The Wild Reed

Thursday, January 08, 2026

“It Was Murder”: Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good

A woman, a wife, a mother died today.

Her name was Renée Nicole Good.

She was 37 years old.

Say her name. Sit with it. Let it land.

What I witnessed today was not just grief for one person, but the resurfacing of deep and familiar wounds. People arrived carrying shock, anger, and fear that lives in the body long before it reaches words. Tears fell between strangers who recognized the same ache in one another. For many, today reopened the trauma, the uncertainty, the memory that life can be taken and the system will keep moving as if nothing sacred was broken.

This was not an abstract moment or a political talking point. This was a human life lost, and the community felt it immediately. Bodies reacted before minds could catch up. People were shaking. People were angry. People were trying to breathe through memories that came rushing back without warning.

I want to be very clear: what happened today in Minneapols was violence, it was murder. . . . It was the deadly reach of a system that has normalized harm in the name of enforcement. ICE does not operate in a vacuum. It moves through communities already carrying generational trauma, and when a life is taken, the wound spreads far beyond the moment itself.

I prayed today, not long prayers, not polished ones. Just enough to help people ground, to remind them they were not alone, to speak dignity back into a space that had just witnessed death. What people needed most was someone to listen. Someone to stand with them without rushing them through their grief or fear. We cannot sit and wait. We cannot tell people to calm down while their bodies are remembering past violence. We cannot treat this as something that will pass if we just keep our heads down. Silence, delay, and distance are not neutral. They are choices.

So I pray this out loud and without apology:

Creator God,
We come in rage and grief because another life has been taken by a system that chooses force over humanity. We name the truth plainly: what happened was violence. Not protection. Not justice. Violence.

Hold close the family of Renée Nicole Good. Wrap them in a love fierce enough to withstand this loss.

We condemn systems that criminalize survival and treat people as disposable. Trouble the conscience of those who design and defend this harm.

Give us courage that costs something. Courage to speak, to protect, to interrupt violence.

No more lives taken in the name of enforcement. No more families shattered. No more silence.

Renee Nicole Good, you mattered.

Your life mattered.

And we will not pretend otherwise. AMEN

If this makes you uncomfortable, good. Let that discomfort move you toward action, toward solidarity, toward truth. This is not a moment to look away.

– Kelly Sherman-Conroy
via social media
January 7, 2026

Here's the real story of Renee Nicole Good that Kristi Noem does not want you to know.

Her mother, said Renee was not involved in any protest activity at all. “Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” she said. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

Renee leaves behind a 6-year-old son. His father, Timmy Ray Macklin Jr., died in 2023 at age 36. “There’s nobody else in his life,” his grandfather, Timmy Ray Macklin Sr., said. “I’ll drive. I’ll fly. To come and get my grandchild.”

Friends and neighbors describe a gentle, creative person. An Instagram account attributed to Renee describes her as a “poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.”

Megan Kocher wrote, “I met Renee and her wife just a few weeks ago. She fed me tea and cookies at her house while we talked about school stuff.” She called Renee “such a warm and loving mother.”

Renee studied creative writing at Old Dominion University and won the school’s undergraduate poetry prize in 2020. A university bio said that when she wasn’t writing or reading, “she has movie marathons and makes messy art.”

Neighbors say Renee and her son were always outside together. “It’s a beautiful family,” said Mary Radford, who lived next door. “He loves our dog. He always has to go run up and pet and play with her.” Through tears, she added, “We’re gonna miss seeing them — forever.”

At a vigil, Jaylani Hussein of CAIR-MN said, “She was peaceful, she did the right thing. She died because she loved her neighbors.” Speakers rejected DHS claims that Renee was a “domestic terrorist,” calling those lies an insult to her life and her family.

“It's so stupid,” her mother, Donna Ganger, said after learning how her daughter was killed. “She was probably terrified.”

This is what authoritarian policing looks like. A mother dead. A child orphaned. And federal officials smearing her to cover their own brutality. This is the right wing’s ICE state in action, and it keeps killing wonderful, innocent people.

Let's make sure the real story of Renee overshadows the lies of Trump thugs trying to save their own ass.

– U.S. Democratic Socialists
via social media
January 7, 2026

Today in South Minneapolis, our community experienced extreme and terrifying violence during ICE activity.

I witnessed community members abducted.

I witnessed observers rammed.

I witnessed observers blocked into their cars.

I witnessed tear gas and pepper spray used.

We learned that an observer was killed today. Our community is grieving.

[The photo at right] is of an ICE agent photographing me and my vehicle while we were present as community observers.

