00:02:45.380In 2023, Sri Ram Shamasundar, founder of HEAL, an organization that trains frontline health workers from countries around the world, including indigenous communities in the United States, wrote,
00:03:05.960i entered the university of california berkeley as a freshman a child of indian immigrants
00:03:12.420keeping my head down and taking primarily science classes to fill a humanities requirement i
00:03:19.540meandered into a class called poetry for the people a course taught and conceived by june
00:03:25.880jordan the great poet and activist in one of our last classes a teaching assistant publicly
00:03:34.100accused June, in front of a class of 250-300, of failing to stand up on behalf of Palestinian
00:03:42.860people. She didn't show up for class the following week. The weekend after, I went over to her
00:03:51.380house in North Berkeley. She was surprised to see me, but she let me in. The morning
00:03:59.880sun lit up the kitchen and made specks of dust visible. We all knew she had breast cancer,0.80
00:04:08.180but we didn't know the extent of her struggle. About 40 bottles of medications were laid
00:04:15.180out on the kitchen counter to treat cancer and fight nausea and pain. We sat at her kitchen
00:04:24.400table. I tried to find the words to encourage her to come back to class. I stumbled as I
00:04:31.620tried to convey that the whole class knew of her commitment to the Palestinian struggle.
00:04:38.480June remained unmoved. She was worn down. She began to talk.
00:04:46.720she said her entire career had been brought to a halt in 1982 by the political stance she took
00:04:55.280in the village voice when she wrote a poem titled apologies to all the people in lebanon
00:05:00.620about the israeli military's massacre of palestinians in the refugee camps in sabra and
00:05:06.580shatila june paid significantly for taking a pro-palestinian stand our bibliography shows
00:05:15.240a gap between the mid-80s and mid-90s when publishers refused to work with her.
00:05:21.280That afternoon, in her sunlit kitchen, I listened to her. End quote. June died of breast cancer at
00:05:30.780her home in Berkeley, California, on June 14, 2002, at the age of 65.
00:05:40.160In Apologies to All the People in Lebanon, she wrote,
00:05:43.400they told you to go 135 000 palestinians in beirut and why didn't you take the hint0.69
00:05:52.580go there was the mediterranean you could walk into the water and stay there what was the problem
00:05:59.620i didn't know and nobody told me and what could i do or say anyway
00:06:05.260yes i did know it was the money i earned as a poet that paid for the bombs and the planes and
00:06:13.320the tanks that they used to massacre your family. But I am not an evil person. The people of my
00:06:21.400country aren't so bad. You can expect but so much from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch
00:06:28.820American TV. You see my point? I'm sorry. I really am sorry.
00:06:37.0201982 in an open letter to adrian rich jordan wrote i claim responsibility for the israeli
00:06:46.960crimes against humanity because i am an american and american money has made these atrocities
00:06:52.060possible i believe that you cannot claim a people and not assume responsibility for what that people
00:06:58.920do or don't do. You cannot claim to be human and not assume responsibility for the value
00:07:06.740of all human life. End quote. June Jordan burned with injustice, with heartache, with
00:07:15.700rage, with luminosity and passion. When the cancer came to her breasts, she was an ember
00:07:24.840burning to stay alive. Though exhausted till the end, she burned with love. After the Harlem riots
00:07:35.920of 1964, Jordan found that she was, in her words, quote, filled with hatred for everything and
00:07:43.840everyone white. She wrote in Civil Wars, quote, it came to me that this condition, if it lasted,
00:07:54.260would mean that I had lost the point. Not to resemble my enemies. Not to dwarf my world.
00:08:03.700Not to lose my willingness and ability to love.
00:17:49.180Mark didn't feel it but I know now not to dismiss things that I might be imagining because I was
00:17:56.160right. Something was wrong. I had cancer. Ipso facto all my anxieties are true. Something is
00:18:05.780wrong with the water and in fact at the end of the day when I'm tired the whole world is on fire.
00:18:12.060later i wrote on a cancer forum i'm angry at root causes these days and every article that
00:18:22.280is still pointing at individual choices like exercise or sitting still too much as a risk
00:18:28.280factor for cancer rather than digging into the systemic issues that are causing a rocket ship
00:18:33.020increase in young people with death in their breasts is making me rage i get that those things
00:18:39.540give readers who don't have cancer some sense of control, but it's like pouring salt on open
00:18:44.760wounds to imply that we, individual bodies now fighting for our lives, could have done much of
00:18:49.800anything to prevent this, when the whole planet is dying for the same reasons we are. I am three
00:18:56.980weeks post-bilateral mastectomy. It's 5 a.m., and I am screaming into the void with you.
00:19:03.480In 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich, co-author of Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, wrote an essay called Welcome to Cancerland, after she, too, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
00:32:40.080that it just flickers with pleasure and joy
00:32:44.820and can you hold that memory like a flame in your heart like the flame over the fields
00:32:54.280can we use it to light torch lights of kindness for every single child person every single one
00:33:05.260deserving of that safe delicious full body joy cancer took from me is still taking
00:33:14.600But two teams of skilled surgeons lining the sides of my bed under the blinding white lights, backed by hundreds and thousands of researchers and patients and activists and ancestors, gave me this back.
00:33:31.120this shiver of pleasure in my own weird skin