Running. Running. Running. To Where?

I've been wearing combat boots every day now for a while now. I've been holding a weight inside that I haven't written directly about. I know this weight isn't mine alone to hold. I know that most people are holding this weight right now. WWIII. Bombs. Running. Hiding. Living. Dying. Survival. Running. Running. Running. To where? I don't know.

I've been wearing my combat boots, and I've been watching them get worn down by my foot. There is a bubble at the front, naturally occurred, like a tire that has a bubble and needs to be replaced because it could blow at any moment. Yet this bubble in my boot holds up, and I'm left wondering, for how long. So I changed out of my combat boots today and put on my sneakers.

I looked down at my sneakers and thought, for how long could these hold up? Hold up before the soles come apart, flapping. Hold up before holes start blistering my feet. Hold up before they are no longer held up, and I'm walking barefoot on the ground.

Shoes. We sell a lot of shoes at Academy St. Thrift. But I'm no longer thinking about looking "cute" in my shoes. I'm thinking about what will last for the long term, in the event that I don't have the privilege anymore to even change out of one pair into another.

None of this is about taking a side. This is a moment, an opportunity, to see the humanity in people. PEOPLE. I see women and children being murdered. Men stripped of their humanity, reduced to something to be contained, caged, erased. It doesn't matter to "them." Dissent is terrorism. Resistance is criminalized.

But the people of the world do not represent the hegemony they live under. The people of Gaza are not Hamas. The people of Venezuela are not Maduro. The people of Cuba are not the Party. The people of Iran are not the Islamic Republic. The people of Ecuador are not the cartels or the government. The people of Tel Aviv are not the Israeli state. The people of America are not representatives of this administration. Let that sink in.

We are just people. Trying to live. Trying to eat. Trying to keep our families safe.

On the morning of Saturday, February 28, 2026, while we at Academy St. Thrift were having our first ever Fill-A-Bag event, the first day of the school week in Iran, girls between the ages of 7 and 12 arrived at the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, in southern Iran (Al Jazeera, 2026). They sat down for their morning session. They had color pencils in their bags. Math books with their names written inside. A missile struck their school while they were sitting in their seats. Iranian authorities confirmed 165 children and staff were killed (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR], 2026).

I think about my own child. If I were to find out my child's school was bombed. I think my heart would just stop beating in that instant. I hope, it would stop beating in that moment and after.

According to Iranian state media and the mayor of Minab, as reported by CBC News, the school was struck more than once, though this specific detail has not been independently verified beyond those sources (CBC News, 2026). One parent, as reported by Democracy Now, received a call that his daughter had survived an initial strike, but could not reach the school before it was hit again, and she was killed (Democracy Now, 2026). As of this writing, neither the United States nor Israel has taken formal responsibility.

I see people in Gaza, documented, photographed, mourned, and still dying. I see Yemen, under sustained aerial bombardment for over a decade, a war the world normalized (Yemen Data Project, n.d.). I see Lebanon, bombed again. I see Tehran, sirens, terror, a city full of people who did not vote for any of this. Tehran is literally on fire right now with black rain falling on 10 million people (TIME, 2026). I see Tel Aviv, civilians who also know the sound of something falling from the sky. I see Ecuador, currently being invaded. I see Cuba, running on empty, no fuel, no relief, no end in sight. I see Venezuela, a people left without a plan.

My heart is heavy.

I think about shoes because shoes are the most human object we own. They carry us. They wear down in the exact shape of our specific body, our specific gait, our specific life. And right now, people across this world are running in theirs, or they have been forced to leave them behind entirely. Shoes left in rubble. A little girl's shoes, still at her desk.

As a thrift store owner, I can't help but see the beauty in honoring our secondhand garments, in thinking about shoes. We are honored by the garments that have lived many lives. The secondhand market is global, and our shop especially understands the cyclical nature of the global clothing market and how truly interconnected we are. And that is a good thing. It is wonderful to have access to a multitude of cultures and ways of being and knowing. It is a blessing to get to know another, to have shared something with another, because those are ripple effects. We are all living a human experience. We experience similar things with different context, different people, but we love no differently, we bleed no differently, we grieve for our families no differently. And that is what unites us as a people.

I changed into my sneakers today because I could. A privilege I did not take lightly.

References:

Al Jazeera Digital Investigations Unit. (2026, March 3). Questions over Minab girls' school strike as Israel, US deny involvement. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/questions-over-minab-girls-school-strike-as-israel-us-deny-involvement

CBC News Visual Investigations. (2026, March). Who bombed a girls' school in Iran? A visual investigation. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-school-bombing-investigation-9.7114994

CBC News Visual Investigations. (2026, March). Who bombed a girls' school in Iran? A visual investigation. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-school-bombing-investigation-9.7114994

Democracy Now. (2026, March 4). Who bombed girls' school in Iran? Reporter Nilo Tabrizy on what we know. Democracy Now. https://www.democracynow.org/2026/3/4/nilo_tabrizy

CBC News Visual Investigations. (2026, March). Who bombed a girls' school in Iran? A visual investigation. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/iran-school-bombing-investigation-9.7114994

Time. (2026, March 8). Tehran shrouded in toxic smoke after Israel strikes fuel depots. TIME. https://time.com/7383099/iran-news-oil-strikes-tehran/

UN News. (2026, March). Deadly bombing of Iran primary school "a grave violation of humanitarian law": UNESCO. UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/03/1167063

UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2026, March). UN experts strongly condemn deadly missile strike on girls' school in Iran, call for independent investigation. OHCHR. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/03/un-experts-strongly-condemn-deadly-missile-strike-girls-school-iran-call

Yemen Data Project. (n.d.). Saudi-led air war data. https://yemendataproject.org/