This isn’t the whole story and it’s irresponsible to reduce it and act like outrage is just ignorance.
Mass graves to temporarily bury the dead during a pandemic is grim, but inevitable. That alone isn’t the issue.
Potter’s Fields have long and complicated history, esp this one https://twitter.com/juliakite/status/1248587619056979969

Death, burial and rites are not apolitical, unfortunately injustice, harm, oppression, hierarchy and inequality follow us there too.

People have named that potter’s field has a history with HIV/AIDS victims being buried there. Nameless and with no one to honor and claim them.

But that no one claimed them wasn’t bc in each instance no one would-Stigma, bigotry and medical violence during the peak of the AIDS Epidemic was high. Due process was just not followed. Family and friends were not alerted. People were seen and treated like they deserved this.

I have read story after story of this happening.

And in the instances where those who died of AIDs were intentionally unclaimed and abandoned because their families would not claim them, or bc everyone in their chosen family was also sick and dying, that isn’t apolitical

It isn’t “Ehh, they died and they had no one, it happens, big city”.

It’s fucking sad. It’s painful. It’s socially orchestrated m. It’s an Injustice. Family and friends ARE STILL piecing together stories and journeys of loved ones lost during the height of HIV/AIDS.

There are these painful existing associations with Hart Island.

Even if not EVERY burial there is this deeply political, it is always yet political and deeply sad for someone to be buried alone and nameless regardless of larger contexts. Always. We shouldn’t be so isolated.

Being that in many cities Black people are seeing higher rates of infection and death from COVID-19, and they were also a vulnerable population during the AIDS epidemic, the comorbidity being anti-Blackness in both cases, people reacting to these mass burials is justified.

Even knowing the use and intention of this gravesite being used temporarily (?) during this time, it is painful and it is jarring for many. That’s valid. That needs to be named and discussed in its entirety.

CW for such deep fuckery involving collecting human remains/disturbing gravesites/colonial brujeria

Remember those batshit Tumblr witches who were stealing bones from a potter’s field in New Orleans?Most of the people buried there were African Americans. https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_ab01739b-ef85-536d-b39d-e3c2e9e31268.html

If you know anything about the terrain in NOLA, you can’t just be putting people in the ground, their remains will exhume and wash up. The people were buried there without care. They were scavenged by white and NB people unceremoniously. It’s not an accident.

More about Hart Island and the AIDS epidemic https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/nyregion/hart-island-aids-new-york.html