By Sophie H. 

On the platform of a Queens Subway, a 35-year-old Asian man waits in line for the train, possibly on his way to pick up his children from school, possibly on his way to a nice family night with his family. Suddenly, he feels a pair of hands on his back and turns around in confusion.

“Go back to China – we don’t want you here,” mutters the man dressed in black, not moving his hands from their place on his back. 

Realization dawns on him, just in time for him to feel the forceful shove of the man in black – sending him flying onto the tracks below. 

As the number of Covid cases in the US rise, so does the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans, especially in the US. Whether it’s a troll on Twitter or someone taking these hate crimes offline and into the real world, Asian’s are facing a dual assault. These atrocious hate crimes against Asian Americans in the US are incredibly disgusting; thankfully, there are still people who are willing to take a stand against these injustices.  

As the train pulls into the station, on track to run over the man lying helplessly in the middle of its path, the driver, Tobin Madathil, senses something strange. People on the platform are frantically waving at him, pointing at something somewhere along the tracks. 

“What is it? What do they want me to do?” he thinks, trying to look over the control panel to see what the commotion was about. That’s when he sees the man on the track. He immediately springs into action – placing the train into emergency mode and doing his best to slow the train down.

The train stops. A mere 30 feet away from ending an innocent man’s life.

The train driver rushes off the train and jumps into the tracks, where the Asian man lay, bleeding from the head. He lifts the injured man onto his shoulders and climbs onto the platform, saving the man’s life.

Oftentimes, we see disheartening news articles about the many problems with our world – everything from “Climate Change Set to Destroy Human Civilization By 2050”, “Five Million Dead From COVID-19”, to “Chinese Woman Slapped Then Set On Fire.” 

The strategy most of us these days choose to take upon reading articles like these is to tell ourselves that these events are irrelevant to us, or resort to being entirely ignorant and pretending that these news articles are simply fake news.

Seeing these ‘heroes’ allow us a glimpse of hope – it helps us realize that there are always people fighting for the right thing.

Doing this not only makes us uneducated people that think we’re above these issues, but it also makes us bad world citizens. As global citizens, we are responsible for taking action, no matter how small of an impact we think we have.