We patrolled actively for over six hours today — documenting abductions, monitoring conditions, and trying to keep people safe. We recorded what we could. We showed up where we were needed.

At one point, we gave a ride to a young immigrant mother and her baby who were walking alone. No one should have to navigate this kind of terror with a child in their arms.

My heart hurts.

This is happening here.

This is happening to our neighbors.

We will continue to witness. We will continue to protect each other. And we will not be silent about what is being done to our community.

If you are able to support community observers, immigrant defense efforts, or mutual aid right now — please do. Lives depend on it.

– Rachel Dionne-Thunder
via social media
January 7, 2026

It didn’t happen until it happened to a white woman.

Now people are super pissed and they should be – but you all told us for years, for decades, to stop being angry, and ignorant, and violent.

Don’t march and break things.

Go along with the police and fix it later using the law.

Because you ignored it when it was in our backyard – it is now in your backyard, (which BTW is also our backyard).

Every white woman looked at Renée and how easily and willfully and without remorse that man put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger three times to make sure she died. Covered his face got in his vehicle and sped away.

He didn’t care if she was someone’s mother or daughter or sister or friend. He didn’t care if she wrote poetry or liked flowers. She wasn’t even human to him.

Your lives flashed before your eyes, didn’t it.

You saw yourself, your daughter, your mother, your feisty sister.

No one said she shouldn’t have resisted because you recognized YOUR rights inside Renée’s rights.

You know ICE is disappearing people and Renée getting out of that car might result in her being unlawfully arrested and disappeared on some trumped up charge. You don’t trust them (ICE, the government, the police) now. But for decades you insisted that we should.

You didn’t notice that disparity in justice when Sandra Bland got unlawfully arrested.

Sandra Bland didn’t try to race away with her vehicle.

She got killed for having an attitude, as did Renée.

It is an unspoken RULE – black woman can’t have attitudes – angry ass black women. 😒

But – Renée had a right to have an attitude – every right. Renée had an attitude and you all agree with it. So do I – BTW.

Her attitude made her say to herself: “I don’t have to follow your orders. Fuck you. I’m going to pick up my kids. Move.” 😒 I don’t blame her. This is why she snatched that car away from that fool who was hanging on to her window so he could get a good aim. And you agree “Fuck Ice,” this is America. We have rights, motherfucker! I agree, black people agree.

But when you saw Sandra Bland all you saw was a black woman with an attitude. You never saw her rights as an American. No one goes to jail because a headlight goes out.

When you see Renée Good – you see her rights as an American before you see her as a white woman with an attitude. Because no matter how liberal you are as a white person – you all tend to believe that black people have rules and white people have rights. It is that belief that you carry deep down in your psyche. And it is that belief that got us where we are today.

That white astronaut that lived in space for months looked down on the earth and noticed one thing – THE INTERCONNECTIVITY OF LIVING BEINGS ON EARTH. You are not white and I am not black when you look at us from space. We are connected by an invisible force field of energy.

And because so many failed to see the pain of a community who wakes up every day to be greeted with a Renée Good situation – day in day out, week in week out, month in month out, year in year out, decade after decade, century after century.

Except the victims are all black.

But the lies are the same, “I feared for my life” “the victim is violent” “a criminal” “a terrorist”.

What has proliferated forever in our community has made it to your community.

Because we are all connected. Please if you see nothing else today see that.

The worldwide protest when a white woman dies and the “meh 🥴 she deserved it” when a black woman dies the same way – is why we are in this clusterfuck today!

If I cut my finger, I swear to god, metaphysically, you bleed. We are connected, friends. We are connected!

Perhaps we expand our humanity to soar beyond the social constructs of race and we can slay this fucking Leviathan. . . . But only if we never ever go back to thinking of ourselves as separated. Thinking of humans as worthy and unworthy. Thinking one life matters and another does not.

Trump is what we needed to get us where we need to be as a human race. He is the monster that will either kill us all or the messenger who will unite us.

We cannot unite over a shared hatred of Donald Trump. We must unite over a shared love of each other.

But that – is up to us.

– Mercy Morganfield
via social media
January 8, 2026

We must refute the blatant lies that the Trump administration is looking to put forward to cover themselves in enacting what was a blatant murder of a civilian, and a civilian who was simply making sure not only that her child made it to school safely, but made sure that her neighbors who are currently being terrorized and attacked by federal ICE agents could also have that same privilege. And she was shot killed while caring for the smallest members of our community.

And I think, for anything – for anyone watching this, to know that if this could happen to a 37-year-old mother, this could happen to you in your city. And we can’t accept Trump’s administration’s lies of them going after bad guys. No, they’re going after everyone, especially those who are in opposition to the cruelty campaign that they are waging through federal ICE agents all across our city.

