Grieving in Public
I tried something out last weekend, and want to share it with you
Last Thursday night, I saw this call re-posted by someone I respect in Minneapolis:
On Saturday February 7th 2026, Native Peoples of Mni Sóta Makoce are holding a public day of memorial and mourning in a significant Minneapolis public park with Renee Good’s family and community leaders.
Across the country, groups are invited to gather in solidarity to mourn Keith, Heber, Victor, Parady, Luis, Geraldo, Silverio, Renée, Alex, and all those who have been killed by federal agents’ violence in our cities.
The call came with A Toolkit for Grieving Together in Public - Mourning those killed by this regime that organizers (NDN Collective, Braveheart Society, Indigenous Protector Movement, American Indian Movement, Freedom Trainers, Sunrise Movement, Project South) had prepared for groups to use and organize their own gatherings. What a gift! The guiding purpose and intention of these gatherings, as they articulated it:
Together we will form a memorial space to practice witnessing our collective power.
Our power includes grieving together, protecting each other and remembering that we shine brighter when we act together. On the coldest days we create warmth and energy by drawing closer.
We circle up to build the muscle memory required to move fear and stress through the collective body and to sustain the courage to keep showing up to protect our neighbors and our families.
My whole being responded with an immediate YES to this. I texted my friend Shonali Banerjee, who’s been leading the organizing of our local Singing Resistance ATL chapter1 over the last month or so, who is also a death doula. Together we pulled off a local version of this public memorial within 24 hours. Here’s the invitation we shared…
And a short clip of one of the songs we sang together:
From A Toolkit for Grieving Together in Public - Mourning those killed by this regime:
Our grief belongs in public to shirk systems of violence which rely on isolation, silence, and speed. Public grief slows us down, gathers us together, and insists that our lives matter. When we grieve together, we turn mourning into witness—and witness into protection.
During our memorial, I read the names of known individuals killed by ICE / DHS or occurring in ICE custody or ICE-related operations in 2025-2026 as of January 30 while those in the circle sang a simple refrain “we are mourning” led by Shonali. I love that reading all the names was something requested by the family of Renee Good at the memorial in Minneapolis. Reading these names was a lot to hold…each containing a whole and important life I know very little about…each a person who experienced a violent death, an execution by foot soldiers of white supremacy:
Keith Porter Jr. (California)
Renée Nicole Good (Minnesota)
Heber Sanchez Dominguez (Georgia)
Silverio Villegas Gonzalez (Illinois)
Genry Ruiz Guillén (Florida)
Serawit Gezahegn Dejene (Arizona)
Maksym Chernyak (Florida)
Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez (Puerto Rico)
Brayan Garzón-Rayo (Missouri)
Nhon Ngoc Nguyen (WEN) (Texas)
Marie Ange Blaise (Florida)
Abelardo Avellaneda-Delgado (Georgia)
Jesús Molina-Veya (Georgia)
Johnny Noviello (Florida)
Isidro Pérez (Florida)
Tien Xuan Phan (Texas)
Chaofeng Ge (Pennsylvania)
Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas (Arizona)
Oscar Rascon Duarte (Arizona)
Santos Banegas Reyes (New York)
Ismael Ayala-Uribe (California)
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes (Texas)
Miguel Ángel García Medina (Texas)
Huabing Xie (California)
Leo Cruz-Silva (Missouri)
Hasan Ali Moh’d Saleh (Florida)
Josué Castro Rivera (Virginia)
Gabriel Garcia Aviles (California)
Kai Yin Wong (Texas)
Pete Sumalo Montejo (Texas)
Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani (Texas)
Jean Wilson Brutus (New Jersey)
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir (Ohio)
Parady La (Pennsylvania)
Delvin Francisco Rodriguez (Louisiana)
Geraldo Lunas Campos (Texas)
Nenko Stanev Gantchev (Michigan)
Victor Manuel Diaz (Texas)
Alex Pretti (Minnesota
We also named Rodney Taylor, a father of 7, double amputee who immigrated from Liberia at age 2 who has been detained by ICE here in Atlanta since Jan 2025. May he be FREED. Taylor is one of many people who are being held in detention centers in a chronic state of injustice. May they all be FREED. In 2025, Georgia had the 5th highest number of deportations in the U.S. ICE has had a big presence here for years, even if it doesn’t look the way it does in Minneapolis right now.
For me it was important during this memorial, to give thanks to the the Muscogee people whose ancestral homelands we are on. We gathered at a John Lewis statue on purpose, to honor him and all of the people in the Black radical and Black feminist traditions who have believed in and fought for Atlanta and beyond to be free from all forms of state violence and repression.
It was also important to me that we give thanks and direct people to support the groups that have been working to protect immigrants and refugees here in Atlanta and in Georgia for decades…groups including Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, El Refugio, Project South, Freedom University, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.
There is a lot I don’t know about how to grieve in public. I’m so grateful to Shonali for practicing some of what we each do know together, and to stretching to meet the moment by leaning on each other. I haven’t felt called to move into action that quickly in some time.
I know that these kinds of public memorials, ceremonies of remembrance, and grief rituals2 are important. They are an essential component of the work that is needed now. And let’s be honest, we are operating from a severe backlog of unprocessed grief. Dominant culture encourages amnesia and numbing. For communities that have long been targets of state-sanctioned violence here on Turtle Island since colonization — Indigenous, Black, Brown, trans and queer people, revolutionaries — it is my understanding that grieving in public, or if not completely public, in communal gatherings, has been a necessary ingredient for survival. I know that this kind of grieving, with intention and skill, is necessary for me to stay connected and rooted in the humanity of myself and of others through this time. I know I need this to keep my bitterness from calcifying.
#InRemembrance #Wokiksuye #BeGood #ICEOut
This is part of a national movement—check out the toolkit, songbook, and upcoming trainings for Singing Resistance here
The people whose teachings on grief have influenced me the most over the past several years are Ekua Adisa, Malkia Devich-Cyril, Francis Weller, and Sobunfu Some. I give thanks to them for being wise guides.
Thank you so very much for sharing Jen.