Rupa Marya: What are we willing to risk for collective liberation? (Ep455)

Written By kaméa chayne
“It is not okay that we should be silent when people are being slaughtered with our taxpayer dollars. It is not acceptable.”
— Dr. Rupa Marya

This original, un-edited recording is from kaméa's Substack live interview from early July of 2025 with Dr. Rupa Marya, who was fired in May by her employer for her advocacy for Palestinian liberation.

Join us as we talk about Dr. Marya’s active case to safeguard protected speech, structures of injustice within current health care systems, building alternative futures, and more.

We invite you to…

 

About our guest:

Dr. Rupa Marya is a former Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, whose work sits at the nexus of climate, health and racial justice. Dr. Marya founded the Deep Medicine Circle and co-founded the Do No Harm Coalition, and she also co-authored, with Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

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interview transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that Green Dreamer’s interviews are minimally edited (both audio and non-verbatim transcript) for clarity and brevity only. All statements should be understood as commentary based on publicly available information, and the views expressed in this interview are those of the guest and host only and do not necessarily reflect the views of Green Dreamer.

While we have made reasonable effort in our interview research and production process to ensure accuracy, we do not present our commentary as factual assertion and we are unable to guarantee the completeness or correctness of every piece of information shared. As such, we invite you to view our publications as references and starting points to dive more deeply into each topic and thread explored.

Kaméa Chayne: I'm here today with Dr. Rupa Marya, a physician, activist, author, and composer, whom we previously interviewed on Green Dreamer a couple of years ago about her book, co-authored with Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Dr. Marya, welcome. It's an honor to get to speak with you again.

Rupa Marya: Thank you for having me back and for continuing to do what you do. The voice you bring to so many important issues and perspectives. Thank you. 

Kaméa Chayne: We're here to talk about some major recent events in your life as a physician. And this particular quote from you sums a lot of this up. But you say, “I didn't expect that my career-ending move would be to say, stop bombing hospitals.” End quote.

So, for people who are not familiar with your case and what you've been going through, what was the timeline and the reasons behind your suspension leading up to you being fired?

Rupa Marya: Yeah, well, I was a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, or UCSF. I've been there for 23 years. I started there as a medical resident and then continued as a professor for many years. And throughout my time at UCSF, I was harassed by the leadership whenever I would advocate for marginalized people, whether it was my patient, Charles Hill, who was shot by the BART police, my patients in the hospitals who were not getting the standard of care because they happened to be black or poor.

So these kinds of things would always be met with push-back. I was often called unprofessional, aggressive, or words that are used to describe, often, women in professional spaces who are very strong about doing the work the way they know that they’re supposed to.

That kind of harassment reached a feverish pitch as soon as I started talking about what was happening in Gaza. So when Israel started bombing the hospitals in mid-October, I was in touch with a British Palestinian surgeon who was on the ground there in the hospitals, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who was giving reports of what was happening every day. It was horrific to hear about as a physician.

When I started sharing this outward with the British Medical Journal, the LA Times, with my colleagues at UCSF, I received incredible pushback and harassment at every level of leadership at UCSF. And so, that to me was very revealing of the kind of architecture of racism, which is baked into Western medicine, especially here in the United States, which Raj and I wrote about in our book.

I could have written three or four other books on health equity and health justice, but we will learn a lot more about these things and why we don't have them in the United States through the legal action that I'm now pursuing against my university for firing me, for taking a principle stance against the genocide of the people in Gaza.

Kaméa Chayne: How surprised were you to be suspended and then actually fired?

Rupa Marya: I was surprised to be suspended for raising issues of critical patient safety and the safety of our medical students. When there's a place that is actively engaged in a genocide of one people and someone's coming from that space into our medical school, and there's mandatory military service in that place, it's a really important question to ask from a medical, legal, and ethical standpoint: “Hey, did you participate in a genocide? Were you an active participant in the annihilation of the Palestinian people?”

When we see people from the Israeli military describing themselves as Nazis, which they did in an article that Haaretz published in August of 2023, this was even before October 7th, and we see people now from the Israeli military saying they're being instructed to shoot Palestinian children, to shoot people who are lining up for aid, these are war crimes. The bombing of hospitals, the bombing of schools. The kinds of horrific scenes we've seen daily for the last 21 months coming out of Gaza, the torturing of doctors, the abduction of doctors like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the raping to death of Dr. Adnan al-Barsh. All of these things are horrific war crimes.

