She was Good
Renee Good is simply the latest — and whitest — case of rampant state violence under the guise of immigration enforcement.
In Chicago, we are remembering Renee Good as a neighbor and an ally, because every day for months, our streets have been invaded by masked, nameless thugs who have been disappearing people based on the color their skin and the language they speak — and then tear-gassing those of us who are standing up to say that’s wrong.
You are reading Part One of an eye-witness account of what has been going on in my city… and what Minneapolis is now facing. Part Two will focus on what to do next. Recommended listening: “Uprising” by Muse.
Woke up one morning, and there were soldiers
The chilling pree-pree-pree of a lone neighbor’s whistle startled me early on a Monday morning last fall, just as I was packing lunch for my kids. I rushed out of my house and into the street.
It seemed like the only sound as ICE agents forced a painter into an unmarked sedan, before speeding away from parents and children walking to school. A parent of color wondered aloud: “Do I need to start carrying my passport with me everywhere?”
It wasn’t an unreasonable question, based on the “papers, please” videos we are now seeing all across the country, in which U.S. citizens are being profiled by ICE and scanned with a facial recognition app.
After an abduction, the small details stick with me:
The oil print of the man’s face on the window of his truck, where the agents shoved him up against it
His left-behind lunch of scrambled eggs with jalapeños, a banana, and two cans of Squirt that he no doubt hoped to enjoy on his break
After another neighbor found the man’s address, she and I drove an hour and a half to find his family and let them know what had happened to him.
Just a few days later, an entire brigade of neighbors blew their whistles when ICE took another man while he was repairing the sidewalk in front of the library, across the street from our school. Again, it was the details:
A boot print in wet concrete, where an agent walked through his work to get him
How quickly and quietly the man they didn’t take got back to work, trying to repair the hole before the cement dried
The scar I could still see in the concrete when I went to my sewing class later that week
Most of us know this is wrong. Some of us, like Renee Good, make noise in the streets with whistles and car horns when we see the secret police.
Comply or die
The government is desperate for us to deny our own lying eyes. If somehow you haven’t seen a full, expert analysis of the video, you should watch it. It offers a clear view of what happened to Renee Good: a view that, perversely, the authorities and their lackeys have twisted to justify her execution on the street in broad daylight.
Here’s what I see: I see Renee Good wave a truck of ICE agents to drive around her car. I see two of those agents get out and try to rip open her door. I see another agent sneak around her blindside and pin her in, even as she backs away. I see her tell the agent who shoots her, “I’m not mad at you.” I see a panicked mother with stuffed animals spilling out of her glovebox turn her wheel all the way to the right as she tries to drive around the agent blocking her path — so she can exit a tense situation that she was brave enough to intervene in.
The fascists, however, have seen all they need to see: the slimmest excuse to put a bullet through her windshield and two more through her open window. The shooter calmly walks away unharmed, pulls his mask up higher, gets in a car, and flees the scene within minutes.
No immediate aid is rendered to Renee Good. An agent tells a doctor trying to check her pulse: “I don’t care.” When the ambulance finally arrives, it’s not allowed stretcher access, so EMS carries her dead body away like a sack of potatoes.
Before the blood is dry on the snow, the spin begins. The President lies that the officer had been “run over” and that it’s “hard to believe he is alive.” He brands this mother “domestic terrorist” and the bystanders as “professional agitators.”
As if it’s inconceivable to him that we average citizens would stand up for our neighbors for free.
And for the “shouldn’t be blocking the street” crowd trying to justify rampant state violence — and who I know heavily overlaps with the Second Amendment crowd — I am wondering: What is the right and polite way to intervene in tyranny?
Mask off
The secret police may wear masks, but the government has dropped its own. They are saying outright that Jonathan Ross followed his training — which is another way to say that his training is to escalate and kill if the opportunity presents itself. (In fact, an independent report found that CBP has a habit of doing just that after examining 67 use-of-force incidents from 2010 to 2012 that resulted in 19 deaths.)
Renee Good is simply the latest — and whitest — case. Before her, they killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez and lied about why. They shot Marimar Martinez and lied about why, before dropping the charges against her. They’ve shot others in LA, D.C., and elsewhere. And 32 people have died in their custody in 2025, the deadliest year in ICE’s history.
The lies are easily disproven. But as Brandolini’s Law posits, "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it." Especially when the government bullshits as brazenly as Scar blaming Mufasa for his own death:
Good’s murder overwhelms our senses because this country treats violence against non-white people as perfectly ordinary and violence against white people as a shock to the system.
Historians draw similarities between this administration and 1930s Germany. But the U.S. is blazing new trails when it comes to their nationalist, white-supremacist rhetoric:
“We just executed one of you!” screams a white supremacist on a megaphone, as if representing the phalanx of ICE agents he’s standing in front of.
In a direct answer to whether “the use of force was justified,” the President says Good was being disrespectful. And the Vice President fantasizes about agents going door-to-door asking for papers, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
It is hitting me like a hollow-point that this is the reason they’ve told us we can’t do anything about school shootings: because “someday, we may need to resist a tyrannical government.”
Back in Chicago, I feel it
Being undocumented is a civil offense, not a criminal one. Yet armed, masked, untrained paramilitaries roam Chicago’s streets, pointing assault weapons at people and racially profiling our neighbors without warrants or probable cause. They tear-gas children in Halloween parades. They shoot and beat anyone else who doesn’t like these tactics — and then they lie about it. At the end of it all, they disappear the detained into squalid and dangerous conditions with no due process and almost no way to find them.
Until recently, they refused to allow journalists or elected officials into these processing-facilities-turned-prisons, despite their right to oversight. So all we had to rely on was the reports of those who got out. They told us that there were no beds, no hot meals, not enough water, and insufficient access to hygiene supplies. They are doing this to veterans, citizens, and non-citizens alike. They are doing this to legal residents who are trying to “do things the right way.”
After ICE’s highest profile raid in Chicago, where they rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters in the dead of night and zip-tied children on the street, no charges were filed. Nearly all (97%) of the people detained during Midway Blitz had no criminal record. So much for “the worst of the worst,” eh?
Even if you’re a person who thinks that some forceful deportations are justified (and I know there are some reading this who do), you cannot deny that this administration has made terror and violence its daily policy instead of its last resort. This should outrage any American with a conscience.
So: Where do we stand today?
Paramilitaries are in our streets, asking for our papers
Kristi Noem says U.S. citizens should be prepared to prove it
They claim they operate with “federal immunity” and that no local or state checks apply to them
International law no longer applies to the President’s power — only “my own morality”
We’ve started another indefinite occupation in South America
We’re talking openly about seizing land from our allies
The richest 10% of Americans added more than $5 trillion to their wealth in 2025
And the EPA has stopped calculating lives saved, only the cost to business when it comes to pollution rules
If that last one isn’t on the nose, I don’t know what it is.
My politics are vertical, not horizontal: no longer right vs. left, but the powerless vs. the powerful. I fundamentally believe that there are more of us with a conscience than there are of them — and for that reason, we will win. But to get there, democracy needs your courage.
I am begging you: Get organized locally. Now.
“Creyeron que te enterraban. Y lo que hacían era enterrar una semilla. (They thought they buried you. What they did was bury a seed.)” —Ernesto Cardenal, Epitafio
on hope
In the next issue, I’ll share a three-step guide for what you can do right now to start building power as a citizen of a crumbling empire. For now, a few words on why “hope is the right response to the human condition.”
Seth Putnam is an editor and writer in Chicago. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in a 1920s home that is the epitome of a work in progress.
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” —Mary Oliver
Thank you for writing this. 🩷