The outside world looks at us Iranians and assumes every single one of us is only fighting because we have absolutely nothing left to lose. Let me shatter that illusion right now. I have a lot to lose. I am 28 years old. I have people I love fiercely and a future I want to build. Because I work as a remote freelancer for companies in Europe and Canada, I am shielded from the absolute worst of the economic starvation suffocating this country. I do not face the same crushing financial reality as most of my people. But that is exactly why every single cell in my body is screaming to fight. I look around and see the agonizing pain of my compatriots. I see my friends, my family, and the fathers on the street who cannot even afford a simple bag of groceries. Just look at what happened in Abdanan, one of our most impoverished and deprived cities. The people there, suffocating under extreme poverty, stormed a store that supplies provisions to the regime's oppressive thugs. They tore the bags open and threw the rice into the air. Despite their own crushing hunger, they did not take a single grain for themselves. They refused to steal, and they refused to eat the food of their executioners. That is the absolute, untouchable nobility of a nation that has been entirely stripped to the bone. And if that economic slaughter was not enough to begin with, I have had to watch this cannibalistic occupation murder our people simply because we dared to demand a free, prosperous life in our own homeland. I watched them take Nika Shahkarami, a brave, brilliant 16 year old kid full of hope and talent, and shatter her skull. She is just one of thousands. I refuse to look away. I fight because silence in the face of absolute oppression makes you an oppressor yourself. I fight because staying quiet is the exact fuel that creates their violence. We cannot afford neutrality. We demand absolute justice. Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.