This week’s podcast episode is full of heartbreak and fury. It’s about Venezuela, Greenland, Colombia, Cuba, and Canada. It includes The Monroe Doctrine, The Roosevelt Corollary, the Authorized Use of Military Force, a screeching Stephen Miller, and an administration with no qualms about doing/taking/killing what it wants — ethics, decency, truth, and the Constitution be damned. It’s about January 6th, five years ago, and how we should have stopped this, then.
Most of all, though, it’s about Renee Nicole Good, which means it’s about all of us.
I feel sick and have for days. Pretty sure I’m afflicted with toxic shock syndrome, but not the kind we’ve been warned about. I sent my essay out into the ether last week as I do every week. There is one platform where I have a business page with a lot of people (fb) that used to be a place where community happened, where people could have conversations and even disagree without losing their minds, but that is no longer the case. I don’t spend a lot of time there anymore, I simply have the page connected to my other meta account (insta), so when I post on one, it shows up on the other.
I started getting alerts from fb quickly. Some of the comments in the thread underneath were so lacking in empathy they made me feel sick in my soul, as if I was talking to people who had been infected by a virus that caused contempt to run through their veins.
We’ve reached a point in our country where the people who did not vote for this president cannot have meaningful conversations with people who are in support of the current administration — and in my case, it is not for lack of trying. I have tried. I tried again this week. I keep trying because I don’t know how we fix things if we can’t talk to each other, but the vitriol and smug disdain coming from the 30% of the country who voted for this and are still in support of it — toward people like me who are devastated by what is happening, is breathtaking and horrifying.
Truly, y’all are not okay. One man called my business number to say I should not block people. I blocked people who were screaming expletives at me, or hurling insults. Imagine being so entitled you call a woman’s business line because you’re butt-hurt she won’t allow people to be abusive to her on her own damn page. Get a grip, sir.
It is legal and a First Amendment right to film ICE raids occurring in public places, and if you don’t understand why concerned citizens are doing that, then you have not been paying attention to what is happening at many of these ICE raids, or you do not care. The second option would be worse.
As a small example, Kristi Noem described what happened to Renee Good two hours after she was murdered — like this: She said ICE agents were “snowed in” and “surrounded by angry rioters” and Renee was “ramming her vehicle into them” and the ICE agent was in fear for his life and the lives of the other agents, so he shot her.
Then you look at the footage of all the people who were there filming, and thank god they were, because that is not. what. happened. That’s why people go and film, so there’s a record. They are not there to impede, they are there to bear witness and to make sure there’s accurate documentation of what occurs. In too many instances, ICE agents are using excessive force, they don’t identify themselves, and they refuse to say where they’re taking people.
Sometimes it’s the people observing who de-escalate a situation, by making sure the ICE agents know they’re being filmed. People are grabbed so quickly they don’t have a chance to call anyone, so they might yell out the name and number of their mom, their wife, their attorney.
There were no “angry rioters” on the block where Renee and Becca Good were parked, a few blocks from their house — there were neighbors, filming and observing. Why? Because immigrants in our country are also entitled to due process under the law and some people care about that. There are a lot of hard-working, tax-paying immigrants in our community, mothers and fathers, grandmas and grandpas, people who have been here for decades, many of whom have been doing it “the right way.” Sometimes they get grabbed directly from their legal immigration appointments.
No one is being paid to care about their neighbors or their communities. People are not being “trained to weaponize their vehicles.” Left-leaning people do not want hardened criminals walking around their neighborhoods, that’s a lie. It is really something being yelled at about law and order from people supporting an administration that violates the Constitution every day. The gaslighting and hypocrisy are exhausting.
It was made very clear to me that there were people in the comments on fb who would not shed a tear or have a kind thought for my children if I was filming an ICE raid to try to help my neighbors, and an agent decided to shoot me in the face three times. They would shrug and say, she got what she deserved. Why wasn’t she home, minding her own business? Why didn’t she think about her children? The thing is, when I worry about my neighbors, that’s part of thinking about my children, and what kind of world they’re going to inherit.
There are ICE agents going door-to-door in Minneapolis today. There are videos of ICE agents tackling two seventeen-year-old kids who work at a Target in Minneapolis, inside the vestibule of the store, violently. Turns out they were both U.S. citizens, which they said. One had his hand broken by those agents. One called out his mother’s phone number. If there’s any confusion about why people film, I sure hope this clears it up.
A woman was murdered on Wednesday, by a man who got angry. He called her a “fucking bitch” seconds after he ended her life. He was never off his feet. He did not have to stand where he did, trying to block her so his buddy could yank her door open. One agent told her to leave, one agent screamed at her to get the fuck out of her car. Her wife told her to drive, baby, drive. I would have fled, too. You know why? I’ve had enough experiences in my life with violent men to know when I’m unsafe. She backed up. She turned her wheels all the way to the right. He took her life because he was pissed. Men like that do not like non-compliant females.
Renee Nicole Good was a mother of three, a wife, a poet, a daughter, and a very good neighbor by all accounts. She should still be here.
