Nearly two decades later, in the midst of another national tragedy that has the US approaching 170,000 deaths from Covid-19, there have been few signs of collective mourning among Americans. "They were mourning those lives, standing for the value of those lives, publicly gathering in sorrow and in rage... I think that is a public act of mourning at the same time that it is a public act of protest." "It leads us to accept deaths that are preventable ... and it makes us cold, if not cruel, in the face of calculated levels of acceptable death. So, in my mind, it is the absence of collective mourning, forms of gathering, and acknowledgment in conjunction with this calculation of acceptable death that leaves us without a sense of the value of life."

Source: CNN August 16, 2020 09:00 UTC