Real change in any society begins with the transformation of the groups most injured within that society. The aim of all historical movements of civil resistance—from the Black freedom movement to the women’s suffrage movement and labour unions—has ultimately been one thing: to enable those sections of society most harmed by injustice to gain agency over their own lives and destinies.

It is precisely for this reason that activists for the rights of workers, women and children, lawyers for political prisoners, and, within the larger ecosystem of our country, environmental and animal-rights activists are the greatest heroes of our society and the greatest enemies of despotism.

Sharifeh Mohammadi, a labour activist and the mother of a twelve-year-old child, has been sentenced to death. This is the naked reality of the political and judicial system in our society.

The truth of any political system can be understood from the way that system, as the highest institution of power in society, treats its most vulnerable groups. Sharifeh’s sentence is a sentence cutting off the voice of workers in society.

There is no honour in life greater than standing for the rights of the most injured sections of society. Valuable people such as Sharifeh Mohammadi are not merely representatives of workers; they are agents of transformation within their society.

If they do not rise, we who remain seated and motionless will never understand that chains lie upon our hands and feet, because we feel the chains only when we attempt to move—or when we see the price of movement and social activism.

By standing, they show a society sitting in stillness the true weight of its heavy chains. The true weight of our chains is the death sentence handed to people like Sharifeh Mohammadi. Let us not remain indifferent to this injustice or to our own chains.

Aydin Areta