So, I’m absolutely standing in solidarity with our residents, with our elected officials who are calling for the immediate removal of ICE officials from Minneapolis. And not only that, we need the federal agent responsible for Renee’s murder to be arrested, and for local ownership of the investigation to proceed, because we cannot trust the federal government to investigate themselves when they are the cause of this travesty and harm. So we need to have local ownership over that investigation and prosecution of, be it one agent, several agents, who were involved in the murder of one of our beautiful civilians, a mother who should not have lost her life while making sure that her children and those of many of our neighbors – made sure that they could make it to school in the morning.

. . . They want to set this as the new norm for their operations, be it under Homeland Security, be it through ICE. They want to essentially say that “We can circumvent your civil liberties. We can shoot civilians at our own discretion. And guess what, residents. Guess what, U.S. citizens. Guess what, general public. You have nothing to say about it. There is no accountability that you can have over us, because we are a federal agency.”

And this is why it’s so important that, as, you know, the general public, supporters of the movements and organizing that’s happening here in Minneapolis, for you all to help us in raising this banner, raising this call to action, amongst the Democratic Party, amongst labor unions, amongst any organization that has said that they are committed to human rights, civil rights, social justice, equity, anything of that nature, to make sure that there is responsibility, that there is a judicial proceeding, and one that is not led by the Trump administration, an independent investigation, and a full, again, judicial proceeding over the federal agents involved in this, because, again, this happening here Minneapolis sets a tone for this to play out in many other cities, where they can go in and kill civilians without any due process. And that’s what we saw.

. . . I am proud of our Minneapolis community, that has a demonstrated track record of showing that when one of our neighbors are under attack, when our government institutions aren’t protecting our residents and our most vulnerable communities, we will organize on their behalf. We will organize for justice. We will organize for accountability, until we see those things be enacted. And we have no shorter expectations in this case in making sure that Renee Good and her family and all the other immigrant communities who have been terrorized and civilians who have been terrorized by ICE agents being in our city, until they’re held accountable. And if that needs to happen in our own backyard, if it’s through the attorney general, if it’s through our local state lawmakers, we need to put every proposal on the table to make sure that accountability and justice is delivered for Renée Good and that ICE agents are packing out of our city and out of our state.

– Robin Wonsley
Excerpted from “'Terror and Chaos’: Minneapolis Reels
After ICE Agent Fatally Shoots Renee Good, Mother of Three”
Democracy Now!
January 8, 2026

Says Dr. Shola: “It was inevitable that the U.S., after enabling mass murder and genocide around the world, and systemically murdering minoritised communities at home, would eventually turn on white Americans too. What will it take for you to wake up?”

These are not “police,” and they are not law enforcers. They are a lawless gang. Look at their uniforms (sometimes plain clothes and sometimes military), their masks (protecting impunity), their gear (militarized), their tactics (human rights violations, unprofessional conduct, random violence, unconstitutional acts, intentional cruelty), and their mission (violent and racist). Created and unleashed without due diligence in the panicked era of post-9-11 hysteria, and then commandeered by Trump’s empowered xenophobes, they are now his own thuggish, politicized, paramilitary agents of MAGA ideology. They are the Brownshirts of the 21st Century. They must be dismantled and held accountable.

– Craig Mokhiber
via social media
January 8, 2026

This is the inevitable and entirely predictable outcome of Trump’s turbocharged mass-deportation operation — so predictable, this magazine warned this exact thing would happen just three months ago. That operation has involved not just massively stepped-up, militarized, and indiscriminate detentions of anyone who “looks” like a migrant but a mass ICE hiring spree that has seen trainings drastically shortened and recruits taken on before background checks are even finished.

The result is that ICE has ended up recruiting former criminals themselves and candidates unable to pass a basic fitness test, whom ICE officials themselves describe as “athletically allergic” and “pathetic.” One former director of ICE has already publicly speculated whether “this rushing of hiring of people” and “shortcutting on our training” may have played a role in this death.

What’s happened in Minneapolis, in other words, is exactly what you’d expect from deploying a heavily armed and poorly trained quasi-militarized police force into American streets, made up of officers who are at once both highly aggressive and prone to panicking, and allowing it to operate with impunity. As long as these operations continue, Good will end up being just the very first US citizen that federal agents kill.

There is one more thing to say about this horror show. Both Kristi Noem and Trump adviser Stephen Miller rushed to use the magic, all-justifying words in the wake of this incident “domestic terrorism.” Already one of the most meaningless words in political language, the Trump administration has somehow found new ways to numb us to the “terrorist” label.

