Who is my Neighbour? On the Death of Renee Good

It’s very possible that Renee Nicole Good reasoned, as I would’ve, that her whiteness would protect her when she put her Honda Pilot, dog in tow, in the path of ICE vehicles on a Minneapolis street less than a mile from where George Floyd’s last words were, just six years before, “I can’t breathe.” Unfortunately for Renee—a poet, wife, and mother of three—neither the historically privileged color of her skin nor her citizenship were sufficient to shield her from three shots fired at point blank range by an ICE officer after a brief and startling confrontation. The officer was briefly hospitalized and released the same day.

Ordinary Americans can add this outrageous bloodshed to a growing list of Orwellian events prompted by the Trump administration, which includes both the killing itself and subsequent state-propagated lies seeking to style Good as a ‘domestic terrorist’ and ‘professional agitator.’ Today, I woke to news of a flurry of resignations from top prosecutors: four senior leaders in the division that investigates police killings have resigned in protest, and six federal prosecutors in Minnesota have jumped ship, not to mention the FBI denying local MN authorities any access to their investigation.

David Langwallner’s recalls encountering judgments of monumental absurdity, involving ill-informed credibility assessments in the Irish refugee tribunal system.https://t.co/ISmEN7H5xe

— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) January 15, 2026

Our times (and our enforcement officers) are trigger-happy, and the socio-political hot buttons have long since boiled over. There is palpable temptation—on all sides of the American partisan spectrum—to give into violence, or despair, or both. Reaching into an exhausted rattle-bag of the faith in which I was raised, “love thy neighbor as thyself” – a Levitical commandment echoed by Jesus of Nazareth—sits like a cold stone in my palm.

Christ was an effective radical because he knew when to flip a table and when to restore a sword-shorn ear lopped off in protest of his own arrest. Angry Americans flip tables with zeal. It’s the cathartic part, the part that soothes our sense of wounded moral dignity and our desire to see immediate justice. But I fear that until we understand the counterintuitive nature of this rattle-bag text – counterintuitive because we do not get to pick and choose the identities of our neighbors, and because we are completely entrenched as a society in ‘othering’ those outside our given and (especially) our chosen ‘tribes’ – we will continue to see blood in the streets and lies on the screen.

POTUS is set on besmirching the name and legacy of Renee Nicole Good—who died standing up for her neighbors. I’m certain we will not see these calumnies retracted any time soon. A closeted melancholiac, I’m left mourning Renee, a fellow artist, and imagining what it means to bring up my young son in such turbulent, hate-stricken times. I know I’m not the only one.

We might finally start living when we learn to kill each other with kindness. Until then, we seem doomed to proceed without the last two words and suffer the consequences.

SOMETHING GOOD
by Haley Hodges

Sky, road, rain, one great
grey. Into this toothless homogeny
come fanged questions—
must we raise our children
in a police state? Was the grey,
say, two generations back
(grand grey to this grey)
softer, somehow? Fault fate
if you must. How to return
to iridescence—to joy—
despite this—despite all—
before we return to dust:
that’s our operation, our
immutable mandate. Let
slates be wiped and crammed
with this endeavor. Light,
it’s time. Come like cream
to the top. Crown each
seeking life, lives going
to the lengths men with guns
and covered faces go—
but oh, finally gently. And
for something good.