Editor’s note: This is an edited version of the speech he delivered at the May 1 workers rally in lower Manhattan.
I am an immigrant. I am a professor at CUNY. And I am a union member — proud to stand with thousands of higher education workers who refuse to be silent.
My union, the PSC, represents 30,000 faculty and staff across CUNY — one of the most diverse public university systems in the world. We educate the working class. We are the working class.
Ege Ozen speaks at the May Day rally in Washington Square Park (Credit: Paul Frangipane).
Right now, higher education is under attack, nationally, deliberately, systematically. Federal Research Funding is being gutted. Adjunct faculty are facing economic hardship and job insecurity. Academic freedom is on the chopping block. What is happening to our universities is not an accident. It is a political project.
An oligarchy has taken over this society. Billionaires sit in government offices.
Our neighbors, people who work, who teach, who raise children, who built this city, are being kidnapped off the streets by ICE. Detained without due process. Disappeared.
This is not enforcement. It is terror. This is what oligarchy looks like in practice.
But we have an answer. And that answer has one name: Solidarity.
Not solidarity as a catchphrase — solidarity as a practice. Solidarity means understanding that an attack on immigrant workers is an attack on all workers. That is when one part of our class is made vulnerable; all of us are weakened. We will not accept a system that puts us against each other while billionaires consolidate their power.
Class solidarity means showing up, literally. The Immigrant Solidarity Working Group has been at the immigration court every single Friday since May 2025. We sit beside working-class immigrant families. We bear witness. We say: you are not alone, and we are here to support you. Two hundred forty seven members and allies have participated, and we have made 1020 discrete visits to the courts. And now we are building committees on our campuses and making connections to the immigrant communities around us.
And on May Day, workers in every country, speaking every language, are in the streets right now. We are not alone either.
So what do we do with this moment, with this solidarity?
We unite with other unions and all working-class people because workers’ power is only real when it is collective. We defend public higher education as a common good, not a commodity. We deliver one clear message, loud enough that no billionaire can ignore it: workers over billionaires.
We will not be silent. The goal is to build our power. The goal is a labor movement strong enough to win better lives for all.
PSC will keep showing up: in the courts, in the streets, in the classrooms, and right here.
Ege Ozen is an associate professor of political science at College of Staten Island.
Published: May 4, 2026 | Last Modified: May 5, 2026
