|

Viola Luzzo, Heather Heyer and Renee Good: Three Ordinary Women Killed Because They Were Like Us

ByToby Sackton

An ICE agent in Minneapolis today shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a defenseless 37-year-old mother of a six-year-old, who lived with her partner in Minneapolis. Good was a legal observer who, based on videos, stopped her car when ICE vehicles blocked the street she was driving on. Then, another ICE vehicle, a truck with flashing lights, came up behind her car. Agents swarmed out and tried to open her door. Terrified, Good tried to leave when one agent pulled a gun and shot her in the face multiple times, killing her. Her wife was left sobbing in on the sidewalk.

ICE agents did not allow a doctor who was on the scene to try to treat Good, and when the paramedics came they would not allow them drive to her but forced them to carry her out to the ambulance. She was dead.

This brutal, deadly violence was directed against an innocent woman who in many ways was just like many of us. She attended anti-ICE rallies. She felt keenly the injustice of masked federal agents terrorizing immigrants for political gain, and so she volunteered as a witness, just as many of us have become trained LUCE verifiers.

I am stunned and torn apart tonight because this is a wound not just to Minneapolis, but to the nation. How have we allowed such corrupt hunger for power, such hatred and entitled cruelty to metastasize into an evil that allows a masked federal thug to causally kill an ordinary American on her familiar city street. An evil that allows Kristi Noem to justify hunting of such victims by calling them terrorists? I would like to see Nuremberg trials for Krisi Noem, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump.

They are conscience-free perpetrators of violence, as inhuman as the leaders who could conceive of the death camps in Germany, or the genocide in Rwanda, or the massacres of Bosnians in Serbia.

But that is not going to happen soon. Renee Good is a martyr every bit as much as Viola Luzzo, the Detroit mother killed by white supremacists in Alabama after giving rides to some of the marchers from Selma to Montgomery. She is as much a martyr as Heather Daneille Heyer, killed in Charlotte n 2017 when an angry rightwing thug drove into a crowd of non-violent protestors.

Each of these women believed in helping others, they believed in non-violence, and they believed, as Heather Heyer said in her last Facebook post before her death, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention”. These women paid attention.

And so do we. There will be a Justice for All Bearing Witness weekly Thursday demonstration outside of ICE in Burlington tomorrow 11:00 a.m to 12:30 p.m. There is also a call for a rally in memory of Renee Good tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. at the Waltham Common. Leaders of Indivisible are also discussing a response.

Our movement to protect our communities is non-violent, and the more state terror and violence is used against us, the more those perpetrating it are losing. Our strength is our community and sticking with each other, even in the face of deep fear. We need to know, like the leaders of Bearing Witness and the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights leaders, that we will overcome our fear together and grow stronger. ICE agents may look tough and threatening; but one day justice will come, and those who crossed the line into supporting state terror and violence will be prosecuted, just as Illinois Governor Pritzker has said.

We don’t want a martyr in Massachusetts, and our legislature and leadership must recognize the serious threat that ill-trained ICE agents recruited via violent war movies and videogames represent. They must take steps to protect us.

 

[ed. note:  our headline for this story does not mean to downplay the shootings of people who face risk everyday because of racism.  Instead we wanted to convey the universality of the hatred and danger ICE poses to everyone, citizen and non-citizen alike, regardless of race. If you oppose them they think of you as less than human, someone they can kill without compunction.  This is the classic fascist framing of all enemies as sub-human who get what they deserve.  The headline was an attempt to convey this truth.]

 

Similar Posts

  • |

    We Are All Minneapolis

    ByToby Sackton

    Alex Pretti, a 37 year old nurse known by neighbors as an amiable man in his neighborhood was murdered by federal ICE agents today in Minneapolis.

    Alex was not the target of any investigation. He was using his iphone to film the violent threats of ICE agents in the street, and he was talking to another woman filming the scene. ICE agents approached him and the woman, wrestled him to the ground, and after he had been subdued one agent took out a gun and fired up to ten shots killing him. His last words, to the woman who was pinned to the ground near him as they were pepper sprayed, were “all you alright?”

    We are at war. No sense mincing words. Until we tear the present DHS agency down to the ground and start with a new structure, no one in America is safe.

  • 6000 People on the Battle Green Was Second Largest No Kings! Rally after Boston

    ByToby Sackton

    On Saturday Oct. 18th over 6000 people streamed on to the historic Lexington Battle Green to support our constitution, our bill of rights, and the rule of law currently under attack by the Trump Administration.

    We echoed the values the original Lexington Militia fought for in 1775, that in America the Law is King, and we do not bow down to tyrants.
    Appearing the night before on the Rachael Maddow Show, Bill McKibben told a national audience that Lexington would have one of the most significant of the national No Kings Rallies because of its historic association with the Battle Green.

  • |

    How Lexington Alarm helped set the Stage for Public Discussion of Hanscom ICE Flights

    ByToby Sackton

    The recent letter from Maura Healey demanding that ICE halt flights out of Hanscom and the Boston Globe article examining ICE flights from Hanscom Field was the result of months of organizing, research, and coalition-building by Lexington Alarm and allied groups across the region. Far from being a sudden media moment, the story reflected a growing public effort to bring transparency and accountability to the use of a Massachusetts state facility for immigration enforcement operations.

    The issue first gained momentum after a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Massport had knowledge of ICE-related charter flights at Hanscom but was not fully sharing that information with the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission. This lack of disclosure raised the possibility that Massport was deliberately keeping information about ICE flights from the Commission.

    In response to the Commission’s request for this data and our desire to increase public scrutiny, Lexington Alarm and partner organizations launched a coordinated letter-writing campaign directed at Massport executives, the Massport Board of Directors, and Governor Maura Healey. To make participation easy and accessible, we developed an online tool that allows individuals to send letters directly to Massport and the Governor both electronically and via regular mail.

    As of this week over six hundreds of letters and emails were sent. This response demonstrated that concern about ICE flights from Hanscom extended well beyond Lexington and involved residents across multiple communities.

  • Massport Lies About ICE Operations at Hanscom to Advisory Committee

    ByToby Sackton

    In September the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission, consisting of representatives from the town surrounding Hanscom, formally asked Massport for information about incoming ICE flights at the airfield and support activities, such as fueling and servicing of ICE charters. Christopher Willenborg, director of Hanscom Field, replied that Massport had no knowledge of incoming ICE flights. This was a lie.

  • Addressing the Massachusetts Due Process Emergency

    ByToby Sackton

    Massachusetts is confronting a due-process crisis of statewide scale: an estimated 6% of the Commonwealth’s residents—about 442,000 people—are undocumented or live with an undocumented family member and are therefore vulnerable to immigration enforcement actions that often proceed without judicial warrants or bond hearings.

    During the first year of Covid in 2020, about 5% of the Massachusetts population got infected. This galvanized the governor and legislature to action, and a number of emergency actions were initiated. Our current crisis demands the same response.

    Immigration enforcement that violates basic legal rights puts 6% of the State’s population at risk, but our legislature is not acting like there is a crisis.