The medical institutions in Israel are implicated. Israeli doctors have been implicated in the torture of Palestinian prisoners. But also the medical institutions in the United States and across the West, in how they have systemically been silencing people speaking out against the genocide, as well as remaining silent themselves.

So this is something that we have to understand is part of what we call the Genocide Enablement Apparatus, in a report that over a dozen healthcare workers and human rights advocates submitted to the UN for their report on healthcare workers as human rights defenders.

What we outlined in the Genocide Enablement Apparatus is that the silencing of doctors here is tied to the killing of doctors and healthcare workers in Palestine.

By killing doctors and healthcare workers in Palestine, there's no one left to take care of the people who are suffering under the attacks of the U.S.-sponsored genocide. By silencing us here in the United States, people are afraid to speak up, and that is a tactic. Because we should, “we” being the profession of healthcare workers, should be overwhelmingly outraged about what's happened to our colleagues in violation of all international humanitarian laws that protect our spaces as sacred, that protect our spaces of care.

So in some way, I was surprised because from the perspective of the oath that I took to not harm, from the medical professional ethics with which I take care of all patients in my care and steward the care of all of my community members, it was surprising.

But what I do know about the relationships between UCSF's billionaire donors, the Diller Foundation, the relationship with the U.S. politicians such as California Senator Scott Wiener, and the relationship with the university administration as outlined in the New York Times article about Project Esther, which is the Heritage Foundation's version of Project 2025 to crush the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States.

When we see that this is part of a right-wing project to silence people like me, all across the United States, not just the United States, but in the U.K., Canada, Australia, across Europe, that this is very much calculated, then it's not so surprising. Then we're seeing the architecture of power laid bare. That's what we have to understand as a group of people struggling for the right to be healthy, that that's the architecture that needs to be taken on.

Kaméa Chayne: We know that legality doesn't equal morality, so we can't always assess morality based on what's considered legal. But were there any legal grounds for your firing? So, what was the justification for that?

Rupa Marya: Oh my God, my firing was just remarkable. So that was quite surprising because I was due for a hearing in front of the Academic Senate, and I was waiting for that like, okay, when do I get the hearing?

We’ve gone through this kind of kangaroo court. I had multiple investigations. I was interrogated by lawyers who work for the Paul Weiss law firm. They produced a 462-page report in which several dozen pages were fully redacted. So I haven't seen the evidence that's being used against me. 

My supervisors at UCSF were encouraging faculty members to write false reports about my patient safety, which they refused to do. They called me instead and said, “Oh my God, what's going on?” They tried to attack my medical license. They put a censure letter in my file when they fired me, saying that I am censured for 10 years, which is the rest of my working career.

So I cannot get a job at the University of California as an academic physician. So to see that, like, what was so bad about what I did, what was so terrible? And what I did was I elucidated and I spoke to the dynamics of power that will allow someone who has potentially participated in war crimes to come and be a doctor in the United States. I elucidated the power that will leave someone like Dr. Howard Maibach, who was a big supporter of Friends of the IDF, who was represented by Israel's lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.

Doctor Howard Maibach, who I wrote about in our book, injected and exposed 2,600 imprisoned people, in the California State Medical Facility in San Quentin, to industrial chemicals, paid for by Dow Chemicals, and all these agribusiness chemicals to see what the excretion of these chemicals would be in these prisoners' bodies.

So those medical experiments, which very closely mirror Nazi style experiments, which were conducted in concentration camps, were done without informed consent of the patients. This is after the Nuremberg trials, where the field of medical ethics was established. This is while Dr. Maibach was a professor at UCSF. This happened without an institutional review board, which is supposed to govern and dictate how human experimentation happens.

Doctor Maibach is still being paid $211,000 a year by the state of California. He didn't have the kind of experience that I had for speaking to the dynamics of power that allow for that kind of disgusting racist behavior to occur, or the disgusting racist behavior of genocide in Gaza.

So this speaks to why we don't have health equity in the United States, because the people who are making these decisions are showing their racial animus. So we cannot pretend that we can get health equity in the United States if we can't say, don't shoot kids in the head in Gaza, and not lose our jobs.

