Hola mi gente!

My name is Gabriel Jesse Martin Medina, and I am proud to be the first Green Party member elected to the Pajaro Valley Unified School District.

I didn’t get here by accident.

I got here because our people are waking up.
Because our people are tired of being lied to,
Tired of being poisoned,
Tired of being told to wait our turn,
And tired of watching our children suffer
While politicians make excuses and corporations count profits.

In March of 2023, the levee broke and our town flooded.

But let’s be honest—the levee didn’t break in 2023.

It broke decades ago,
When our elected officials chose to ignore our community.

When they built stronger levees in other places and left ours to crumble.

When they told us we mattered, but showed us we didn’t.

The water was just the final insult.

Nearly 450 students lost their school.
Families were displaced.
Homes destroyed.

Teachers and staff lost personal items they still haven’t been reimbursed for.

Some families have still not returned.

Our students were bused to unfamiliar campuses,
Pushed into crowded classrooms,
Separated from the very roots that keep them grounded—
Their school, their neighborhood, their people.

And as we tried to recover from that trauma, we were hit again.

Not by water—but by fire*

Not once.
Not twice.
But several times, the lithium battery storage facility at Moss Landing released toxic chemicals into the air.

And still—
No alarms.
No evacuations.
No urgent district-wide warnings.

Just a cold email:
Close your windows.

But how do you close a window that doesn’t exist?

At Pajaro Middle School,
Windows were still missing.
Ceilings were still open.
Teachers had to use lamps to light the bathrooms.

We had to beg for basic safety.

Is that the America they promised us?

Some say we should be patient.
That we should wait.
That these things take time.

But I ask:
How many generations do we have to wait?

My great-grandmother waited for sidewalks.
My grandmother waited for clean water.
My mother waited for a school system that treated her children with dignity.

And now I stand here,
Waiting for windows,
Waiting for clean air,
Waiting for justice.

We are told to believe in the system, to trust it.

But the system is not broken, it is working exactly as it was designed.

It was not built to protect us.
It was not built for the farmworker,
For the teacher,
For the single mother,
For the undocumented neighbor.

It was built for the powerful.

And the powerful think they can dump lithium near us.
That they can expose us to pesticides,
Then test asthma medication on our kids.
That they can treat our suffering as data points on a spreadsheet.

But like Corky Gonzales said,
*“I am Joaquín, lost in a world of confusion, caught up in the whirl of a gringo society, confused by the rules…”*

But we are no longer confused.

We see clearly now.

We are not a sacrifice zone.
We are not lab rats.
We are not disposable.

We are descendants of those who crossed deserts and mountains,
Of people who fed this nation,
Cleaned its homes,
Raised its children,
And bled in its wars—

And we are done asking for permission to be treated like human beings.

We must demand leaders who are for the people, the planet, and peace.

Not another slick politician who shows up with empty promises every four years.
Not another bureaucrat who says, *“It’s complicated.”*

No.
We don’t need complicated.
We need courage.

And for those who say this movement is too radical

Let me remind you that revolution is not radical when you are fighting for clean air.

Resistance is not radical when your children are choking on chemicals.

It is survival.
It is love.
It is dignity.

Our fight is not just political.
It is spiritual.
It is moral.
It is philosophical.

We are standing up for a basic truth:

That our lives have value.
That our children’s futures are not bargaining chips.

And I will leave you with this:

There is a Nahua teaching that says,
“We eat the earth, and the earth eats us.”

There is a balance,
A reciprocity,
A sacred relationship.

But the Spanish man came and took, and took, and took—
And never gave back.

Now the earth is burning.
The rivers are rising.
And our people are suffering.

If we are to survive,
We must remember who we are.

If we are to survive,
We must protect each other.

And if we are to survive—
We must fight like hell.

Not just for ourselves.

But for every child who deserves a school with clean air.
For every elder who remembers what it was like before the chemicals.
For every farmworker who feeds this country and still gets told their life is worth less.

This is not the end of the speech. This is the beginning of the movement.

¡Viva la tierra! ¡Viva el pueblo! ¡Y que viva la justicia!

¡Gracias!