If you scroll down your phone’s photo album to 2017 what do you find? At first mine appears to contain the typical moments of my new college life, moving into the dorms, hanging out at USF, enjoying the dining hall, studying with friends, screenshots of notes from missed lectures…etc

However when digging just a bit deeper you’ll see the warnings we gave.

You’ll see the SJP event flyers. You’ll see the photos from protests coordinated between midterms. You’ll see the countless divestment resolution drafts that failed to get passed. You’ll see us standing in front of microphones, giving speeches so clear—sharing stories of those we held so dear. Hoping we could prevent what we knew to be coming near.

You’ll see everything we tried to teach them — a curriculum that never made it into the syllabus. A dedicated group of student organizers doing all that we could to get the world’s attention — our only request was for the possibility of prevention. Consistently dismissed with vile threats of suspension, for simply hoping our families’ names might possibly be worth mention.

This Sunday, evening — join me years later, near that very same campus to screen my film, “Gaza Is Our Home.” to witness the atrocity that we know could’ve so easily been prevented.