First, it was random Venezuelan migrants who were terrorists. In September, it was drug cartels. Then it was left-wing protesters. By the end of the year, simply videotaping ICE agents was “domestic terrorism.” Now, apparently, it’s slowly backing up your car and trying to drive away in it.

In other words, under Trump and for everyone in his administration, “domestic terrorism” now effectively means anything and everything that they don’t like. And since it is apparently punishable by immediate death, the more accurate definition is “whatever the government decides it wants to kill you over.”

– Branko Marcetic
Excerpted from “ICE Shot a Woman Dead
– Then Lied About What Happened”
Jacobin
January 8, 2026

We’re under so much fear. And I am tired of living in fear in a community that I love, in a country that I love. My families are immigrants. We’re not criminals. And we just want to live our lives.

– Edwin Torres DeSantiago
Excerpted from “'Terror and Chaos’: Minneapolis Reels
After ICE Agent Fatally Shoots Renee Good, Mother of Three”
Democracy Now!
January 8, 2026

There’s an ugliness so great that masks enhance
its diseased features, drawing attention
to what too many missed at first glance:
cowardice married to malevolent intention.
Flags fray, stretched thin over tumors
permitted together mass for years on end.
Fascists frolic among lies and rumors
spread to drown dissent, and send
muddled missives mindlessly repeated
by corporate pens. Can we rise, beforew we descend
into believing we’ve already been defeated?

– James Kevti
“After Minneapolis”
January 7, 2026

Butch Ware: “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”

I received the following message yesterday from Green Party candiate for California governor, Butch Ware. It’s a message that fills me with determination and hope. Perhaps on reading it, you’ll feel the same way.

______________

This week, Donald Trump said the United States will “run” Venezuela, “fix” its oil infrastructure, as he turns American oil companies loose to plunder the world’s largest oil reserve.

Trump’s clear violations of U.S. Constitution, international law, human rights and UN charters demonstrate what American empire looks like when it stops even remotely pretending to care about human life and speaks openly in the language of occupation, extraction, and domination.

Anyone who has paid attention to Latin America knows this scheme because it has been imposed again and again for more than a century.

Guatemala. Chile. Panama. Haiti. Nicaragua. Honduras. Bolivia. And now, again, Venezuela.

Years come and go, but the colonialist script stays the same:

Undermine a government. Design a coup or impose force. Install a compliant puppet leader. Silence dissent. Break resistance. Strip resources.

The U.S. government has drenched the hemisphere in blood for over 100 years for power and profit, and still has the nerve to call itself a force for freedom.

These crimes are carried out in our names and funded by our labor. Every airstrike, every naval blockade, every corporate windfall is financed by tax dollars pulled from working people like us.

We are told to accept this brutality as normal and to keep feeding the machine that eats other nations alive.

Together, we can refuse that submission.

I support mass action, including a general strike, because working people have the power to stop the flow of money and the false legitimacy that empire depends on.

I also believe elections matter because public office can be used as a weapon against this system rather than a tool of compliance.

As governor, we will move California away from participation in imperial violence and stand openly with people targeted by American aggression. American imperialism cannot function if the wealthiest most populace state in the Union fully and actively divests.

Together, we will push state divestment away from corporations that profit from sanctions warfare, private security, mass surveillance and militarized enforcement.

I will direct state contracting away from companies that build the machinery of blockade and occupation.

I will freeze any non-divested state spending by executive order, veto any legislation that is not divested, and appoint state agency board members who prioritize divestment.

I will use the power and visibility of the world’s fourth-largest economy to demand war powers enforcement.

If you are done watching this country behave like an occupying criminal while working families pay the bill, chip in today and help us build a movement that refuses complicity and fights for liberation with clear eyes and no apologies.

Peace and Power,

Butch Ware

Wednesday, January 07, 2026

“This Is What Fascism Looks Like”

The following statement was released earlier today by the Green Party of Minnesota.

An ICE agent has just shot and killed a legal observer in Minneapolis. Our hearts go out to her family and the community she was protecting.

ICE has only brought chaos, fear, and now death to Minnesota, and they must leave immediately.

This is what fascism looks like, killing innocent people as they defend their neighbors’ rights.

We stand in solidarity with South Minneapolis and our immigrant and refugee communities. Trump’s attacks are cruel and unjust, and we must do what we can to resist them.

Thank you to all of the community members who have gone out to protest ICE’s presence in Minnesota. We will share opportunities to help push ICE out of the state as we see them.

