A place to remember is an act of resistance

Orlando Memorial at the 519 in Toronto

I regret only stopping by briefly to pay my respects at this memorial for the Orlando shooting that has been growing at the 519 Community Centre in the heart of Toronto’s lgbt village.   I was on my way elsewhere with a group of people and when we stopped to read the names.  I struck by how young so many of them were and I must have said that out loud.  “Yes, they were”, said a very quiet voice behind me.

I turned to see a kind, sad face of a woman looking at me.  She started to tell me about a friend of hers who was killed, but his name could not be listed because he was not out to his family.  She had no where to go to remember who he was.  She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her.  For a few minutes we were quiet together.  I said I was grateful that she told me about her friend and how important I thought it was that she remembered him as he would want to be remembered.

Another very kind woman at the site offered me a cup of tea. I supposed she was with the 519, and they were trying to create some hospitality for folks who were stopping by.  I said no and caught up with my group.  But since then I wish I had stayed or returned back to spend some real time there, just being with people who are wandering around, looking for a place to remember, a place to find a bit of comfort and company.  How important it is to create actual physical places for people to mourn and to comfort each other.

So much has been taken in Orlando.  Little acts of compassion and hospitality are so important.  The queer community has always created it’s own places of welcome and care and we will repair the breach that has been opened by this violent act of hate — one story and one cup of tea and one candle and one name at a time.

Remembering names, restoring honour

I was very honoured to walk with the survivors at the “Lost but not Forgotten” Memorial at the Huronia Regional Centre cemetery in May this year.

The story of the graveyard mirrors the story of abuse and exclusion that surrounds the institution. People disappeared, were buried without names, and their burial ground has been desecrated by sewage pipes.

In recent years, survivors and allies have organized, researched and advocated with government to reclaim and restore the cemetery. Much has been acheived and there is much more to do.

We gathered at the bottom of the road. The day was grey and wet and cold. Survivors assembled with signs of loss–a homemade casket, a hand-sewn banner, baskets of comforting things that had been denied, photos of relatives. We carried them up the hill, together, walking behind the pipers.

As I listened to the pipes I was reminded of the recent funeral of my brother where we also processed behind a piper. It was full of honour and dignity as his colleagues paid their respects. This procession looked pretty different, but embodied the same claim of dignity, honour and respect. By the time we reached the gate, I felt like we were setting something right with our simple solemn walk of honour.

We gathered in a circle to honour the dead, at at the same time it was an honouring of the living as the survivors expressed not only their grief, but also their outrage at what has happened to their families and friends.   I witnessed stories of cruelty and harm and unthinkable loss.  At the same time, people made all kinds of creative offerings and the circle filled with care.

I decided to bring little bundles of lavender, an ancient herb used in honouring and washing the dead. Every body deserves an honourable rite at the end of their life.  In a small way I hoped we could  restore some goodness by offering a symbolic act of honouring.  Some of us sprinkled the lavender over the graves.  I appreciated the way it lingered on my hands, marking my own body with the memory of those who died. I hope I can carry their memory with honour.

Death is not the end of love and those who lie in the Huronia cemetery, known and unknown, continue to be loved and remembered. Survivors continue to resist, to bear witness to their own truth and to compell the wider community to Remember Every Name.

The community conversation for Remember Every Name is on Facebook, where you can ask to join the group.

 

The mourners organize

Church of the Holy Trinity
August 2012

One Sunday at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto I was able to reflect on a familiar passage, Isaiah Isaiah 61: 1-4, and I found a new connection in light of mourning and organizing. I’ve always found significance in public expressions of grief that engage community, but when I read this passage  again and realized that it is the mourners who do the organizing and in doing so they find restoration, these actions took on new meaning for me.

The Spirit is upon me, anointed me;
to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of Jubilee and the day of reckoning;
to comfort all who mourn;
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

(And listen here:)

They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of God
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

I’ve heard this reading so many times –  but I’ve never really heard before that it is the mourners here, who do the acting.

Remember and act, mourn and organize—it’s a wholistic call that is both personal and political. It’s a reminder to honour each life, say each name, grieve each lost future and comfort those who mourn. When we pay attention to our mourning, we feel like our will hearts break, and they will.  We are invited to do this with our whole heart, and then, to pick ourselves up, to pick each other up, and organize.

Act to expose the specific acts of violence, but also the values, beliefs, ideas, structures that allow violence to continue unabated. Act so it does not happen again.

In this persistent work we honour those who have died and bring change, something new out of sorrow. God transforms acts of mourning to acts of restoration for the whole community. Planted in their very sorrow is new life, new possibility. Through God’s promise, the wounded ones offer restoration to all.

Silent ride for a cyclist

Silent Memorial Ride
November 2011

Tragically, in the fall of 2011,  Advocacy for the Respect of Cyclists was active again in our own Parkdale neighbourhood. I joined with neighbours in an early morning memorial ride for Jenna a cyclist killed by a truck, just past the end of our street.  We started at Spadina and Bloor and using the people’s microphone, echoing the activism of the Occupy movement, the leaders organized us to ride to the accident site.

We road in silence,hundreds of bikes processing, creating a counter current to the morning rush hour– we were a strong and fragile witness.

At the scene, we used the people’s microphone again and it was a powerful moment for me to repeat the words of her friend during the installation of a ghost bike: We loved Jenna, he/then we said.  I didn’t know Jenna, but I knew that I belonged with the group of people who showed up early Monday morning to bear witness to her death and to call for a road that is safe for all travellers.

It was an act of mourners. It was an act of community.

 

Bikes take the street

Bike Memorial Ride
September 1998

My first encounter with an activist form of public memorial was after my friend John died in a bike accident on one of the highways in Toronto. A group of cyclists, known as Advocacy for the Respect of Cyclists, previously unknown to us, organized a memorial ride. I was grateful we were able to join the ride and be swept along by this action that felt so much like the right thing to do — although we would never have thought of it in the state of shock that we were in. The ride itself was a powerful experience, riding with the bike couriers and the coolest cyclists in the city — it really felt like claiming a place on the street in an assertive and peaceful way.

We rode to the spot of the accident and everyone laid their bike down on the street, closing the highway for a few moments in respect for our friend.  Laying down our bikes in honour and memory of our friend felt like more than a gesture, it was a public action of reclaiming. For a few minutes, the highway was quiet in acknowledgement of the tragic loss of life.

I still miss John all these years later, and I regret all the difference that his life would have made in the world if he were still in it.  But thanks to ARC, a few of us, including John’s family, were able to express our loss in community, in public space, in a way that made a difference — in a way that he would have approved.

It was an act of mourners.  It was an act of reclaiming.

Montreal Massacre 1989

Winnipeg, December 6, 1989

The many vigils that rose up in the aftermath of the Montreal massacre in 1989, when 14 women were slaughtered in the Montreal school because they were women, were formative for me.  In my hometown of Winnipeg, women gathered in the rotunda space of the Manitoba legislature. It was cold.  But the space warmed as we as we crowded in and lit our candles. We repeated the defiant phrase, “I am a feminist”.  At the end of the ceremony in a quiet moment there was a very little voice of a small girl child holding her candle and we heard her little voice say,  “I am a feminist”. It was was incredibly hopeful and sad at the same time.

It was an action by women. It was an act of mourners. It was an act of defiance.

It was the beginning of my own journey of acting and reflecting on community based actions of memory and resistance.