Kaméa Chayne: Right. I think this really goes to show that everything is political. Health is political. And what does this mean if we support more funding going towards the healthcare system, but this is how the healthcare system operates? So, there are a lot deeper questions to ask.

I had learned about your work and activism from years ago with your book, with Deep Medicine Circle, and a lot of that already centered on supporting decolonial practices, building community, and so forth. So I'm wondering, before Palestine taking center stage the last few years, did you receive pushback or threats for your earlier grassroots activism? And how did that level of pushback compare to what you were met with when it came to Palestine?

Rupa Marya: I started getting death threats and threats to my physical safety when I was writing my book. People were trying to get access to my book through the California Public Records Act, which was hilarious.

People were trying to find out where I parked at work at UCSF. People were trying to find out how many students I interacted with, what my syllabi were, and how many people I affected. They wanted to know my influence and my reach. So that was the first time I knew that they were upset, whoever they are, these right-wing forces, these reactionary forces that are seeking to remake U.S. society, right now.

When I think about myself, at that time, it was, I would say, medium grade. Now it's like off the charts. I mean, obviously, getting fired. I'm not the only doctor to get fired.

I know of four other doctors in the United States who have been fired for Palestine. They’re all women of color. They’re all very courageous.

I call it bake sales against genocide. So at UCSF, the people who are pro-Palestine are relegated to making bake sales for people in Gaza or talking about how do we support these med students coming here, which is great. Let's do that. But where are you supporting these med students coming to? To a place where they fire nurses for wearing a watermelon pin? Where they fired a doctor for talking very specifically about the dynamics of racist power that are causing the genocide?

When folks are relegated to these liberal, performative acts for Gaza, but not allowed to speak to, like, what you were just saying, the dynamics of power, which is what I research and study. How has colonialism set up dynamics of power in our bodies around our bodies that contribute to poor health? So that means that we have to organize on the outside to take care of our community members, which is what I've been doing with the Deep Medicine Circle, growing food and working, and supporting land moving back into Indigenous hands. And we have to grow our power on the inside.

This is what a lot of doctors don't like to hear. They're like, “I do my activism for Palestine outside the hospital.” Well, of course you do. The bosses inside the hospital are deeply racist people who are totally fine with children being annihilated in their tents at night with these bombs that are coming from the United States.

So, while we don't have healthcare here, while 17 million people are being kicked off their healthcare insurance right now as this bill is moving through Congress, we're sending billions of dollars to Israel to murder people there. And they have universal healthcare, and they have an education system where they're supported. And so this is a critical moment for people to understand these dynamics of power because they're having a direct impact on whether or not they get a surgery, get seen by the doctor, or get a debt that puts them out of service just for getting sick.

Medical debt in the United States is still the number one cause of personal bankruptcy.

And so these are all very important questions to ask. Where is our money going? This is our money. It's our tax dollars. And why isn't it going to support the food, the medicine, the education, the health, the well-being of our communities? Why is it going to murder people across the world?

And to take this on means to take on the very structures and dynamics that are causing climate collapse, that are causing so much pain and suffering in humanity, that are driving wealth disparities, that are impacting who gets to eat, and how well they get to eat, and who gets sick and who gets to be healthy. That kind of gets at the heart of all of these things.

Kaméa Chayne: Yeah, I think when we hear about all these different crises happening, like climate change, social injustice in so many different forms, it can be very overwhelming, but it really helps to dig deeper to see their underlying shared roots. And I think that's a lot of what your work speaks to.

What I'm still personally trying to grapple with is the fact that liberal establishments, I think they usually like to co-opt social movements and water them down to render them more palatable to the system and what it can accept as change, like with Black Lives Matter and politicians in kente cloths and corporations posting black squares.

So even though these symbolic gestures clearly were not enough and often were distractions and capitalized on, what I find baffling is that the same liberal corporations, and organizations, and establishments that might even do land acknowledgements or support diversity and representation, a lot of them are not okay with even symbolically supporting Palestinian human rights.

I'm wondering when you take a pulse on how all of this is playing out in comparison to other social movements, what is your assessment on why advocating for Palestine feels different and is much more heavily retaliated against? Like, this is the red line for the powers that be.

Rupa Marya: It's racism, that's it. It’s good old-fashioned American racism, that's it. People are deeply racist, they don't feel that Palestinians have the right to be happy, the right to be peaceful, to walk down the street and not get shot in the head, going to school, the right to go into a doctor's office and not be murdered, the right to be sick in a hospital bed and not be set on fire. 

