On this page we feature memorials written or collected by a new partner, the volunteer group Mourning Our Losses. In the words of the group’s coordinators,
Mourning Our Losses is a crowd-sourced memorial to honor the lives of people who died in prisons, jails, and immigration detention facilities in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We remember the lives of people who died from exposure to abominable public health conditions, as residents and as employees.
Mourning Our Losses seeks to restore dignity to the faces and stories behind the statistics of death and illness from behind bars. We believe that a loss of any human life warrants mourning.
We are united in our effort to honor our fallen brothers and sisters by telling their stories. We offer a platform for grief, healing, community, and reflection for all those touched by this preventable tragedy.
We update this page weekly; the posts can be viewed below. To see MOL’s full archive, please visit their website, and consider donating to their volunteer-powered initiative. To support the initiative, follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Life in Quarantine is proud to partner with Mourning our Losses. As with other initiatives such as Prison during Pandemic, this collaboration restates Life in Quarantine‘s basic commitment to honor the lives of people by focusing on their actual, lived experience of the pandemic. We hope that you will read the many stories the MOL team has so admirably been collecting; sadly, they are stories of human beings to whom covid-19 was not a bump in the road, but a definite end. We believe that anyone trying to understand the complexity of our current moment, especially in the United States, will benefit greatly from reading these stories and passing them on to others.
About our partnership, Kirsten Pickering, one of the team members at Mourning Our Losses, writes that
We deeply appreciate Life in Quarantine for amplifying the voices and stories of people living in conditions of mass incarceration during this pandemic. Conditions in U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers have always been inhumane and exploitative, and have only worsened during this crisis. People incarcerated today suffer a rate of COVID infection five times higher than the general population, as well as 24 hour lockdowns and the denial of basic human needs, including access to showers, adequate food, and contact with loved ones. Through their focus on Prison during Pandemic, LiQ helps us not to look away.
Below you can find some touching memorials that span the United States. These memorials are a reminder that for some of us, this pandemic was not a hiatus, but a permanent interruption. All love and condolences to the family members and loved ones of the people featured below.
