Today gave me a flicker of hope.

The 'Hands off' protests against Trump & Musk, April 5, 2025.

Today gave me a flicker of hope.

In the past three years, I’ve attended over 50 protests. But today felt different. For the first time, I witnessed crowds flooding the streets of Chicago to protest the violation of their constitutional rights, this time at the hands of the Trump administration. There was a kind of urgency, a shared pulse of resistance I hadn’t seen in a long while. You could feel the anger yet the friendliness of having a common enemy among the crowd, which built comradery.

“Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.” - The Prince, Chapter XVII, by Niccolò Machiavelli:

When Trump puts tariffs on stuff from China and other countries, he isn’t just making a political move. He’s messing with people’s money. Farmers, factory workers, and small businesses feel it. Prices go up, markets tighten, and people start hurting. Machiavelli says, “Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony,” which means people get over death quicker than losing their money. And it makes sense. You take someone’s livelihood, it hits way deeper. Trump’s whole pitch is about protecting America by “Making America Great Again”, but for a lot of us, it feels like they’re getting screwed by their own government. It’s classic Machiavelli. Hurt someone’s wallet, and they remember it way longer than almost anything else.

It reminded me of the mass mobilizations during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement when people across the country rose after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Not since those days have I seen Chicago show up in such overwhelming numbers, defiant, unified, and unapologetically loud.

Is this a moment rooted in hope and momentum or just another fleeting spark lost to history?

All photographs are copyrighted by ©Adriano Kalin.