The fact that we've seen all these things and the world, or the doctors have not erupted. And let's talk about the liberal dynamics of doctors, even doctors or healthcare workers who are healthcare workers for Palestine. Even those folks are liberals cosplaying revolutionaries.

We are seeing a lot of that where people will have a lot of language, but then you say, okay, well, let's push. Then let's, oh, no, no, no, no. I'm scared for my job, I'm scared for my this or that. What do you think is going on with those doctors in Palestine? They are scared. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for their people.

What are people here willing to sacrifice for children? What are our people here willing to sacrifice for our own community members who are about to be thrown off their Medicaid?

So we are seeing the violence of the liberal performance of kind of like a politics of care, you could say it, but it isn’t a politics of care.

I mean, I have been silenced by the pro-Israel folks, I've been silenced by the pro-Palestine, I call them the liberal pro-Palestine folks, where they want to be on the right side of history, but they're not willing to do something that feels to them too risky. Oh, it's just, you know, this is too much. But that's like, how much we push, how much we understand that the institutions we are in are part of the problem. We've seen it now with Project Esther that the universities, the politicians, and these donors are working all together to silence us. So we have to take on the institutions where we work. We have to walk off the job. We have to have mass resignations. We have to say, I refuse to participate if you won't come out and say this genocide is wrong. And if they won't say this genocide is wrong, or they won't even call it a genocide, they are exposing their deeply racist roots.

And if they have deeply racist roots, I can guarantee you Black mothers, Black pregnant people, will still be dying at 12 times the rate as white pregnant people delivering babies. That is baked into the system. And they won’t say, this genocide is terrible, this genocide should end. They'll say both sides are doing horrible things.

One side's committing genocide right now, and one side's been committing apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and dynamics of colonial oppression for 77 years. Those are not equivalent. You can't equate an abuser and a victim. You don't go to the domestic violence survivor, oh, here's two sides to every story. No, there's dynamics of like violent abuse and victim-hood. And the fact that Palestinians can’t be seen in their victim-hood is a sign of deep racism, period.

Good old-fashioned European, American, Western, whatever you want to call it, racism. And so, to me, it's a time to really ask, why are physicians so cowardly? How can a doctor be a good doctor to a community if they are so cowardly that they won't speak up right now? Why is their career more important than a child in Palestine when our tax dollars are the ones sending those bombs? Those are, like, deeply moral questions.

And for myself, I just came to the point where I couldn't put my head around it. My lawyers say, you're going to lose your job if you keep talking. I'm like, this is the hill I'm willing to go down on because I've stood in all these spaces, and I will continue to stand in these spaces.

And the push-back I’m getting right now is telling us something. And we all need to pay attention. What is it telling us? Let’s go dig in there further.

If you're getting repressed at work, lean into it. Talk louder. Don't shut up. And if they push back harder, get ten of your friends and push back. But don't be silent. Don't be ashamed. You're speaking up for the rights of people to live in dignity, to live in their integrity and their sovereignty. And children, I don't care what child it is, if it's a Jewish child, a Palestinian child, an Indigenous California native child, a Punjabi child, a Kashmiri child, a Muslim child, doesn't matter. Those children are all valuable. And all need all adults to speak up, and that's the part I don't understand.

// musical Intermission //

Kaméa Chayne: I want to lean a little deeper into this question of navigating risk because I think the threats that you and many other activists have received can really take a toll and be life-changing for a lot of you. I think the reality is that seeing real and material retaliation happen can discourage a lot of other people from speaking out and taking action out of fear.

I wonder what guidance you have for people in terms of finding support, finding community, assessing risk, and navigating any type of dehumanizing vitriol that might come people's way. 

Rupa Marya: The dehumanizing vitriol you just have to ignore. Just think KKK. You don't give KKK the bandwidth in your head. These are deeply racist people. And so, it does take a toll, it is scary, and it is enlivening because I've never felt more clear in my purpose than I have these past two years.

I've never felt more like getting to the point of going, no, I’m willing to actually risk it all for this. I'm willing to because I know that I could write about this for the rest of my career and not make the headway that I'm going to make, collectively, all of us are going to make, if we push back on this racist structure. This is a time we have to push back.

