Grief and Capitalism: A Guest Blog from Kara L. C. Jones

Since the beginning of these pandemic years, I cannot stop thinking about the grief illiteracy that capitalism fosters. It's that I saw the multi-generational effect of the WWII survivor generation of my family left with unprocessed collective and individual grief. Such that when my first son died, they urged us to move on, get over it, that support groups were for "crazy" (ableist capitalism) people. They told us providing therapy or other support for our older living children or sharing with the kids what was happening was "bad parenting." My own grandmother said she refused to speak to me ever again if I insisted on ever "mentioning that dead kid" 6 mo. after his death. And our lives since 1999 have been a scramble to survive a world that demanded men don't grieve, we be productive asap and constantly, that we individually figure it out even though the grief had collective effects. We were homeless in our car for a bit. We've had many years where we lived at the poverty line, sometimes on food stamps, either had no health insurance or have it only because the Obama administration secured the healthcare credit. As each of us has had health deteriorate to disability, we endure ableism.

And this was just one family experience. As I've offered creative grief heARTwork in the world, I've met hundreds of other families who had similar. And now here in year 3 (about to be 4) of pandemic, all I can think about is how the unresolved collective grief of WWII affected us all. And now, how will the collective and individual grief of these pandemic years and the absolute genocidal approach of our USian government affect my grandchildren's generation and the next and next. Very quickly my grandkids were being told "get into the classroom"/ be productive instead of grieving. Throughout the pandemic, our adult kids have been told to keep working or lose their housing, access to food, etc. The grief they face or their kids face is being swept into erasure by the carrot and stick of capitalist productivity. I see mirrors of the WWII survivor generation or maybe these are extensions of living in a culture of unprocessed grief.

“Some the mirrors or extensions I feel like we are seeing include things like:

  • At the end of WWII, women and people of color were forced out of workplaces like factories, forced out of source of income, and even those who had served in the armed forces were segregated away from various benefits that white men were seeing from their service. That extended, I believe, into the Reagan era in California where the white men of institutional power destabilized education opportunities for funded higher education because they didn’t want women and people of color to benefit any longer. Was there any real time acknowledgement of these things as they happened? Were the later explosions of feminism and civil rights in part response to this?

    I feel we are seeing a similar force being used against our children to not process emotional intelligence around all we’ve lost in the pandemic years and focus rather on “get back in the classroom” and academic intelligence. Instead of using the pandemic years to really build infrastructure of accessibility for virtual learning - which is an entirely different animal than in person classrooms - we squandered it and just began destabilizing opportunities by chanting “back in the classroom” and even various groups organizing to force “no masks allowed” inside schools. Our genocidal tendencies are showing!

  • Another area that seems parallel is the denial of what white supremacist capitalism does to our culture and communities. Again reflecting on how Black women and men were exploited during war time in the military and factory systems and then denied benefits with segregation reinstated post-war, there is a reflection there about how the rates of covid illness/death is so high in Black communities. There is reflection there of how frontline workers have been exploited. The latest being railroad workers denied paid sick leave!!!!?

  • Another reflection I see is how capitalism, not actual need, drives infrastructure. So during war time when women were required to keep the factories going, infrastructure was created to make that happen. When the white men returned and “needed the jobs more,” women were relegated back out of the workplace. During these pandemic years, I believe we’ve seen an ableist capitalism reflection of this, in that in 2020 when Ableds suddenly needed access, overnight accessibility was put in place for working remote, virtual access to education and cultural events, even healthcare suddenly opened up video and phone healthcare. These were things disabled people had been screaming for for decades but were told were impossible, too expensive, too difficult, etc.. We were thrilled to see these things come to be OVERNIGHT. And now that Ableds want to believe that in-person everything is more important and safe again, all the access is slowly being revoked. Although, the numbers of disabled people have gone up so high with long COVID, that we’ll possibly not see things revoked in healthcare?

  • What other reflections might you see now that we’re talking about this??

This is big stuff to process. And no, I don't think there is one answer to this. I'm not sure that there is more than exhaustion-rage and scrabbling to survive right now. But this grief illiterate, capitalist genocide is at play for us all. Even if you are in the best circumstances possible. This is collective! Best or worst circumstances, this is collective. And don't start asking therapists and coaches to be automatons lining up strategy etc. They are your equal humans suffering this. It will take a million approaches, projects, and collective doings. I don't know why I bother to keep writing these things except that it helps me be less scared, less hopeless to encourage us all to start now, right where you are. Rest. Seek the deepest meaning of mutual aid and do it. Understand that we are all affected now. All of us. Even those who deny. Even those who call you "crazy" (again ableist capitalism) for stating these obvious things unfolding all around us. Even those who call you Cassandra or say you should be grateful for what has been done. Even all those folks are in this grief illiteracy deep end. So you keep trying anyway.

Much like abolitionist theory + practice tells us, we need all the thousands of answers. There isn't one blueprint. It's all of us continuing to try to survive and then reduce harm in whatever ways we can. Keep taking the next small step, Loves.

If you are looking for a bit more learning around possible next small steps consider:

○      Mariame Kaba’s work from “Hope Is A Discipline” to “We Do This Til We Free Us” and everything she’s offered this world is a good place to start. Her “One Million Experiments” collaboration alone shows you explicit, real world examples of starting where you are and how it will take a million answers, not one, to shift our culture!

○      If you are not familiar with how marginalized community issues intersect with what we see happening, you might start exploring resources like Disability Justice Resource List, The Radical Death Canon, and Queer Attachment.

○      Do an in-depth read of Malkia Devich-Cyril's words on "Grief Belongs in Social Movements. Can We Embrace It?" excerpted from Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation by adrienne maree brown (AK Press, 2021).

○      Try exploring what people are creating in collective and community ways by doing internet searches for terms like “Faces of COVID,” “covid ritual,” and “covid collective grieving.”

Kara is on Vashon Island, WA, the traditional lands of the sx̌ʷəbabš (meaning Swiftwater People) Peoples. Learn more about Kara and her heARTwork at www.GriefAndCreativity.com and www.CreativeGriefStudio.com

Will Daddario