A time to rejoice, and a time to be heartbroken

<p>Good afternoon. I would like to start by wishing you all a very happy Harvey Milk Day.</p><p>I am tremendously honored to receive the university medal, and I am so proud to graduate with you, my brilliant classmates. On behalf of the class of 2009, I want to thank our families for their support and love. Thank you! This is your accomplishment just as it is ours.</p><p>It is a gorgeous day. I am so very proud. I am also heartbroken. I am heartbroken because for me, attending UC Berkeley was to live devastating contradictions.</p><p>The week I received this award two young men I knew were shot and killed a few miles from this campus where, because they were black and poor, they lived a world apart. Their names were Larry and Maurice. Their murders hardly made the news because in this country, there is nothing uncommon about the unnecessary deaths of young African American men.</p><p>I celebrated this honor knowing their families were drowning in grief.</p><p>UC Berkeley professor and poet June Jordan wrote, "To live means you owe something big to those whose lives were taken away from them." There are many people who should be with us today but are not because their lives or dreams were taken from them.</p><p>And today we officially have the power, as graduates of an elite university, to look away. We will go on to become powerful lawyers, engineers, policy writers, educators, doctors,and researchers. As June Jordan would say, we are now on the shooting side of the target range.</p><p>But I believe we also have the power to begin to construct the democracy we want to live in. I believe this kind of democracy begins when those of us with university degrees, those of us with privilege, are unafraid to name the quiet violence we observe and experience even though it may benefit us to keep silent. As Audre Lorde wrote, "It is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence."</p><p>It may be that you are comfortable now, and wondering why I'm talking about all this atrocity. Because the breaking of silence is something that concerns all of us. Even here, this university, one in three women will be sexually assaulted by someone else at this university. And I see this as evidence that violence is systemic and there is no way to guarantee our own safety as long as other people are positioned as worthless and left vulnerable. We can choose to look away, but that looking away compromises the heart of what it means to be human.</p><p>For those of you thinking, "Can this girl just shut up already? This is supposed to be a day to celebrate!" I am speaking about these things because I believe we celebrate best with our eyes wide open. This is the world we live in however invisible the violence I speak about is to you.</p><p>I believe we experience joy most fully when we are aware of the context in which we are celebrating. I believe that our broken hearts give birth to our resistance, and to the fierce collective insistence I have seen here with you at UC Berkeley that things can be better. And what a glorious and sacred thing to celebrate!</p><p>Poet Mario Benedetti wrote, "We sing because the survivors/and our dead want us to sing." So let's sing for the people whose lives and dreams were taken from them.</p><p>In the face of all this sorrow I am full of hope. I am full of hope because many of us, most of us, I think, were never meant to get this far -- because I am a woman or because your people were brought to this country in chains or because I was told that I was stupid or because you are queer or because you are a war veteran or because you or your parents do not have the papers that make you a citizen in this country or because there is violence in your family or because you worked two jobs to get through school. Each one of you knows your own story and your own battles. Not a single one of us graduates today without some struggle.</p><p>We all persisted despite the very different violences leveled against us. And here we are. This is a cause for the most momentous celebration. This is a foundation for enduring hope.</p><p>It is a beautiful day. I am honored and grateful to graduate from UC Berkeley, and I am filled with awe when I listen to you, my peers, and your brave and audacious visions for the future. You are all amazing, you are all gorgeous, and you are each absolutely indispensible.</p><p>So let's build a country where I can walk home safe at night. Let's build an America were no young man will ever again be shot face down in a midnight BART station because he is black. Let us demand that our government honor and protect the undocumented and dignified people who power our economy. Let's build a country in which our young women do not starve or cut themselves into shadows of their possibilities. Let's build an America where young men like Larry and Maurice know the public universities of their country are just that -- truly public, with equal representation of all people.</p><p>As June Jordan wrote, "We need everybody and all that we are." There is so much work for us to do. Let us do this work by breaking silences, singing with rage for our dead and with hope for our survivors and for ourselves.</p><p>Thank you.</p><p>-- Emma Shaw Crane 23, of Graton, has a long history with her parents of social activism.</p>