If you believe in health equity, if you want health justice, if you’re a healthcare worker, stand up and say free Palestine. Let them try to take you down, and you push back.

It is not okay that we should be silent when people are being slaughtered with our taxpayer dollars. It is not acceptable.

And so when people reach that point, do not be afraid to lose something because you're going to gain other things. You're going to gain things you never knew you had. You're going to find the courage you never knew you had. And you're going to get clarity about what kind of healthcare worker you want to be. 

And we need those people to come forward because we are about to enter a pinch-point in human history that we have never seen. Crop failures are going to start happening on scales we've never seen with the heat, with the fires, with the hurricanes, with the loss of our topsoils. 

So people are going to be hungry, water is going to be scarce, the Earth is pissed. We're going to need a different kind of doctor, a different kind of nurse, a different kind of person. Come be that person. Come lose your fear and step into your humanity of service. If that's why you became a doctor, this is the time to do it. And there's no better way of doing it than starting by saying, “Free Palestine.”

If you're in a histopathological conference, you're like, “Can you tell me how white phosphorus affects the skin? Because I've seen these pictures of these kids with the stuff going straight to the bone.” 

Ask the questions of what you see on the news, what you see on your reels, and what you're seeing. Ask those questions in your spaces of medical care and just see the reactions. Because why can't we talk about it? We must talk about it. It is our duty. So freeing our voice, liberating our voice.

We've noticed that on October 13th, we had a meeting with the Do No Harm Coalition in Palestine. We said the number one strategy is going to be liberating the healthcare worker's voice. We are 20 months in, and most of my colleagues are cowards. And I'm embarrassed. Honestly, I'm ashamed. Most of my colleagues are cowards, which is like, why did you go into medicine? For yourself? Or for the service of humanity?

If it's for the service of humanity, it's time to speak up. Yes, there's a risk. But the bigger risk is that we have so much to lose. So now, as people are silent on Palestine, I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day, who's in leadership, and I said, how are you doing? He's been silent on my case, and he said, oh, well, you know my family members are from Venezuela, and some people are undocumented, now it's very stressful with ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

It's like, well, what do you think was going to happen? You were silent about Palestine, now they're coming for your family. This is the same racist structure. ICE people are trained with Israeli techniques and Israeli technology. So we're dealing with the same apparatus, the same thing happening now here.

So if we don't find our courage soon and we don't speak up soon, we're going to be in very scary in dire times, scarier than what we're seeing right now. They're just getting started.

Kaméa Chayne:  Yeah, it really goes back to the fact that all of these issues are interconnected, and no the good thing, but the good thing is that they're this is being live-streamed. There's so much evidence that people can point to as being facts about what's happening.

So much is being documented that people can refer to. So it's not opinion, it's facts about what's happening. And so we've seen countless people like yourself lose jobs over time advocating for Palestine, we've seen people risk their lives in the ways that they advocate. And we're continuing to see more protests, more direct action being taken around ending this violent occupation.

The future holds many questions, of course, and I don't think there's necessarily one path forward or a definitive solution. But having been immersed in the work of systemic transformation for so long now, what do you think it will take for this bloodthirsty, power-hungry regime to be composted into something more life-affirming for everyone? And what is possible for us?

Rupa Marya: Oh, God, so much is so exciting. We have to walk away. So, a general strike, we've got to shut down the economy. We need to stop participating, with our brilliance and our labour, in these systems. 

We need to walk away, boycott, divest, and sanction. Not just Israel, but all the entities here that are directly contributing.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories), she just released a report this week on the economic ties of the genocide. It keeps going because it's profitable. So, from Google to Microsoft to Amazon to Volvo to Caterpillar to Chevron, there are just lists of United States corporations, very powerful corporations that are making money off the murder of Palestinians.

When we, as working-class people, interact with those structures, we have different choices to make and we have collective labor strategies to address, which is the non-participation. This economic engine works because we participate in it. It's time to start building new economic models now. It’s time to start building economic models that are regenerative and care-oriented for everybody. This is a very creative time. We need the big dreamers. We need the creators.

We need that. We need those people, and we need to get our unions activated, throw out the leadership of the unions who are bought off by these same corporate entities, and get real worker power back. General strike, we need to shut it down. That is the only thing that's going to work. And that is what we need to do.

