On Maximizing Our Grief

The experts say that anger is just a symptom or a phase of grief. Normally I’d agree and investigate my recent desire to revert to my teenage self’s propensity for speaking only in expletives every other word like Eddie Murphy’s “Raw” comedy tour. Because normally I wouldn’t be this bereft so many days in a row following the deaths of complete strangers. But as most of you reading this know by now, there is no normal. “Normal” is gone and it is not coming back anytime soon. Human beings are being ripped out of their normal and sent away to God knows where. Normal looking neighbors are being murdered with zero due process followed. We live in a country that no longer values the statement "I am a U.S. citizen." What is there to do but grieve?

Alex Pretti's body is honored by the staff at the Minneapolis Veterans Hospital where he served as an ICU nurse.

Denial, Bargaining, Acceptance? Forget it. Depression and anger are all that’s left of the so-called five stages of grief. If people are denying what’s happening or are inexplicably accepting of this horror, then they clearly know information I am not privy to. But from my vantage point, all that can be useful on these ice filled streets and surrounding areas of Minneapolis is depression fueled rage.

Here I stand writing about it. Writing from my cozy church office, no sound of shrieking whistles or blood-curdling screams of suddenly orphaned children or parents wailing because their sons and daughters didn’t come home from school. I can barely even write those sentences without becoming a puddle of tears. Because it’s real. It’s not hyperbole. This is what is happening every day. It’s not something from the ancient past.

And yet, as depressed and angry that I suspect many of us are, it is our love, not our anger, that sets us apart. Claims and stories that the streets of Minneapolis are lined with paid protestors, out-of-state agitators, and domestic terrorists are just that: claims and stories. Those acting with such hatred towards other human beings do not have the capacity to imagine that there are actually people who are not coerced into acting kind and people who courageously dare to confront the flaunting of force. Hate cannot see others in the ways that Love can. I bet our compassionate protests are boggling their minds! 

Miller, Noem, and name that minion answer the questions in the way they do (with condemnation, bigotry, and idiocy) because I honestly think that those are the only narratives that make sense to them. Their knee-jerk reactionary tales would be hilarious if not for the fact that there are probably people who are actually believing them. I’d say the videos speak for themselves, but apparently they aren’t. I watched one dumbass news reporter demonstrate that the way Alex Pretti was holding his phone could’ve been mistaken as a handgun. I wanted to laugh, but found myself reeling from the sheer stupidity of his accusation, outraged that there are suckers like him out there buying his justification for Alex Pretti’s fate. 

These are all just claims and stories and self-preservation tactics attempting to explain away the Nazi-like occupation of Minnesota we are living through right now. Nothing but lies and propaganda the powers-that-be are telling themselves and anyone xenophobic enough to agree.

I digress. I’m sure I could go on and on for hours as could you. But this isn’t even the challenging part of what I wanted to write today. Instead, I need to wrestle with something else weighing my conscience: the possible solutions that privileged white people like me can actually do about our difficult-to-treat ice problem. Does everyone need to withstand tear gas to be considered courageous? I don't think so. I heard something the other day that made me stop and wonder if we could also approach this from a different angle. 

“The most radical act in a capitalist society isn’t protest, it’s nonparticipation.”

 - NYU Professor Scott Galloway from The PIVOT podcast with Journalist Kara Swisher.

People a lot smarter than me can probably speak to this stuff more clearly, but if I am understanding correctly, then another solution to what we're experiencing in Minnesota and other states with an ice problem would be a massive, longer-term (a week or more) of intentional non-spending consumer strikes. I don’t know how this would be helpful for small businesses nor can I really fathom what an act of resistance of this magnitude would do to the average working class American household, but I am beginning to doubt that protests alone will be able to reverse this administration's lack of decency.

Look, I think protesting is still highly important and valuable. It inspires others to step up and speak out, and it sends a message to local, national, and global onlookers that everything is not OK. But I am doubting that the protests alone will change the minds of the powers-that-be. I think our signs and recordings are important, but are they going to affect those who are green-lighting the gaslighting and endorsing these trauma-inducing actions in our streets? Is it time we also think about performing a ritual sacrifice of our privilege? 

“If you could convince 50% of Americans to not buy the new iPhone in the next 60 days (or to put off buying it) and 10% of ChatGPT owners to cancel their subscriptions, this ends. 

These are the people the administration cares about.” 

It's become abundantly clear that this group of “leaders” cannot be morally shamed into meeting our demands for the basics like dignity and due process. Their moral compasses are still in the box, and the plastic wrap hasn’t even been broken. The only thing they care about are the markets and if their stock goes up or down. If we could make that needle teeter in the wrong direction while still keeping the news feeds busy with our protesting, then maybe those siding with the victims would get a hearing instead of total silence and the constant threat of physical harm.

What happens when an economy that is 70% consumer driven experiences consumers who choose to stop doing what they’re supposed to do? I don’t know the first thing about pulling something like this off, but I know that I've seen enough suffering and death already. At what point does it become our duty to humankind to make a sacrifice of comfort for the greater good?

“The most radical act in a capitalist society isn’t protest, it’s nonparticipation.”

That quote keeps clawing at me from the inside out. Am I condoning cruelty and being selfish by participating in capitalism? I find myself bargaining, "but I’m a member of the evaporating middle-class! My household already operates with a thrifty mindset of, “why buy new when used will do?” and “recycle, reuse, repurpose.” What about all that retirement income accumulating interest from our capitalist economy—what am I supposed to do with that, cash it out for gold bricks and become a Ron Swanson? That’s money I have set aside so that I don’t have to work myself to death!

The more I think about the state of the world today, the less sure I am that this resolves itself. God, I hope I’m wrong. Someone please assure me that America is going to be OK and that these deportations and federal crimes against civilians are “slight and momentary afflictions” (2nd Corinthians 4:17) as the Apostle Paul wrote the Corinthians thousands of years ago. Reassure me that all of this is not the beginning of the end for our democracy and that what’s coming for us next isn’t going to feel like that monster’s arrival in the diner scene from Spaceballs.

I’m always willing to be wrong about how I see and sense things. Perhaps this daily dread and disrupted peace are not signs of the apocalypse. Maybe I still have time to hold off on buying that bug-in book by the former Navy Seal or that backyard survival manual (that keep popping up on my Instagram feed because I find the idea of building a below ground bunker on my property cool as hell.) 

Be they ominous signs of something longer-term or just run-of-the-mill societal speed bumps, I am deeply grieved by all these unlawful acts upon my fellow Minnesotans of color, and especially about what happened to Renee Good and Alex Pretti.  

(Ecclesiastes 3) For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven… 

However we go about righting these wrongs, the season for doing something with our white hot rage is on. From picking up where Renee and Alex left off to caring for families deprived of their loved ones unjustly, this is our moment, our season to maximize our grief. The time is now to stand with Minnesota physically and financially, and perhaps to even begin contemplating what a longer-term consumer-minded rebellious act of non-participation might look like if and when we start to get serious about sticking it to this greed obsessed cruelty machine our tax dollars are helping to fund.  

If you’re grieving and as fired up about how this administration is supposedly making America great, then may your grief be a sign that you’re ready to get curious and compassionate and to start transforming those heavy feelings into something helpful.