In peace and solidarity,

– The Green Party of Minnesota
January 7, 2026

Above: Blood on the car seat of a vehicle in south Minneapolis where an ICE agent shot a middle-aged female driver on Wednesday, January 7, 2025 (Photo: Ben Hovland / MPR News)

UPDATE: City of Minneapolis officials have confirmed that 37-year-old Renee Good was the woman shot and killed earlier today by an ICE agent in south Minneapolis.

Monday, January 05, 2026

Matthew Cooke: “Trump Did Not Change the Office of the Presidency. He Exposed It”

In the 12-minute video below, Matthew Cooke makes the argument that “invading Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, [and] bombing Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Palestine, is the job of the U.S. presidency as established by the founders – a group of war profiteers, slavers, bankers, speculators, and whiskey distillers.”

“Empires cost far more than they profit, but the balance sheet is ignored because the profits are captured by their owners and the costs are borne by the people,” says Cooke. “It’s an archaic, medieval system operating as designed. Trump did not change the office of the presidency. He exposed it.”

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressive Perspectives on the Trump Regime’s Illegal Attack on Venezuela
• And So Here We Are
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Howie Hawkins: “The Democrats Are Not the Answer to the Trump/Fascism Problem”
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• Neoliberalism vs Neofascism: Cornel West on the State of U.S. Politics
• Tony Pentimalli on the Fallacy of the “Safe Political Center”
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden Administration
• Sharon Astyk on What Volodymyr Zelensky Revealed Yesterday in the Oval Office

Image: “Murder Most Foul” by Mr. Fish.

Sunday, January 04, 2026

Progressive Perspectives on the Trump Regime’s Illegal Attack on Venezuela

The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife [Cilia Flores] solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as took place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rougue imperial powers and perpeptual violence and chaos.

If there is one lesson we should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is that regime change spawns Frankensteinian monsters of our own creation. The Venezuelan military and security forces will no more accept the kidnapping of their president and U.S. domination – done as in Iraq to seize vast oil reserves – than the Iraqi security forces and military or the Taliban. This will not go well for anyone, including the U.S.

– Chris Hedges
via social media
January 3, 2026

After illegally invading Venezuela, bombing its Capitol, and kidnapping its President and First Lady, Trump now says he will assume control of Venezuela and manage its oil. That’s what this has always been about. Modern day colonization and oil. Congress did not authorize this war. Impeach and remove NOW.

– Qasim Rashid
via social media
January 3, 2026

Whether Americans realize it or not, the United States has just declared war on Venezuela. And, in part because the declaration was less than clear, that could be even more dangerous than it sounds.

Today it’s Venezuela, tomorrow it’s Mexico, or any country that refuses to kneel, because Trump doesn’t see nations, he sees properties, and he thinks the world is zoned for his ego.

This is how democracies rot, not all at once, but in the public shrug, in the normalization, in the exhausted acceptance that “this is just how it is now.”

And don’t miss the accomplices, the congressional sycophants, the career cowards, the TV patriots, the propagandists, all of them clapping like trained seals, while the Constitution is used as a napkin.

The real danger is not only the war he starts, it’s the precedent he normalizes, if you can kidnap a president, you can invade a neighbor, if you can bomb Caracas, you can bomb anywhere.

Trump calls himself a “peace” president, yet every move he makes, every breath he takes, every headline he generates, is the exact opposite, coercion, violence, spectacle, and appetite. They will tell you this is about “security,” about “cartels,” about “stability,” about “freedom,” and they will expect you to forget the oldest motive on Earth, money, resources, oil.

Trump remains the most dangerous threat to the future of our planet, not because he is powerful, but because he is reckless, unbound, and surrounded by people who will not say no.

– Michael Jochum
via social media
January 3, 2026

Whether you like Maduro or not is not the point. The point is whether you are willing to support illegal acts of war, bombings of civilians, and the kidnapping of heads of state – or not. Are you willing to be part of normalizing and legitimizing political terrorism that will not stop with Venezuela and will undoubtedly turn inward?

Because they will use the same lawlessness and impunity with which Trump's administration and the billionaire class is moving abroad to crush any little semblance of rights that we have here – if they are applauded and enabled to continue. Only the organized masses of people have the power to stop the madness.

– Claudia De la Cruz
via social media
January 4, 2026

Elsewhere online, someone declared that what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela wouldn’t be happening if Kamala Harris was president. Why? Because “Democrats don’t do illegal things.” I appreciate how another person responded:

Kamala sat in the VP chair and watched Biden violate multiple federal laws to facilitate a genocide without so much as speaking out against it, much less resigning. She ALSO watched Biden attempt to coup Venezuela by recognizing a CIA asset who declared himself president in the middle of the street as the rightful ruler. I don’t want to hear a peep about “Democrats don’t do illegal things.”

