In the following 8-minute video journalist and author Chris Hedges responds to two questions from viewers, the first of which is: “How do we protest while adhering to the principles of nonviolence?”
I appreciate Hedges’s response, especially this part:
The state speaks the language of violence, and it does so in ways we [as citizens] never can. . . . [The U.S. government] has 60,000 in the special forces. These are death squads. We can’t compete on that level. But if you look closely at Crane Brinton’s book, The Anatomy of a Revolution, you’ll see he makes the point that most revolutions succeed not through violence . . . but through national strikes – the ability to essentially shut the country down.
. . . Nonviolence is a fundamental key component of any revolutionary movement, and having been around a lot of violence and covered [as a journalist] various revolutions, [I’ve come to see that] nonviolent revolution is more effective in most cases. I also think that nonviolent revolutions permits an easier transition to a better society.
Minnesota State Senator Omar Fateh spoke earlier today at a rally calling for justice for Renée Good, killed Wednesday in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Omar was also interviewd at this event by Prem Thakker of Zeteo. Here’s what he said . . .
Renée Good was murdered in cold blood. . . . She was doing what we see our neighbors do time and time again. She was showing up; she was standing up for our immigrant communities. She was showing up for our neighbors. She was peacefully observing. She was not a “domestic terrorist” as labeled [by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem]. She was our neighbor.
. . . [During the] last few weeks in which ICE agents have been in our neighborhods, local elected officials and neighborhood groups have all been warning that the escalating rhetoric and violence would lead to someone dying. And, unfortunately, that’s exactly what we saw happen a couple of days ago.
We’ve seen the largest ICE raid in our nation’s history with the federal government deploying 2000+ agents, putting historic investments into recruiting, and doubling the number of ICE agents that they have. What we’ve seen in response to that in the past month or so is community members being afraid to go to work. They’re afraid to go to school as we’ve seen ICE agents going to schools.
The rhetoric of the federal government saying that they’re just targeting criminals or folks that are a threat, it’s a flat out lie. They’ve been literally doorknocking. They’ve run into restaurants, locking the door, and demanding to see paperwork. And so they’re targeting and profiling people based on how they look. And [yet] what we’re seeing right now with the murder of Renée Good is a silver lining; in that folks are waking up and ready to fight back.
Opening image: People gather around a makeshift memorial honoring Renée Nicole Good on January 8, 2026 in Minneapolis, near the site where she was fatally shot. (Photo: AP Photo / Tom Baker)
Earlier today my friend Andrea shared the following via social media. It was just what I needed to read, given all that’s going on – both here in Minneapolis and the world. Perhaps you’ll find author Karen Salmansohn’s words heartening as well.
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 Renée Nicole Good [left] that Kristi Noem does not want you to know.
Her mother, Donna Ganger, says Renée was “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She’s taken care of people all her life. . . . She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”
Renée leaves behind three children, two teenagers from her first marriage and a 6-year-old, Emerson, from her second marriage to Timmy Ray Macklin Jr. who died in 2023 at age 36. “There’s nobody else in [Emerson’s] 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 Renée 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 Renée 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 Renée “such a warm and loving mother.”
Renée 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 Renée 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.” Other speakers at this same memorial vigil rejected DHS claims that Renée was a “domestic terrorist,” calling those lies an insult to her life and her family.
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 Renée 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
Here we go again, y’all. Let the ritual begin . . .
Did she comply? Was the car moving? How fast? At what angle? She tried to hit him. No she didn’t. Obey law enforcement. Don’t make sudden moves. Follow instructions and you’ll be fine.
Folks keep replaying fragments of information about the Minneapolis ICE shooting as if the correct combination of obedience and posture might retroactively render Renee Nicole Good alive.
This is the language Americans have learned to speak when the state kills somebody. People talk like survival is a puzzle you solve correctly. Like there some precise choreography you must do to survive.
