Justice & Law Quote by Lech Walesa

Defiance is doing a lot of work here, but it is defiance with a strategy: Walesa’s triple repetition of "We shall not..". turns a protest slogan into a moral boundary. It’s not a revolutionary vow to seize power; it’s a refusal to be pushed out of legitimate civic space. That matters in the Poland of Solidarity and martial law, where the state tried to recast labor organizing as criminality and dissent as "extremism". The line isn’t just aimed at police batons and prison cells. It’s aimed at the propaganda machine that insists coercion is order.

The key move is how he frames the stakes. "Union freedoms" is deliberately specific and stubbornly ordinary. He roots political conflict in the workplace and in rights that feel tangible: association, bargaining, the basic right to say no. That specificity undercuts the regime’s favorite story about dissidents being abstract ideologues or foreign agents. Walesa is saying: you can call it politics if you want; we’re calling it life.

Then comes the tightest moral reversal: "sending people to prison for their convictions". Convictions can mean beliefs, but also the legal act of convicting. Walesa collapses the two, exposing how law becomes a costume for repression. The subtext is a dare to the authorities: if you imprison us, you admit you fear persuasion. If you meet ideas with cells, you confess you’ve run out of arguments.