The Shoe in Mid-Air: On Protest and Power

In the wake of a shocking display just days ago of what, at least in this observer’s opinion, can only be deemed an act of domestic terror, in which Minnesota Senate Minority Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were murdered in their home. In a related act, the same perpetrator attempted to murder yet another Democratic Senator, John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman who are presently recovering from critical injuries at this time. My American brain cannot comprehend this…but alas, it must. 

I had already been worrying about the most vocal, or at least the most visible of the progressives in the House of Representatives, AOC and Jasmine Crockett. I worry for their safety and I worried before this tragedy happened and postulated that we should fund private security for them somehow.  Their voices are not the only ones, don’t get me wrong. It’s just, I knew that side is radicalized as much as the Taliban and this is the evidence that violence is the plan. 

Now my stomach hurts and I am reminded again of that moment in 2008–that glorious moment when A  journalist stood up in a press conference and hurled his shoes at George W. Bush. Damn if Bush didn’t duck both. But that moment? That was protest, unfiltered.

In Arab culture, throwing a shoe is the ultimate sign of disrespect. And that man wasn’t just speaking for himself. He was channeling the outrage of people displaced, maimed, and lied to.

Bush dodged with a smirk. Like it was a game. But it wasn’t a game for the people who lost homes, limbs, families. Futures.

The image that accompanies this dispatch was created with the assistance of G, My AI Assistant.  I look at the image from this conversation—the one we made—and I realize:

It’s not about the shoe though is it?

It’s about someone breaking the script.

Someone refusing to clap when told to.

Someone who won’t let the lie go unchallenged.

Ask yourself, if you were in the same position would you do it too?  Tell the truth, shame the devil – If you somehow found yourself in the room with a man who’s hurt people and is slated to hurt an unthinkable amount more, you know in your bones—you’d throw your shoe. You’d do it without thinking, without flinching, without worrying about the consequences. Not because it would change anything. But because not doing it would mean pretending it’s okay, not doing it would mean compliance.

Do you know the feeling that is gnawing at your belly?  That feeling is the physical embodiment of moral revulsion. It’s a refusal to normalize harm. A shoe becomes a symbol: not of violence, but of the last thing you still control in a system that robs you of power, dignity, and voice.

And yes, I worry for people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (lovingly known by her initials AOC) and Jasmine Crockett. I worry that telling the truth still puts a target on your back, while power wears a bulletproof vest made of silence. If we are honest, what this system protects is not the brave. It’s the profitable.

But even in the void, that shoe still flies. That scream still echoes. I saw it in the absolutely massive NO KINGS protests that overshadowed a wannabe dictator’s birthday party and that gave me a glimmer of hope that we are not alone.  And we can still form a shield wall if necessary.  

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