As with many things in American politics, what goes on in front of the curtain bears little resemblance to what goes on behind it.

Trump says, “We're going to run [Venezuela] until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition . . . because that’s what we’re all about.”

Translation: It’s ours now, and we’ll decide what to do when we figure out who will play ball. Anyone willing to be our puppet, who will play along with the oil companies, who will help us extend our hegemony over the Western hemisphere, we’ll keep. Anyone else, we’ll figure out how to sideline or get rid of.

. . . In his press conference, Trump repeatedly referred to Venezuela’s “money in the ground” and said “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” He also said the oil companies will be "reimbursed” for all the money they lost when they were kicked out of Venezuela in 2007. Translation: We did it all for the oil. (It’s always worked out so well before)

Ah yes, we’ve seen this playbook before. It’s much like the coup orchestrated by the U.S. and U.K. in the 1950s’, putting the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh under house arrest and installing the Shah of Iran as the West’s puppet. Mosaddegh’s sin had been the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry, purporting the extraordinary, audacious and totally unacceptable proposition that Iranian oil should belong to the Iranian people. That coup, like most all of America’s imperialistic misadventures, had unintended consequences from which the world still suffers. It’s widely considered the main contributing factor to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the coming to power of the Ayatollah’s religious fascism in Iran.

. . . Regardless of the insanity displayed at times by American foreign policy, We the People should refuse to be insane. American imperialism isn’t just morally wrong or even illegal; it’s stupid. It’s one of America’s most dangerous missteps. At its worst, it’s a threat to the world.

That the Venezuelan people have suffered greatly under Maduro is indisputable, and I understand the joy so many of them feel at his overthrow. Clearly he was an evil dictator and an illegitimate leader. But so was Saddam Hussein. America’s invasion of Iraq, however, led to the deaths of a million of its citizens.

At the time of the Iraq War, I was hosting a Sirius XM radio show. Speaking by phone to a woman in Iraq, she said something I will never forget. “We knew we had a devil on our hands. We were waiting for the day when we could get rid of him and his sons. And we were plotting. But what you Americans have done is delivered so many devils, we’ll never be able to be rid of them.” We can feel horrible for the plight of the Venezuelan people and still not assume that America invading their country is the ultimate solution to their problem or even an end to their misery.

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from “Bang! Bang! Shoot ’Em Up! in Venezuela”
Transform
January 3, 2026

Let’s start with a question many prefer not to answer: Did Barack Obama authorize bombing campaigns in Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria – yes or no? The record is public. Most won’t look it up, not because it’s unclear, but because it’s inconvenient.

That avoidance exposes the fraud. Like the Republicans, the Democratic Party has no moral authority to lecture the world on democracy or legitimacy. It has consistently supported war, regime change, and imperial violence – often with enthusiastic backing from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who align themselves with U.S. empire while speaking progressive language.

The hypocrisy is glaring. Figures like Hakeem Jeffries and Joyce Beatty denounce Nicolás Maduro as “illegitimate,” while ignoring America’s own compromised elections – defined by voter suppression, gerrymandering, and corporate control. Legitimacy is questioned only when Washington dislikes the result.

Now imagine the reverse. If a foreign country declared a U.S. president illegitimate, invaded the U.S., kidnapped the president and their spouse, and put them on trial abroad – Congress would call it insanity and an act of war. Yet this behavior is normalized when the U.S. does it to Haiti or Venezuela.

So the final question is unavoidable: Would today’s Black Caucus defend the sovereignty of Burkina Faso, Mali, or Niger? Or would they follow the usual script – branding leaders like Ibrahim Traoré as illegitimate, dangerous, or dictatorial?

Overall, the point is simple: Democrats and Republicans are on the same team. Both are pro-war, imperialist, and committed to maintaining a white supremacist global order. And both operate from the same assumption – that other nations do not have the right to control their own resources or determine their own futures.

– Black Knowledge
via Facebook
January 3, 2026

But Obama bombed foreign nations!

This isn’t a gotcha. Those of us committed to justice condemned Bush’s Iraq and Afghan wars, we condemned Obama’s drone strikes, we condemned Biden’s funding of Netanyahu to commit genocide, AND we condemn Trump’s bombing of seven different nations and regime change in Venezuela.

That’s what JUSTICE requires. Stop excusing atrocity because of the color hat they wear [blue or red], and start demanding justice on the tenets of actual justice.

