We stepped out of the car and into chaos. The second our red Make America Mineral Independent Again hats caught the sunlight, it felt like we’d wandered into a lion’s den in lipstick and denim. The looks started before the wheels of our wagon even hit the pavement. Profanity, dirty looks, phones out filming. Every instinct said get back in the car, but we didn’t. We smiled, adjusted our hats, and kept walking. Two girls wheeling a cart of hope through a minefield of opinions.
Then, like sunlight breaking through smoke… the Turning Point students appeared. They ran over with grins and open arms, helping unload boxes, cracking jokes, and offering to help set up. It felt like someone finally turned the volume down on the noise. Their kindness grounded us, reminded us why we were there. For a moment, surrounded by laughter and easy camaraderie, I thought: maybe this won’t be so bad. But kindness has a way of echoing louder on days heavy with grief.
Only later did we realize the date- October 7th. Just across the walkway stood a pro-Israel, anti-Hamas booth. Posters of hostages. Candles. Flags trembling in the wind. One woman stood out… quiet, trembling.
Suddenly, all of the laughter and conversation going on at our table vanished from all of my senses. All I could see, all I could hear, was her. I walked over. She couldn’t say much through the tears; she didn’t need to. Her grief spoke louder than words ever could. Her friend nearby shared that her son had died on October 7th. So, I wrapped my arms around her and prayed. The noise around us, the shouts, the chants, the arguments- all fell away for a moment. There was no right or left, no cause or countercause. Just two women holding each other in the middle of a battlefield of ideas, both knowing loss doesn’t choose sides.
When I walked back to our booth, the weight of that moment stayed with me throughout the day- a reminder of how fragile people are beneath all the noise. As the hours passed, conversations turned into debates. Some students were curious, asking real questions. Others came to shout, to posture, to perform. The air buzzed with tension and caffeine. Still, we stood our ground, smiling through the chaos, refusing to shout back.
Then, just as the day was winding down, it erupted. One of the women from the Israel table suddenly found herself surrounded. Voices rose. A crowd tightened. Girls and guys yelling, swearing, spitting venom. It looked like a telenovela filmed in hell – fully choreographed to the beat of self-righteousness. And through it all, a campus officer, half-asleep, doing nothing.
I stood there thinking, this is why we came. Because if screaming could change the world, it already would have. It was one of those moments where everything in you wants to scream, “This isn’t how you change minds!” Because it isn’t. You don’t win hearts by humiliating people. You don’t change minds through mob mentality. You do it through empathy, through moments like the one with that grieving mother, how grief had made her softer, not harder. Through listening, through standing tall when the world tells you to sit down. And I wondered what it would take for this generation to learn that lesson.
By the time the sun sank behind the trees, our wagon was lighter, our voices were gone, and our hearts were on fire. If I had to sum it up in one line?
“They tried to drown us out- but we spoke in a language louder than hate: grace.”
That was Day One.
The day we walked into the fire and refused to burn.
