We Shouldn't Have to Watch a Woman's Murder to Counter Government Lies

None of us should have to watch videos of our fellow citizens and neighbors being killed to get factual information about what happened. Yet the way President Donald Trump and Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, described the moment an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a 37-year-old mom and American citizen in broad daylight was so blatantly far off from what happened that I fear we will need to keep seeing for ourselves.

I never watch videos of people being killed on purpose. Yet, I clicked on a video of a woman in Minnesota in her SUV who seemed to be in a heated verbal exchange with an ICE agent. I saw her try to pull away from an agent who was reaching into her car, only to be shot at close range as she was trying to leave. It happened so quickly I hoped that she got away and the bullet did not hit her, but my hopes gave way to a nauseating pit in my stomach as her car veered off and hit a pole, the way one does when a driver falls asleep. Only, I knew she didn’t fall asleep because moments earlier, I saw an angry man in ICE uniform shoot at her. Her name was Renee Nicole Good, and she was an award-winning poet, wife, and mom of three, her youngest child only 6 years old.

Surely everyone would condemn this killing, I thought to myself. I immediately sought out comments sections on the internet and official accounts of various politicians hoping for a solidarity and decency that has eluded us since Donald Trump arrived on the political scene. I just knew that everyone—regardless of political party or support for Donald Trump—and perhaps even those in the current administration, would condemn this brazen murder by an ICE agent who was filmed losing his temper, shooting, and killing a woman as she tried to drive away. At the very least, I thought politicians who support ICE would call it a tragic accident. Admittedly, I especially thought this would be true when I learned that the victim was white, a citizen, and a mother—identities that have often provided cover from the deadliest encounters with those across law enforcement entities.

Instead, I read a statement on Instagram from The Department of Homeland Security that insinuated Renee Good was a rioter. They said that she used her Honda as a weapon and began to weave together a familiar narrative that amounts to: ICE was blameless, and the mom in her car was part of an organized movement that should be considered domestic terrorism. The comments were divided. Some people expressed their deepest sympathies and outrage that she was killed that way. But far too many others repeated the story from Homeland Security’s written statement and from Kristi Noem’s testimony. I’d seen comments like those before. “She should have complied” and “FAFO” (fuck around and find out).

We must fervently resist the attempts made by this current administration to gaslight and pacify us in the face of deadly injustice, and we must challenge those who seek to override the best of our humanity with their institutionalized and wildly funded cruelty.

In the past six years we've watched the American right-wing push narratives that encourage the general public to support police officers when they kill unarmed Black people and squash any suspicions of their wrongdoings. The same messages that were used to criminalize Philando Castile and paint Trayvon Martin as an aggressor, the same messages that were used to try and excuse away Breonna Taylor’s murder, are the talking points we are hearing now about what happened to Renee Good in Minnesota. And they are yielding the same divided responses, only this time in response to the killing of a white mom as we live out the cautions in the famous “First They Came” poem.

Right-wing leaders have spent years telling people that, to put it simply, there are good guys and bad guys and law enforcement officials, including ICE, are always the good guys and anyone opposing them are always the bad guys. They have also convinced too many that “bad guys” deserve to be executed on the spot, no trial necessary.

Now, most alarmingly, they are trying to convince all of us that what we saw on video with our own eyes was not actually what we saw, and for far too many, it seems to be working.

We must fervently resist the attempts made by this current administration to gaslight and pacify us in the face of deadly injustice, and we must challenge those who seek to override the best of our humanity with their institutionalized and wildly funded cruelty. It starts by recognizing the predictable playbook they have been using since George Floyd died crying for his mama and saying, “I can’t breathe.” We must work to restore these bipartisan basics:

• Shooting people is not an acceptable resolution to misbehavior and nonviolent confrontation;
• Trained professionals should know how to deescalate and remain calm, not shoot when they feel threatened (or more accurately, angry);
• Protests are not inherently riots and are a constitutional right;
• Rather than playing “good guys or bad guys,” we must acknowledge good actions vs. bad ones, legal actions vs. illegal ones, and use due process to determine guilt and consequences when things go wrong; and
• No matter what a government official or even the president says, what you see with your own eyes is more trustworthy than a story they concoct to spin events to serve their agendas.

Renee Nicole Good should still be alive to mother her children, love her wife, and write poems. We will not allow them to distract us from that with lies.