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“[…] My pay has not moved since 2014… While everything around me
kept climbing. The bills. The groceries. The cost of a life that quietly became unaffordable.
“[…] We were told to be grateful. To stay professional. To not question. To not push back.
“But how do you stay silent, when silence starts looking like agreement? […]”
The following poem, described as a spoken word reflection containing two voices and one truth, was submitted to Wired868 by two anonymous public servants:
Photo: UNC.
I voted for you.
Let me sit with that for a moment.
I voted for you.
I voted for change.
For fairness.
For decency.
For the feeling that maybe this time
it would be different.
Because you spoke boldly.
Because you pointed at what we were all tired of pretending wasn’t happening.
Because you named the same behaviours
we were told to accept as normal for too long.
And I believed you.
We believed you.
And they gave us a slogan.
“UNC wins, everybody wins.”
Everybody.
That word still echoes.
I held it like something precious.
I repeated it to myself on election night
like it was a promise I could bank on.
But nobody stopped to ask the real question.
If everybody wins…
who loses?
Because in every game,
the scales have to balance somewhere.
And I am starting to understand
exactly whose side of the scale I am on.
I have watched friends of friends
find their way to the front of every line.
I have watched people from outside
reach inside
and rearrange what was never theirs to touch.
I work in a space where rules exist loudly
until certain doors open…
and suddenly the rules learn flexibility.
“No work from home,” they said.
Clear.
Firm.
Non-negotiable.
Until it isn’t.
Whole sections. Shut down.
Systems. Dismantled.
Not for efficiency.
Not for improvement.
But rebuilt.
Carefully.
With the right faces in the right chairs.
We were told there is no money.
No room.
No budget.
No flexibility.
Yet somehow…
comfort is still funded.
convenience is still found.
and support appears in places
we were told had nothing left to give.
We were promised backpay.
I remember that promise clearly.
And every time I asked,
every time we asked,
the answer came back the same way.
“Not in the budget.”
“Next month.”
“Next year.”
Until next year stopped coming.
My pay has not moved since 2014.
Two thousand and fourteen.
While everything around me
kept climbing.
The bills.
The groceries.
The cost of a life that
quietly became unaffordable.
And I kept working.
I kept performing.
And we were told to be grateful.
To stay professional.
To not question.
To not push back.
But how do you stay silent
when silence starts looking like agreement?
(via TTRNA.)
The progress that was already being made?
Restarted.
Because the jersey changed.
Not because anything was broken.
We cleared the board like the opening of a new chess game.
But nobody asked
where the knowledge went.
Nobody asked who was going to remember
how the pieces moved.
Because once you remove the people who understood the system…
you do not get improvement.
You get confusion.
Dressed up as a fresh start.
Competence gets questioned.
Experience gets dismissed.
And those who once held things together
are now spoken about
as if their contribution was the problem.
The big unions are celebrating.
And good for them.
But what about the rest of us?
The ones not in those rooms.
The ones not on those lists.
The ones who are not connected.
The ones who showed up every day
and did the work
and asked for nothing but fairness.
Are we the balance?
The sacrificial arithmetic
behind the slogan?
Because I do not see everybody winning.
I see the connected winning.
I see the convenient winning.
I see rooms that were promised open
still requiring the right name
to get through the door.
And the rest of us?
We are left inside it.
Trying to function.
Trying to adapt.
Trying to make sense of instructions
that change depending on
who is standing in the room.
Copyright: Office of the Parliament 2025.
And here is the part that keeps me up at night.
I never loved PNM either.
Under that flag I got nothing.
Under this one, I am getting nothing differently.
So what do I do?
When both roads lead to the same place,
which direction do I walk?
When the choices are this bleak
what does a vote even mean?
I did not vote for this.
And I know I am not the only one who feels that way.
Because many of us believed this was about correction…
not repetition in a different direction.
Photo: Deposit Photos
What I do know
is that I am standing here.
Head down.
Collecting a pay cheque.
Not because that is all I am worth.
But because somewhere along the way
that became the safest option.
And that is painful.
To know what you are capable of.
To have proven what you are capable of.
And to feel it slowly
being made irrelevant.
Not by your performance.
By proximity.
By who you know.
By what jersey you wore
on the right night.
“UNC wins, everybody wins.”
I have turned that over so many times now.
And I have landed somewhere
I did not expect to land.
It was never true.
It was never meant to be true.
It should have always been:
“UNC wins.
Some people win.”
And the rest of us?
We just live inside the win.
Trying to afford it.
Trying to survive it.
Trying to remember
that our silence
is not the same as acceptance.
Even when it starts to feel that way.
And I keep asking myself…
If everybody won…
why does it feel like so many of us
are just trying to survive the win?
Three more years.
I do not know what I am supposed to feel.
I just know
I feel it deeply.
And I do not think
I am alone.
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Many valid questions, the answers to many of which are not easy or satisfactory or truly helpful.
But this one is not hard to answer although the answer is decidedly not easy to take on your chest: When both roads lead to the same place,
which direction do I walk?
Answer: Build a new road that takes you where you want to go and hope you can inspire thousands of others to pitch in.