Our Stop the Wars rally found its way into Princeton University’s Reunions celebration, where we spent several hours making our anti-war case to the approbation and disapprobation of the several thousand revelers marching in Princeton’s annual P-rade. Among those apparently expressing approbation was Princeton alumna Sonia Sotomayor, as revealed in this photo, in which she smiled directly at activist leader Sireen Sawalha, who was standing right next to me.

About a second after flashing this smile, Sotomayor put her hand on her heart in a gesture of affection and solidarity for us. I missed that particular shot, but it was captured by the photographer for Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW). For copyright reasons, I can’t reproduce the PAW photo here, but the preceding link takes you to it. You can see Sotomayor lifting her left arm to grab the umbrella captured in my shot, so she can make the gesture with her right hand about a second later captured in PAW‘s.

Naturally, PAW did its level best to ignore us throughout. The following day, I sat in on a Reunions Breakfast for Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS) at the Nassau Inn at which the big-wigs at PFS explained that thankfully, PAW had recently brought in a new administration, that PFS was lobbying hard for the right kind of press coverage from them, and that they, PFS, were making headway on that score. The folks at PFS made amply clear–for about 90 solid minutes–that coverage favorable to pro-Palestine activists wasn’t coverage of the kind they were seeking. I guess they weren’t kidding.

Not that it mattered. We got Sonia Sotomayor’s attention! What inferences can we draw from the fact that a Supreme Court justice looked straight at a loud and conspicuous group of pro-Palestine protesters–festooned in keffiyehs and Palestinian flags–smiled, and put her hand on her heart for us?

I leave that to you to decide. For my part, I’ll just borrow a line from my friend Bill Ayers (who borrowed it himself), and say: you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.