And activist and cancer patient Zahara Heckscher has died at the age of 53. Heckscher was repeatedly arrested protesting against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as the TPP, and its so-called death sentence clause, which would have extended drug company monopolies on medicines. This is Zahara Heckscher speaking on Democracy Now! about her mother, who also died of breast cancer.

Zahara Heckscher: “I was only 11 when she died of breast cancer, and that was before these drugs were available. She only lived one year after she was diagnosed, and that’s what breast cancer means without access to the modern medicines, the biologics and the other emerging medicines that, for example, have kept me alive for seven years so far and still going strong. So I know very personally what it means when people don’t have access to the medicines. And I also know that breast cancer, it’s not about just the individual patients, it’s about the family. And for me, I’m fighting for my son to have a mom as much as I’m fighting for myself and for other women and their families.”

That’s activist, mother and writer Zahara Heckscher, who died from breast cancer at the age of 53 on Saturday in Maryland. Click here to see our full interviews with Zahara Heckscher.