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Yesterday gave me pause. I was running a San Francisco South Asian Radical History Walking Tour yesterday, with a group of thirty-ish Brown/Muslim/SSWANA college students. We read from an 1850s SF newspaper editorial that frames South Asians and Muslims as part of the diversity of the city…

We're standing in front of the location of one of those antiracist meetings. Many of the students were 18, 19, years old and had never heard someone speak clearly about that upsurge of hate before they were born. And then, as I’m speaking, this dude comes up to us…

and starts heckling us. He tells us to go home, that we don’t belong there, that this is his city. I’m literally telling a group of Brown kids about the fear of being targeted, and the multiracial coalitions we put together — and it’s literally happening right there, in front of our faces.

I’m wearing a kurta, someone's in a sari, a student's wearing a hijab. I keep going, but the dude won’t shut up. He gets louder. People try to distract and de-escalate. These POC college students—many from the Bay, some newcomers—are just watching silently, as they’re being told they don’t belong.