– Qasim Rashid
via social media
January 3, 2026

The Green Party condemns the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President and his wife and demands their immediate release. We strongly oppose this illegal act of war which violates both the U.S. Constitution and international law. Congress needs to immediately commence impeachment proceedings against Trump.

The Party also harshly reacted to the assertion by Trump that the United States will now be running Venezuela for the near term and if he faces any local opposition, he will send in a second wave of American military forces to subdue the population.

The Party urges the Senate to vote on the resolution scheduled for next week to halt military intervention. The bipartisan resolution only needs a majority to pass.

According to the Charter of the United Nations, force is only permissible in response to an armed attack, or possibly to rescue a population facing an imminent threat of extermination.

“Trump is primarily interested in seizing control of Venezuela's oil and other natural resources. His pretext of seeking to protect Americans from drugs is ludicrous, especially in light of his pardon just a month ago of ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking. Congress must immediately convene to finally reign in this President who is ripping to shreds the Constitution and American democracy,” said Craig Cayetano, Co-Chair for the Green Party of the U.S.

“The White House National Security Strategy document released in November 2025, outlined what Trump considers a priority – focus on the Western Hemisphere – which clearly looks like taking control of Venezuelan oil while at the same time attempting to thwart a socialist government,” said Cassandra Lems, Co-chair for the Green Party of the U.S.

The Green Party is committed to join with other groups committed to peace, justice and the rule of law to organize nationwide protests to free Maduro and his family and to stop this illegal war.

– The Green Party of the United States
“Green Party Condemns Trump Attack on Venezuela”
January 3, 2026

Opposing war and a coup in Venezuela, workers and union members need to organize mass strike action. We need broad unity among labor, socialist, and antiwar organizations to build mass protests and civil disobedience actions.

The policy of aggression and regime change toward Venezuela is bipartisan, as with the genocide and occupation of Gaza.

Prominent Democrats like Florida Congressmember Debbie Wasserman Schultz are cheering on the coup, calling it “welcome news.” Grotesquely, Wasserman Schultz is also effectively calling for full-blown war, saying that “cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows.”

Even “progressive” Democrats have limited their critique to merely asking for Congressional approval, while actively helping Trump and the Republicans manufacture false narratives about “narcoterrorism” to justify the assault. Senator Bernie Sanders, in his statement about the U.S.–led coup in Venezuela, calls Maduro a “corrupt and brutal dictator.” Sanders does NOT talk about the many corrupt and brutal dictators that the Democratic and Republican Parties have propped up around the world when it suits the interests of U.S. imperialism. In the context of bombing and a coup by U.S. imperialism, Sanders is parroting pro-war rhetoric like that which has been used by Trump and Republicans to justify this attack.

Both billionaire-backed parties have ratcheted up towards war on Venezuela. It was Democratic President Barack Obama who first declared Venezuela an “extraordinary threat” to national security in 2015. In 2020, Trump issued a bounty of $15 million for Maduro. Democratic President Joe Biden increased that bounty to $25 million, and Trump increased it again to $50 million.

The only way to stop the war on Venezuela is for the American working class, led by unionized workers and the labor movement, to urgently organize mass strike actions to build toward a one-day general strike against imperialist war and the billionaire class. Workers internationally must stand with working people in Venezuela against the privatization and plundering of their oil resources by U.S. and Western European oil companies. We must also fight to end the sanctions against Venezuela, which have had catastrophic consequences. Working people need to take the major oil and gas companies into democratic public ownership to put an end to their warmongering and destruction of the planet.

American working people and the antiwar movement cannot afford to have illusions in the Democratic Party. We need to build independently to fight both parties of Wall Street and war.

– Kshama Sawant
via social media
January 4, 2026

The spectacle of [Trump’s] press conference is amazing. It looked like something out of a Hollywood movie set, a B movie set. This is the Pirates of the Caribbean. This is Marco Rubio now the viceroy of Venezuela. This is an effort to run Venezuela with 15,000 troops. That’s utterly impossible. There is a government in Venezuela. There’s a people in Venezuela. . . . The reality is that we’ve seen this before. We’ve seen this in Panama. We’ve seen this throughout the history of Latin America, whether Nicaragua, whether Haiti, whether Mexico. The reality here is, very clearly, Trump made this about oil. He says that what they do want to run is not the country; what they do want to run is the oil fields. And that’s the central part of this discussion. I think we need to keep an eye on that ball.

And I think the other part of this is it’s clearly a message internally for U.S. politics with a view towards midterm elections. The U.S. can impose its will. We saw that clearly in the national security strategy documents that were revealed a couple of weeks ago, where the U.S. will control the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. will impose its will. The message is clear for Mexico. The message is clear for Brazil. The message is clear for everywhere in Latin America. What we’ve seen here is an effort at regime change.

