Remember Ohio
The Murder of Renee Good
Today is January 8th, 2026.
Things feel pretty rough. But it also feels like something’s shifting.
Two more people have been shot by the MAGA regime’s out of control forces of violence.
Yesterday, Renee Good was killed in Minnesota in what looks a lot like murder.
The two people in Portland today brings the number who we know have been shot by ICE or Customs and Border Patrol up to 16, with four fatalities, including Renee Good.
All of these are tragedies. Ms. Good left behind three children.
Many of us, myself included, are reluctant to comment on it, because of the tragedy.
But in this case, it’s also a political moment and we should recognize it.
I was hesitant to call it this, but it may be that Renee Good’s murder will be a George Floyd kind of moment, but this time featuring white people. I went ahead and just said those words because I later saw Heather Cox Richardson posting today, and she made the same point with different language.
For the first time she talked about what is Fascism. And she did it to point out that fascism requires setting up an “other” against whom “the people” can be rallied against.
Out of those 16, and I’ve put the link on my Substack and YouTube channels to the accounting, it appears that Ms. Good is the first white person.
And that is a political pivot moment.
Because the line of who is the other is has now been crossed by the violence of this regime. Because just like the Nazi Fascists, these MAGA Fascists have a racial divide that they ID with dog whistle phrases like “non legacy American.”
This regime is not smart, so they didn’t train and restrain their forces to prevent this murder of a white woman from happening.
But they’re instinctive enough in their authoritarianism to employ the fascist playbook: the way to square up the Regime’s use of force against a member of the white-people in-group to paint the victim as a traitor to that in-group. That is exactly what Trumpet and Noem immediately did: despite the facts being obviously otherwise.
They called her a ‘domestic terrorist,’ a ‘professional agitator,’ a member of a ‘radical left movement of violence and hate,’ and so on, even though those are in some cases self-contradictory.
Tonight it is still an open question how much success they will have with that.
I’d like to point out, that the pattern of violence that led to Ms Good’s death is one that has befallen black and brown people for generations. An eyewitness reported today that ICE officers gave Ms. Good conflicting instructions: orders to leave, and orders to get out of the car.
She followed the order to leave: and they killed her.
I join the calls for peaceful protest. We will better advance our cause for freedom and justice through non-violence. Also, notice how our progress is being accelerated by the bravery of Ms. Good’s neighbors who went out and caught it all on video. This is how we will throw them off.
Where do these murderous ICE agents come from?
A piece I encountered today that I’d like to share: Avner Less was a Jew who interrogated Adolf Eichmann before his execution for war crimes and for organizing the Holocaust. Mr. Less came away with this prophetic piece of writing:
“There are Adolf Eichmanns everywhere. They are all around us. They are latent in a democracy, but in a dictatorship of the left or right, they become deadly in an instant.”
This is where the ICE agents who murdered Renee Good came from. They’ve been all around us all the time, and now they’re unleashed.
But still, they cannot win.
Ultimately I believe we are too proud of a people; too well equipped with cell phones and internet connections; too committed to the entitlement of all to due process; and ultimately, yes, too well armed with more firepower per person than any people in the history of the universe.
So as awful as it feels right now, please care for yourself, please know that you’re not alone. There are millions of us who are working to take this back.
Things are already shifting in Congress. Signs of resistance. Too weak, yes, but growing. They’ve voted to prevent more action in Venezuela. They’ve voted to restore the Affordable Health Care subsidies.
They put back the plaque honoring the Capital Police for their heroism on January 6th.
Yes, it’s too little. Yes, it’s nowhere near becoming law. Yes, it’s symbolic.
But it is happening. And it wasn’t before.
This is how it starts.
When we succeed, there will be a mess to clean up that can never be made whole: it will be missing people like Ms. Good.
We’ve been through dark periods before. Now is our time to take up our duty to make the world a better place. An old song is becoming newly relevant: Remember Ohio.
Amen, America.