This Is What Hope Looks Like

The sun is just coming up over Williams Park. I’m standing at my window, coffee in hand, watching the quiet geometry of the streets below. In a little while, I’ll take Wolfie—my dog—on his regular morning loop around the post office and along the edge of the park. He’ll sniff the same trees.

I won’t be waving to early risers. I’ll be nodding quietly to the people who were here all night—the ones sleeping on benches, in doorways, tucked beneath the post office arches. The ones already living on the edges of this city, seen and unseen.

But when I return later with my partner, it won’t be the same.

By then, Williams Park will be surrounded—encircled not by fences or silence, but by people. People who are showing up not just in body, but in belief.
We will be two of them.

Each intersection around the park is accounted for. Every crossed circle in the image above marks a corner where more than a hundred people have signed up to stand. This isn’t symbolic coverage—it’s intentional encirclement. A full perimeter of presence.

In between, we’ll gather with friends and neighbors to make our signs—passing around markers and tape, reminding each other to reapply sunscreen and drink water. It’s going to be 87 degrees today—protest in Florida comes with sweat and sunblock. We prepare anyway.

Later, we’ll walk together to the closest corner of the park. Just a half-block—but today, it feels like crossing a threshold. Like stepping into something shared.

I live in Snell Arcade, but today, it’s simply the place I step out from. Built nearly a century ago, the building was designed as a grand, arched corridor—an “arcade” in the original sense: not a destination, but a passage. But this story isn’t about architecture. Today, it feels less like a landmark and more like a witness.

We’ll pass the Open-Air Post Office next. Also on the National Register of Historic Places, it was designed to be accessible to everyone, any time. Even now, it feels like a building that trusts people. As if someone once believed connection should never need a key.

And then, the park.

Williams Park has always been where the city meets itself. Donated to the public in 1888, cleared and shaped by the women of the Town Improvement Association, it has seen concerts, protests, silences, and memory. We’ll head to the closest corner, where the World War I memorial stands. There’s no Roman numeral. Just the words:
“Our heroes of the World war 1917–1918.”
Because back then, they believed it might be the last.

But here we are—again, standing up to another kind of war. Not of weapons, but of erasure. Not fought overseas, but in public services quietly shut down, in protections rolled back, in the shrinking of lives under the guise of “efficiency.”

Today’s protest is part of the Hands Off! movement. A response to mass layoffs, agency closures, deportations, slashed health programs, and the naming of Elon Musk as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Across the country, people are gathering to say no.
No to erasure.
No to silence.
No to pretending this doesn’t matter.

We were always going to stand up. The question was never if. The question was which protest, where to stand, how to show up in a moment when everything feels urgent.

Still, I hesitated. I told myself it was the heat, the logistics, the headlines. But under that was something softer and scarier: fear. Not of what might happen, but of what might not. Of showing up and not being enough. Of hoping, and feeling how heavy hope can be when no one answers back.

And yet, here we are.

Together, we’ll cross that threshold and take our places—at intersections, under trees, near statues and signs and strangers. From across the city, people will come. St. Petersburg may be just one dot on a crowded map, but today, it pulses with intention. As of the last census, our city numbered 263,553 souls. Fifth-largest in Florida. Eighty-sixth in the nation. Just one place. But not invisible.

The sidewalk beneath us has held a century of footsteps.
Today, it will hold ours.

This is what hope looks like:
Coffee cooling on a windowsill.
A leash ready by the door.
A park already beginning to change shape.
A short walk toward a shared refusal.
A crowd that knows the heat is real, but the stakes are hotter.

Hope looks like standing here.
Together.
Still choosing each other.

And later, when we return to this window, the park won’t look the same.
We won’t either.
Some will return home. Others never left.


🌀 This piece is part of a connected trio on hope, presence, and quiet resistance. You can read the full arc here:

This Is What Hope Looks Like / Not in Rage, But in Resonance / Before the Roar

p.s. If this moved you, consider sharing it—or forwarding it to someone who might need it. I’m on a quiet mission to reach 1,000 subscribers by fall. Every voice helps.