Public domain
Note: an earlier version of this piece appeared in the author’s Substack. It has been revised and expanded for inclusion in Earth & Altar.
Everytime my home state is in the news, it's for something bad. I often hope for good news from other states; but when I saw the story of Renee Nicole Good’s murder I was reminded that the rot that infests Tennessee is everywhere, it doesn't matter if the state is "red" or "blue."
I learned this lesson the hard way in 2012 when George Zimmerman got exonerated for murdering Trayvon Martin. As a youth minister, all I could see when I saw Trayvon’s picture was one of my kids, walking along, looking forward to a snack at home, only to be murdered for the crime of existing while black, wearing a hoodie to keep his head warm on a chilly February day. It seemed so straightforward to me that Zimmerman was guilty. His acquittal shook me to my core and woke me up. I’d been lulled to sleep by all the pretty lies told by our nation to make sure I never saw the reality. Pretty lies of liberty and justice for all were rightly shattered in that moment, and I’ve discovered since there seems to be no end to learning the truth. It’s not terribly difficult to find as it turns out, it just takes a lot of time to peel back the whitewashing of history at literally every turn and find out what really happened.
And now a white woman has been shot in broad daylight by a federal officer. She was unarmed. She had just dropped her child off at school. Apparently her last words were, “It’s okay, I’m not mad at you,” with a video still capturing a nervous smile, right before the ICE agent stepped in front of her car, and opened fire through her window.
And so the outrage began. Good’s murder was captured from multiple angles on video, witnesses who refused to step down, refused to stop recording, even in the face of such horrific violence. ICE was responsible for the deaths of thirty-two people in 2025, and while there have been widespread protests against them, and widespread denunciations of them over all, I have yet to see as much spontaneous outrage as I have over Good’s shooting.
Now I’m not trying to downplay this at all; it is truly terrible. But if ICE will shoot a white woman in her face in broad daylight surrounded by cameras, what have they been doing to the brown and black folks they’ve rounded up and disappeared - people whose families and lawyers can’t find them because they’ve been moved so rapidly from one detention center to another. I can almost guarantee that there’s been more than thirty-two people who have died in ICE custody. Since July of 2025, there have been sixteen shootings by ICE, with four people killed and seven injured. The day after Good’s murder, two more people were injured by an ICE shooting in Portland. Luis David Nino-Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras were shot by ICE on Friday after an incident where ICE and Portland law enforcement claim they “weaponized their vehicle.” Except this time there were no cameras. And since they tried the same line about Good even with ample video evidence to refute it, I’m skeptical, to say the least. The DOJ policy on the use of force stipulates that “Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.” (emphasis added).
Thursday’s shooting of Renee Good was notable in how well-documented it was, showing just how egregious the violence from our government truly is. I cannot stress enough that I’m not attempting to downplay what happened, but I need to stress as well that this is actually not really “new.” It’s just the latest iteration of state-sanctioned violence against minorities and their white allies. White and black folks alike were beaten, injured, and killed during the civil rights movement. Read for example about Viola Luizzo, who saw the civil rights movement as “everybody’s fight.” She drove from her home in Detroit to take part in the march from Selma to Montgomery. She was shuttling marchers, most of them black, after the march when a carload of Klan members spotted her with a black man in her passenger seat. For this she was murdered, and her killers were acquitted. After her funeral, Klansmen in Detroit burned a cross on her lawn where her five children were mourning the loss of their mother.
White folks have never been murdered in the same numbers as people of color, but it has happened before and will happen again. I highlight Viola next to Renee because she immediately came to mind when I’d heard what happened in Minneapolis this week. Both shot in a car while trying to be allies, while trying to stand up for justice. I highlight them because we know their names, and we don’t know the names of everyone else killed in the civil rights movement, or who have been killed by ICE in our day. We know their names because they were white women.
The violence that immigrant communities face now, that people of color have always faced in this country, isn’t so readily extended to white folks. It’s part of the shiny lie that these folks must have done something to deserve the violence, that good, law-abiding citizens (read that as white people), don’t have to worry about such things. And yet one of the Old Testament’s insights about sin applies here: violence, once it’s let out, just spreads and spreads. The first ICE shooting in Trump’s second term was just six months ago and now there have been sixteen. Once the restraint is broken, more officers will be empowered to react with increasing levels of force. Just a few months ago Stephen Miller went on national TV and claimed that federal officers have immunity for their actions. And even though that’s not true, it does seem to be the way it’s going for Jonathan Ross, who murdered a woman for perceived disrespect. Instead of investigating him, federal resources are being directed towards trying to smear his victim.
If these events this week shocked you in the sense that you were surprised, it’s time to follow that shock down the rabbit hole, unplug from the matrix, pop the bubble of pretty lies, and discover that white womanhood has never been the defense you may have thought it was. It will only protect us in so far as we allow ourselves to be used as tools of oppression. White male patriarchy and supremacy has never had our best interests at heart. It has always been using us. It’s time to for our bubble to pop. We can’t let the pretty lies lull us back to sleep. Everything is at stake. And when I first wrote this, I was going to add a “hey white men, if you think you’ll be spared, think again” clause, and before we could publish, they executed Alex Pretti only minutes from where they shot Renee Good. It’s beyond time we all stand together. No one is exempt. This is everyone’s fight. As Andre Henry is fond of signing off: “Another world is possible. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
