*My social media feed is a disturbing mix of bystander recordings of public and violent ICE raids and kidnappings, along with cute animal videos and laughable relationship advice from self-proclaimed experts. While the AI bunnies and influencer gold diggers bring my cortisol levels down on occasion, the incessant violence against Brown bodies has generated a new trauma.
The 2020 pandemic produced a similar version of chaotic social media feeds — home remedies that cured COVID, another recording of a police shooting, and dance parties hosted by famous DJs. At some point, the violence was normalized, the threat of death was imminent, and people began to simply scroll past the latest memorial post of another dead Black guy. Whose name are we saying now?
ICE’s propaganda machine includes advertising at rodeos (I was there), pop-up ads on live radio and streaming services, and social media channels parading the primarily Brown faces of their captives while they blur the identities of their agents.
These images are reminiscent of the 90s reality show “COPS,” another propaganda machine that established a narrative of good guys vs. bad guys, coupled with adrenaline rushes, the masculinity of the State embodied by brolic cops, and a clear message about compliance. The show primarily depicted cops chasing after alleged criminals, drunks and druggies, poor folk, Black and Brown gangsters. They always victoriously bagged their targets and made out to be the heroes.
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But the visuality of Renee Nicole Good’s murder did something different. Her death became the tipping point for many Americans, unveiling and reinvigorating a quieted rage that had become dubiously desensitized over the last few years. But many of us, who were paying attention, knew it was a matter of time and knew that it would take a death like this one to wake up the sleeping flock.
There are no excuses for the deaths, rapes, sexual assaults, violent kidnappings, beatings, home invasions, and more that this federal agency has inflicted upon the people who call this country home. Good’s murder became a part of an explicit message and reinforcement of tyrannical power… and we have to do something about it.
Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, delivered a speech defending ICE agents and their actions after the murder of Good and warning of recourse if the public retaliates. While blabbing unrelentingly, locals and fed-up people nationwide protested against these actions and demanded accountability, she and the Trump administration delivered a rather plain and violent message through the inscription boldly placed upon the podium from which she spoke.
It read: “ONE OF OUR ALL OF YOURS.” Critics have noticed and reminded those who care that this phrase references a historical moment in Nazi history, which is known as the Lidice Massacre. An entire village of Czechs was killed over the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking SS official. This symbol of Nazism and a promise of collective punishment is something we knew was coming.
The death of Good, though we weren’t sure who it would be, was something many of us expected, too. And we knew that it would take the murder of someone who looks nothing like the stereotypical immigrant to set the fire. Brown bodies specifically have been the primary target of ICE violence since the start of this mayhem. Other non-white bodies, too, as we’ve witnessed in Chicago and the New Year’s Day death of Keith Porter. But the violence has been deafening and repetitive, and there was an air about some factions across the country that said, “What does that have to do with me?” It is the same sort of response I would get from my Black auntie when protests about Palestine were dominating the news media. It’s the same sort of sentiment I heard from people who did not see themselves as that type of other. The government has for centuries trained us to identify deviancy on non-white bodies and taught us who deserves death.
For decades, the Palestinian struggle had warned us that the tactics the Israeli occupation forces had been practicing against them — surveillance, violence, and total dismissal of life, all funded with U.S. taxpayer money — would be unleashed on us. And we have now arrived. We have arrived at the beginning stages of our version of Palestine, in which our citizenship, our entitlement to the land beneath our feet, or our homes and our rights, or whatever imagined privileges we have, have no meaning because we are not the America this regime desires to exist, and we are not people who are falling in line with this campaign. The government, with its big guns, its firepower, surveillance technology, its questionable laws, and the willing bodies that have signed up to carry forth these campaigns, has been empowered and is emboldened to enact violence so severe. And our politicians are disappointingly sitting on their hands. And quite honestly, a lot of America has sat on its hands as if this sort of thing couldn’t touch us, too.
Good’s death sparked a kind of fear and rage in people that Brown bodies should have. White Americans, behaving Americans, Christian Americans, on-time-tax-paying Americans can now see themselves in the crosshairs of ICE in a way they hadn’t been able to before. Good’s death made clear that this is not simply and only a race thing. It is a power thing. The Trump administration and its participants — from the billionaires funding it to the ICE agents waiting for their bonus checks to clear — are interested in domination.
Minnesota’s protest and outrage have shown us what it might look like to resist. At the end of the day, the people will always outnumber the bodies in the regime. There is risk, as we’ve seen — militarized violence, death, hunting, public canceling, and career endings. But their unity in outrage and fed-upness aggravated the regime in such a way that it required them to respond with an even louder and clearer message about their intentions. They are pursuing and pushing ideals of fear to quiet the masses, to whip people into submission. Minnesota showed that we’re not having it. They’re putting their bodies on the line. They are speaking out, speaking up, and refusing to abandon their neighbors. There’s an end to this, but we have to fight to get there.
Rest in power, Renee Nicole Good. We will continue to protest until you achieve justice. pic.twitter.com/nSTI8Za6AW
— ?September?Rayne? (@EndFascism90069) January 11, 2026
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