Real freedom means having no fear

My name is Pauloma Martinez and I have been a public defender for the past 15 years in this very courthouse. 

As a legal worker for so many years, I have seen the toll this line of work takes on all of us who choose this profession.

We don’t do it for the money, or the glory, or the recognition – because there isn’t any. 

We do it for the people and the communities we serve. 

We do the work for some semblance of social justice, however fleeting or far off it all feels. 

We do the work because the communities and people we serve are the most marginalized and oppressed of our society, whether we are defending people in criminal court against the violent police state, or children in family court against the destruction and separation of families, or tenants in housing court against the cycle of poverty, or immigrants in federal court against exile and the onslaught of the new gestapo. 

We are here today on May Day–the International Workers Day–to commemorate workers and to never forget the state sanctioned violence that was inflicted on workers demanding the eight-hour workday that we all benefit from today. 

We are here today to remember the sacrifice that workers before us made to fight against the greed and indifference of the ruling class.

We are here today to demand a living wage, so that legal workers across the city no longer have to scrape by can thrive, not just survive, and live. 

We are here today to demand working conditions and workloads that are sustainable so that every working-class New Yorker who finds themselves in need of a legal advocate knows that that advocate is not burned out, and that advocate is on a level playing field with equal access to the same resources as their adversaries. 

We are here today to demand that the city and the state fully fund a public defense system that places equal value on social justice work and the lives of the marginalized. 

We are the legal workers of NYC. 

We make the courthouses all over this city run. 

And we hold the power to shut it all down.  

Both unionized and non unionized workers:  

– from the fields, to the factories, and the assembly lines, 

– to the office buildings, hospitals, construction sites, and courthouses 

– to the homes and streets and back of house and anywhere workers labor for a wage 

Our labor is exploited everyday for the benefit, the bottom lines, and the profits of the bosses.

But now more than ever, as workers both nationally and internationally, we must unite! And we must fight back!  

The ruling class–the one percent–and their enablers have been waging war on our communities for generations–for far too long! 

When every piece of our daily lives as workers and as people is under attack by the elite and powerful, we as workers must take the power back!  And show the one percent that they need us–we do not need them! 

Without us, the workers, all of the wealth the one percent hoards would cease to exist. 

They think they can scare us into compliance? Real freedom means having no fear. 

They think they can cage us all? Free minds and free hearts can never be confined by prison bars. 

They think they can silence us? We will not be silent!

They think the daily grind and all the external distractions will keep us busy and asleep? The workers have awakened! 

On this May Day and every May Day, the international workers of the world must unite and look toward the future and remember: 

We the masses–the working class–hold the power to stand up to the ruling class and take back the power.

We must honor and never forget the martyrs before us and not allow their sacrifices to be in vain.  

As was so eloquently stated by August Spies, a martyr of the original May Day in 1886 on the date of his execution before he was hanged by the state: 

“There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

We must unite as one working class in solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of the ruling class.

Long live May Day and long live the working class people of the world!

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

Featured Image credit: Mike Steele; modified by Tempest.