think beyond our individual lives and in terms of the complex social and political worlds that are crumbling and that need reshaping. We will need to look up beyond our exhaustion and see each other with empathy, and rebuild our communities.

Because we need each other. Physical separation–and the way that so many people have so much difficulty practicing it–makes this so clear. Humans need each other.

Some of the best parts of the past few weeks have been meetings organized in our new spaces where we just check in and listen to each other. Listening to each other: it is such a gift. In our physical distance, it is good just to hear familiar voices, to virtually see familiar faces, even when those voices sound weary or afraid. And this is why our existing institutions and organizations are so important especially now.

Living in a society and a political system that works against us because of racism, economic inequality, mass incarceration, misogyny, homophobia, we feel anger, rage, fear, and also grief. There are ways that this crisis feels all too familiar for the ways it is already making existing injustices worse. But I also need to feel hopeful about this moment. This really colossal failure to choose life over death through our collective institutions might make us see some injustices more clearly, and make it possible to change some of our complex social systems so that they work for a better common good. Maybe it could work to bring us together in new ways. I hope so.

The tension and grief between what is and what should be is a common teaching in IAF community organizing. Organizers argue that the only way to bring those worlds closer together is to have enough power to push the world a little bit closer to where it should be. Change doesn’t happen because something is right; it happens when you have enough collective power to make it happen. If health care workers and first responders and even governors had enough collective power, we wouldn’t be worried about the lack of enough medical equipment right now.

Frequently what we do with our political grief is to become accustomed to the world as it is, to feel cynical and powerless, to deny the possibility that anything that we might do might make a difference. We are afraid to hope for new possibilities that might push us towards a world closer to the world that we want to see. Grieving is exhausting, and political grief also wears us down, makes us feel dull and tired. When we are just trying to survive in this crisis, it is easy to retreat to cynicism.

For example, what I have been experiencing regarding the lack of enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers is blinding rage. I have family members who are being put at risk because of this absolutely criminal situation. The federal government should have ensured, in advance, that the equipment that hospitals and health care workers need is readily available in sufficient quantity to ensure everyone’s safety. That is what government is for. People are dying because of this failure. That is not hyperbole. It is fact.

But my rage is not going to bring about a change in this situation. Here is where our existing organizations and institutions can also make a difference, and maybe push the world more towards what it should be. Metro IAF has tried to step in and function essentially where government has failed. And recognizing state failure, we are asking for better corporate responsibility. We shouldn’t have to. But here we are.

Kessler points out that grief requires movement. “There is something powerful about naming this as grief….When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion.” Such a wise way to think about emotions, and this is key to understanding grief from the point of community organizing: we have to be able to imagine change, movement, the world as it should be, to understand our feelings about what is happening.

Establishing and reestablishing democratically responsive decision making also requires a lot of people working together. This is where Kessler has added another way to think about grief, both personal and political: the idea of meaning-making.

Kessler is very clear that we make meaning, not from the loss itself, but from how we respond to the loss. You aren’t grateful for the death of your mother. You might be grateful for the meaning that you were able to make in your own way of acting, responding, to the grief. Probably only after many years of feeling many other things.

We could respond to this crisis by saying, we are all in this together. We could have empathy for each other, across all of our divisions, and try to build our communities as we help each other survive. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. We will continue to lose, even as we also make some progress in some places. Maybe I’m bargaining right now. Maybe I need to hope that what we do right now can make the world just a bit better. Maybe that is true.

There are many ways this situation might change us; many for the worse, perhaps some for the better. Maybe we can engage, already, in some meaning making while we are in the process of experiencing this situation. We already see and will continue to see, in ongoing, horrific detail, the effects of the failings of a government that does not seek to actually solve social and political problems. Maybe at least some of us can work together to push the world a bit, so that our collective decision-making bodies–civil society organizations and governments at all levels–actually work for the common good.