ABOUT

Radical Loss

CATALYZE GRIEF.
MOBILIZE
MOVEMENTS.

Founded in 2022 by Director Malkia Devich-Cyril, Radical Loss is a Black-led change lab transforming how movements face loss and catalyze grief into powerful leadership and action. Black, Indigenous and Arab changemakers, as well as other communities on the frontlines of bereavement are the central practitioners in this lab.

Radical Loss connects grieving communities, trains bereaved racial justice leaders, and supports Left organizations to lead bereaved communities as we face and fight for the future.

MISSION

Radical Loss is advancing a transformative and movement-building approach to loss, grief and mourning. We build beloved communities, train resilient leaders, and empower racial justice movements to mourn the dead and fight for the future.

VISION

Radical Loss envisions a future where everyone has the right and power to grieve, and our collective grief forges a joyful path to new economies, racial justice and human rights for all.

  • We live in a nation whose politics and policies induce unequal and mass loss, while rejecting grief, with devastating consequences to our health, rights and power.

  • The consequences can be demoralized communities and demobilized movements for racial, economic and gender justice.

  • Radical Loss offers an approach to managing bereavement and change for Black, Indigenous and Arab people, and other changemakers building power in their own oppressed communities. 

  • When power-building movements can radicalize, metabolize, and mobilize grief, they become an unbeatable force for deep and lasting change.

The Radical Loss Framework

RADICAL LOSS IS

ADVANCING A TRANSFORMATIVE APPROACH TO LOSS, GRIEF AND MOURNING.

TRANSFORMATIVE GRIEF IS…

  • ACCOMPANIED

  • ANTI-COLONIAL

  • COLLECTIVE

  • EMBODIED

  • RADICAL

  • ENFRANCHISED

  • POLITICAL

  • WITNESSED

  • RESILIENT

ABOUT MALKIA DEVICH- CYRIL

Malkia “Mac” Devich-Cyril is the founder of the Radical Loss Project and co-directs the Healing, Sustainability and Culture Strategy at the Movement Innovation Collaborative. Devich-Cyril is a Black and Left movement strategist and facilitator, writer, public speaker and award winning activist on issues of collective grief, Black liberation, narrative change and power building. As the founding and former director of Media Justice, Devich-Cyril spearheaded more than two decades of national grassroots efforts for abolition and access in a digital age, galvanizing communities of color for an open internet, media access, and platform accountability. In 2002, Malkia Devich-Cyril helped coin the term “Media Justice,”in 2015 they coined the term “e-carceration”, and in 2019 declared that one significant goal of the Media Justice movement was to “fight for a future where we are all connected, represented and free.” In an era of rising authoritarianism and devastating mass loss, Devich-Cyril launched The Radical Loss Project in 2022.

The Radical Loss Project is a Black-led change lab transforming how modern freedom movements face loss and build collective power through collective grief. Black, Indigenous and Arab changemakers, as well as other communities on the frontlines of bereavement are the central practitioners in this lab. Since 2020, Devich-Cyril has partnered with organizations like the Homeless Action Center, Movement Innovation Collaborative, Solidaire Network, Northern California Grantmakers, CS Fund, School Crisis Recovery and Renewal, and Castanea Fellowship, among others, to develop the grief leadership of organizers and other justice workers.

Additionally, Devich-Cyril was a 2022 - 2024 Leading Edge Fellow, 2020 - 2024 Founder-in-Residence at Media Justice, and a 2022 -2024 Strategist-in-Residence at the Narrative Initiative exploring public narratives on grief and race. Since 2021, Devich-Cyril has co-designed the Transformative Movements Project examining structural approaches to collective healing with movement leaders, and is the Principal at CultureJedi Consulting, providing facilitation and coaching for movement leaders. Devich-Cyril was featured in 13TH, the Oscar nominated documentary by director Ava Duvernay (2016) and other documentaries including Outfoxed (2004), Miss Representation (2011), and Free For All: Inside the Public Library (2020). 

Devich-Cyril’s political writing and poetry has been published in The Atlantic, Wired Magazine, CNN.com, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Yes! Magazine, In These Times, the Nation, McSweeney’s, TechCrunch, the Progressive, Truthout and books like We Will Not Cancel Us by adrienne maree brown, among many others. As a masc, genderqueer feminist, Devich-Cyril is committed to building an inclusive and powerful movement -- in solidarity with oppressed people everywhere.