And we heard this before. We heard this in Iraq, when Bush said that the oil production in Iraq will pay for the intervention. Well, that didn’t happen in Iraq, and it won’t happen in Venezuela. This is about regime change. This is about establishing U.S. dominance. This is about the U.S. regaining control and excluding China and Russia. And imagine what Putin must be thinking, or Xi Jinping, about zones of influence. Well, if the U.S. can exert its role in the Caribbean, well, why shouldn’t Russia exert its role in Ukraine? Why shouldn’t China exert its role in Taiwan? The dimensions of this are incredible.

– Miguel Tinker Salas
Excerpted from “Special Report on Venezuela:
U.S. Kidnaps Maduro, Trump Says “We Are
Going to Run” Oil-Rich Nation”
Democracy Now!
January 3, 2026

The only truly astonishing thing about Donald Trump’s latest descent into authoritarian madness is that anyone still claims to be surprised. This is not a deviation from the plan. This is the plan. It is exactly what he promised from the beginning, and his MAGA base continues to swallow the con, the lie, the spectacle, without question, without memory, without shame.

So I sincerely hope that every single person who voted for this rat-fucking traitor, this false-promise prophet who bloviated endlessly about being the “peace president” and then promptly picked a fight with the Venezuelan regime, is pleased with what you bought. You elected a man in visible physical and cognitive decline, a man bereft of conscience, hollowed out by grievance and vanity, and obsessed with one thing only, remaining in the White House for as long as his body can be propped upright.

What we are witnessing is not just insane, it is entirely predictable. Trump laid out the blueprint years ago. During his 2024 campaign, he openly stated that he would not be a dictator “except for day one.” That wasn’t a joke. It was a confession. He has spent years praising strongmen like Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, and now he governs in their image, weakening democratic institutions, attacking the rule of law, eroding basic human rights, and dismantling the safeguards that once restrained presidential power. The danger is now magnified by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively grants presidents sweeping immunity for “official acts,” transforming the executive branch into a throne with legal armor.

And now, with war drums beating in Venezuela and new threats against Iran, the trajectory is unmistakable. Trump’s version of “peace” has always been submission, intimidation, and spectacle, chaos in service of control. He thrives on crisis because crisis justifies consolidation of power, and consolidation of power is the only legacy he seeks.

If you have never joined a protest before, this is the moment.

If you have never spoken up politically, this is the time.

If you believed it could never happen here, it already is.

The threat is not coming.

The threat is here.

And silence is exactly what Trump is counting on.

Since so many of your friends refuse to say this to you, I will: you are morons. I do not care how many degrees hang on your wall, the most dangerous form of stupidity is political illiteracy, and you used your vote to elevate a corrupt, authoritarian grifter who only ran for president to avoid prison, and now he is dragging the country with him.

History will not be gentle with any of you.

– Michael Jochum
via social media
January 3, 2026

Saturday, January 03, 2026

May We Do Likewise

On this feast of Epiphany, let us remember the act of resistance at the heart of this story: The magi saw through Herod’s lies, defied his decree, and honored the birth of the Prince of Peace.

So may we, in our own day, refuse every order that serves cruelty, stand against oppression without flinching, and follow the Light that exposes the unjust.

~ Unknown

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The Feast of the Epiphany
• What We Can Learn From the Story of the Magi
• Richard Rohr on the Meaning of Epiphany
• We Three . . . Queens
• Our Story Too
• An Epiphany Blessing
• The Magi and Our Journey to Christ
• Wakey Wakey
• A Story of Searching and Discovery
• The Onward Call
• Wise Women Also Came
• Phillip Clark on the Magi as Archetypes of “Witchy Faith”

Image: Michael Bayly.

Thursday, January 01, 2026

Into a New Year

As the clock strikes twelve
We are beckoned through the door
into a new year.
Go forward slowly . . . no need to rush.
Everything is waiting for you.
What will you be taking with you?
And what will you be leaving behind?

Here awaits a blank canvas
for you to fill with new experiences.
Paint it brightly, live it joyously.
Welcome each trial and accept
every tribulation as they unfold.
Carry yourself with grace
and in difficult times, look to
the wisdom you have gained thus far
to accompany you through.

In a short while new buds will be
appearing and fresh growth will resume
in all its glory.
Bask in the beauty that each season
will inevitably bring.
Celebrate each gift and mourn each loss.
All is part of the wheel of life,
so generously given to each of us.
And remember to give thanks for each
and every new blessing coming your way.

So go now, the door is open;
the future awaits.
A new year has been gifted.