Hands positioned like so. Speed calibrated just right. Tone sufficiently deferential.
Folks really believe all that reliably protects civilians from armed agents of the state. The questions are a way of pretending that the outcome was avoidable if only the victim had performed citizenship more perfectly.
If the killing can be explained as a failure of compliance, then everybody watching gets to feel safer. Folks can tell themselves, "I would have done it differently." "I would have known better." "This won’t happen to me." You don’t know what the fuck you would have done. Just stop.
Because if you are confronted by sudden authority, masked hulking men, weapons, shouting, chaos, and fear, the brain does not access some well-rehearsed civic instruction manual. It does not flip to the page labeled perfect compliance. The brain switches to survival mode. The brain’s job is to keep the body safe. And so it scans for ESCAPE. It floods the body with adrenaline. Time distorts. Sound narrows. Fine motor skills degrade. Judgment collapses into reflex. It tells your ass to RUN! This is basic biology.
People love to imagine themselves as calm, rational, obedient avatars in these scenarios because it flatters their sense of control. But the truth is destabilizing. Under threat, humans freeze, flinch, misinterpret, move too fast, move too slow, hesitate, comply imperfectly, comply inconsistently, comply while still being read as dangerous. The very things people insist would have saved her, things like stillness, clarity, precision, and compliance are often NEUROLOGICALLY INACCESSIBLE IN MOMENTS OF TERROR!
The brain’s job is not to perform obedience correctly. It is to keep the body alive by any means it can manage in the milliseconds available.
That’s why the compliance narrative is so fucking tired. It demands superhuman composure from civilians while excusing split-second lethal decisions from armed agents trained for force. It treats fear as evidence of guilt and instinct as intent. And it pretends that survival is a skill issue rather than a power issue.
So when people say I would have done it differently, what they’re really saying is I need to believe the system is predictable. Because if you accept that a person can follow instructions and STILL BE KILLED, if you accept that panic is not controllable and obedience is not protective, then the ground gives way beneath you. Then safety stops being something you earn and starts being something that is arbitrarily granted, or denied, by the state.
The questions are not about Good's actions. They are about audience’s fears and they are a collective incantation against vulnerability. Because admitting that somebody can follow the rules and still die at the hands of the state is intolerable for a society that insists its violence is rational and earned and deserved.
– Stacey Patton 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 [left] got unlawfully arrested [in 2015].
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.
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 and 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 Renée’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. . . . 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 the general public [and] the supporters of the movements and organizing that’s happening here in Minneapolis 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 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 Renée 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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
If you’re a church posting prayers for peace and unity today while my city bleeds in the street, miss me with that softness you only wear when it costs you nothing. Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness. Don’t call silence “peacemaking.” Don’t light a candle and think it substitutes for showing up.
Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me next to my car, looked me in the eye and told me, “We’ll be seeing you soon.”
Not metaphor.
Not hyperbole.
A threat dressed up in a badge and a paycheck.
Peace isn’t what you ask for when the boot is already on someone’s neck. Peace is what the powerful ask for when they don’t want to be interrupted.
Unity isn’t neutral. Unity that refuses to name violence is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.
Stop using scripture like chloroform.
Stop calling your fear “wisdom.”
Stop pretending Jesus was crucified because he preached good vibes and personal growth. You don’t get to quote scripture like a lullaby while injustice stays wide awake. You don’t get to ask God to “heal the land” if you won’t even look at the wound.
There is a kind of peace that only exists because it refuses to tell the truth. That peace is a lie. And lies don’t grow anything worth saving.
The scriptures you love weren’t written to keep things calm. They were written to set things right. And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is stop praying around the pain and start standing inside it.
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.
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.
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.
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 Renée Good was the woman shot and killed earlier today by an ICE agent in south Minneapolis.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Opening image: A fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, after a series of explosions in Caracas on January 3, 2026. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images) All other images: Michael Bayly – Minneapolis, Saturday, January 3, 2026.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
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