Kaméa Chayne: Yeah, I always think about leverage, like what is it that builds leverage for people to reclaim power? And I think a lot of people understand the role of boycotting corporations and things that we don't support. And I think if we go down that rabbit hole of, like, boycott all of these things, the other side of that question is, what do we want? Like, what do we want to build? What alternative models are there already right now that we can tap into and support, and things like that? I know you've been very tapped into that side of the equation as well. So I wonder what you'd like to share more about the building alternatives, the building of what's possible.

Rupa Marya: Yeah, I think starting with our mutual aid networks, I always go back to that. So, in your neighborhood, who are the people who need help? And what is the help we can mobilize to get from point A to B? What are the needs of our community?

Once we start doing that, we start seeing, actually, how little we need to rely upon those other entities. It's like, oh, I can get by in a way that's better for me and my family by leaning into my community right here. So building those mutual aid networks, because when ICE rolls into your neighborhood, if those networks are strong, you're going to have a different ability to resist and respond than if you're all fragmented.

That is the number one thing that I recommend people do.

We need to start from, does everyone in my community have the food, shelter, and medicine that they need? If not, how do we mobilize that?

And when we start to do that, there's a beautiful kind of caretaking that happens where we start to see each other again, not as transactional relationships, but in like, oh my gosh, here's this person who lives on my street who I've never spoken to. I've been here 30 years. What's your life like? What's going on? How can I help? Like, how do we take care of one another?

Kaméa Chayne: I'm about to interview Dean Spade about the book Mutual Aid. So I'm excited to dive deeper into nitty-gritty details in terms of how to get started practically, because every community is different as well. So I'm excited to explore this even more. And as we start to wind down our conversation, I want to return to your case. So, what would you like to share in regards to the upcoming timeline of your legal battle and how people can best support you?

Rupa Marya: Yeah, so I brought a federal and state lawsuit against UC San Francisco. And we will require about $50,000 to get depositions. So this is just court fees to get certain people on the witness stand. And that's everyone from the billionaires, to certain politicians, to folks within the system and structure.

So the lawyers who are working for us right now, for me and several others, are working all pro bono. They're amazing lawyers. But we have to cover the $50,000 of court fees. We've raised about $12,000 so far, so I ask everyone to go to our GoFundMe page. I think it's bit.ly free speech number four HCW, free speech for healthcare workers. This is a landmark case.

If doctors are being silenced for advocating for anybody, that’s a problem for everybody.

So we need to protect our rights to speak up.

Kaméa Chayne: And finally, is there anything else that I didn't get to ask you about that you'd like to share? Anything else lingering?

Rupa Marya: Just that Palestine is at the heart of all of our justice movements. And people need to start to really understand that. You can't stay silent about Palestine and hope they just don't come for your issue. The only superpower we have is our solidarity. So if solidarity is our superpower, we need to start leaning in, everyone speaks up and start jamming the system through your non-participation with these violent entities.

Kaméa Chayne: Thank you so much. I'm feeling chills all over my body from this whole conversation with you. And I do have one final question, which is just how are you doing and feeling? Because I know you've been going against strong currents for so long now, and I really want to honor that and ask how you're doing and what is it that's keeping you going during these challenging times?

Rupa Marya: Oh gosh, I want to shout out my friends, I want to shout out my friend Rochelle, my friend Chirag, who have been so, so loving and kind, just really good friends, my friend Debbie, people who have known and loved me for many years and some are just new friends who've also been impacted by their Palestinian advocacy. The doctors in Gaza, doctors who have been going back and forth, we've just become a tight community of people who are able to speak together professionally. My ancestors and my connection to my ancestors in the land where I'm at in occupied Ohlone territory.

My Indian community, I just sat with my Sikh elders. They're in their late 80s and 90s now. And every elder I've spoken to has just said how proud they are of me, which makes me laugh because I grew up in an Asian household where being a doctor was very important, and being a professor has so much prestige. And when I sat with all of them and gave them the news, that I’d been fired for this — they all just said, “Beti (daughter in Hindi), we are so proud of you.” That meant everything to me.

It's like they understand why I'm a doctor, they understand what I've given to medicine and what I will continue to do as a role and as a healer. Those people, and most especially Mother Earth and the children in Gaza, they are carrying my soul right now in their hands, all the martyred children. I think of them every day. And so I will continue until we have justice.

 
kaméa chayne

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