A single yellow faded and warped hope poster sitting discarded on the dingy floor of a vacant store. The window I viewed it through covered in the dried dirty tears of the previous day’s heavy rain.

These are the images I live to find. The seemingly random yet highly prescient. They are around when you look. The images that make it all flood back yet forward at the same time. The hopeful days. The dark ones. There sure have been a lot of the later. Some, like this one, are also an invitation. The hope poster may lie downtrodden but take note: it’s still there.

The protests on college campuses today give me hope through that dried muck. There are the people using the protests as opportunities to spout antisemitism and commit violent acts. They should be condemned. But I believe the majority in these protests are true in their intent: what is happening to Palestinians, especially in Gaza, is deeply wrong. Taking a historical big-picture gaze back on student protests over the last century, I am reminded that the students and the faculty that support them have rarely been wrong. They wield an idealism that acts as a necessary counterbalance to the injustice and hypocrisy that I feel others have grown to accept and rationalize away.

Perhaps we should take a moment to listen.