“It Was Murder”: 12 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 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.

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.

– Robin Wonsley
Excerpted from “'Terror and Chaos’:
Minneapolis Reels After ICE Agent
Fatally Shoots Renée Nicole Good”
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 Renée Nicole Good”
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

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.

If that makes you uncomfortable – good.

Growth always is.

– Matt Moberg
via social media
January 7, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
“She Was Murdered,” Say Minnesota ICE Shooting Victim’s Family – Connor Stringer (The Telegraph, January 8, 2026).
Identity of ICE Agent Who Shot Minneapolis Woman Is Confirmed, Protests Continue – MPR News (January 8, 2026).
ICE Agent Kills U.S. Citizen, Protests Erupt In Minneapolis – Novara Media (January 8, 2026).
GOP Goes All-Out to Prevent Accountability for Agent Who Shot Renée Nicole Good – Sharon Zhang (Truthout, January 8, 2026).
The Physical Weight of Trumpism – Garrett Graff (Doomsday Scenario, January 8, 2026).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like”
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• Great Event, Great Sign, Great Nails
• Butch Ware: “We Have the Power to Stop the Flow of Money and the False Legitimacy Upon Which Empire Depends”
• Photo of the Day – December 5, 2025
• Omar Fateh: Quote of the Day – December 4, 2025
• Derek Penwell’s Message to Those Waking Up to Consequences They Didn’t Think Had Their Name on Them
• James Greenberg on Trumpism: “The Tactics Are Unmistakable”
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like” (June 2025)
• Jason Duchin on the “Trumpian White Supremacist Lie” That Must Be Confronted
• Marianne Williamson: Quote of the Day – June 20, 2025
• The Declaration of Resistance
• The Choice Before Us
• James Greenberg: “The Choices We Make Matter”
• Derek Johnson on the “Courage to Call Fascism by Its Name”
• An Incident That Feels “Ripped from a Dystopian Novel”
• James Greenberg: “I Am in Mourning for America”


Opening image: David Guttenfelder / The New York Times.