On Urgency, On Memory
I imagine I join with a great many who tire, who are bone-tired, who are in a space beyond exhaustion, of the social media news activism cycle. I imagine I join with a great many who wish that a trauma-informed approach to this type of work is not just welcome, but necessary in times like these. Watching the cause and product of deep, ravaging intergenerational and current traumas shared again and again and again without preface, without warning—the toll this takes is profound.
These are not dark chapters. This is not past tense. Any implication of finality is an erasure of the ongoing traumas and injustices experienced by the communities affected by systemic oppression.
I list ‘History is NOW.” as the first piece of the ethos of the work that I do with UNLRN PRJCT for precisely this reason. We are passing so many heartrending anniversaries over these past two weeks.
I know I am remembering hundreds of thousands taking to the streets around the world in the middle of a global pandemic in protest against anti-Black racism and its associated systemic oppressions. I am remembering all of the commitments made, and I am remembering how many fizzled, came to nothing, or are still stuck in the sludge of bureaucracy. I am remembering, too, all of the beauty, the solidarity, the actions taken. And I am remembering, in this moment as time bends and includes the now, the presence of burnout from all sides. Except white supremacy.
Beyond the anniversary of those protests bursting forth and George Floyd’s murder (which reminds of Breonna Taylor, of…I cannot name all of the names. I know we must say the names. We must. And there are too many for my heart to manage.)—
Beyond those anniversaries, these past few months have held so much pain. Anti-Asian racism erupting (and continuing) worldwide, the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, the ongoing struggle against settler colonialism, against islamophobia, against anti-semitism that Palestine has once again illuminated, then the remains of 215 Indigenous children found in Tk’emlúps residential school.
Genocide seems so inadequate a word. Some things language fails so marvellously to correctly express, even at its most brutal and stark. Because what could be more brutal than this? Than stealing children from their families in the name of a crooked and twisted idea of civilization, of humanity, of being, erasing their —
If your heart is not broken and breaking, are you paying attention?
If you are not doing everything you can to piece it back together and join in the atonement, the reparation, the reimagining, the rebuilding that we all must engage in, then what are you doing?
What are you doing to learn, to unlearn, to heal yourself, to heal others, to be accountable, to do your work, to undo all of this long, deep pain? Are you in this struggle? Are you here, with us? Have you awoken?
If not, I shudder to think what it might take.
And so I ask, what is urgency, for you?
Where does it live, in your life, in your mind, in your body?
When you feel it, what do you do with it? Do you let it dissipate? Does it fuel action? Is it a signal to reflect?
I ask these questions because how we respond to urgency has everything to do with how we understand and participate in the news cycle that can feel so overwhelming and stagnating. How many of us quickly repost to show solidarity and forget to follow up with action in the form of money, or unlearning, or having necessary conversations, or checking in with loved ones? How many of us are swept up in what urgency creates in us, into whatever patterns it settles into that are already carved into our minds, only to burn out bright a day or two later?
I hope that we can find a way to understand the vital nature of urgency, and remember how easily we can fall prey to misunderstanding what it can offer us in the moment.