Thursday, March 5, 2026

Guest Opinion | Nahshon Dion: Keep Hope Alive — Especially Now

In 1995, when Jesse Jackson visited John Muir High School, I was 17.

Several months earlier, my mom and I had relocated from our apartment in Pasadena and from Rodney Glen King’s previous apartment on Sunset Avenue, behind King’s mom, to my grandparents’ home on Neldome Street in Altadena. The move placed me in new hallways with new faces at Muir. I was proud to be a Stang and follow in the footsteps of several family members. I worked in the student canteen during lunch, eager to be independent, stepping into young adulthood as America fractured.

The shadow of the beating of Rodney King still lingered over Los Angeles. The grainy video of King being struck repeatedly by LAPD officers had shaken the nation; just as King felt the blows, so did our community. Jackson called it “a brutal, savage beating that shocks the conscience of the nation.” Even as a teenager, I understood something painful, undeniably wrong, and wicked had been exposed.

When three of the officers were acquitted in 1992, the city erupted. Jackson called the verdict “a miscarriage of justice,” warning when the system fails to provide justice, it fuels frustration and anger. We felt that frustration. We lived inside its consequences.

But he also offered direction. “We must not surrender to violence,” he said. “Our pain is real, but we must channel it into constructive change.” That balance — naming injustice while insisting on discipline — mattered. “No justice, no peace” was not merely a chant; it was a demand for accountability and dignity.

On September 19, 1995, Jesse Jackson visited Muir and delivered a speech to the student body that, as some described, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Scores of students and faculty sat around the M-Quad hearing Jackson  offer words of encouragement and address affirmative action. He noted that more money is spent on jails than on schools. Jackson encouraged rising above the negative aspects of the world and continuing our education while exercising our civil rights. He felt that, with the right motivation, all students can reach their potential and urged those who’d be 18 by November to register to vote.

I was 17 years old, sitting in that quad, listening to a national civil rights leader tell us our education, our voice, and our vote mattered.

As Jackson stood before us, the city was healing. Federal civil rights charges led to convictions for two officers. Civil settlements were awarded. Policies were debated. Beneath the headlines was a deeper question: who are we to one another?

That question remains.

We are in another heavy moment. Wildfires have displaced families. Economic instability strains households. Political rhetoric divides neighbors, and ICE is tearing families apart. Grief — whether from violence, disaster, or personal loss — rests quietly on many shoulders. It is easy in such times to harden ourselves.

Yet Jackson’s message still resonates: keep hope alive.

Hope is not naïve optimism. It is discipline. It is choosing compassion when bitterness feels easier. It is being patient with others when we do not know the burdens they carry. It is encouraging and comforting those who are suffering rather than competing over whose pain matters most.

Everyone’s humanity is bound up in the next person’s humanity — regardless of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, or sexuality. When one life is diminished, all of us are diminished. When one life is protected, something in all of us is strengthened.

What I remember most are Jackson’s words:  “I may be on food stamps, but I am somebody,” and mostly, ‘keep hope alive.”

Rest in peace, Rev. Jesse Jackson.