Only a day after Renee Good was shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross, we began to see media trying to discount the value of her life, so Fox, OAN, Newsmax, or Daily Wire viewers could waive off the murder we all saw ICE commit. This time, the victim was a blonde-haired white woman and mother of three, who had just dropped her first grader off to school. But within a day, the media and later the vice president got to work making her a one of “them” rather than a one of “us” by talking about her divorces, her queerness, her poetry, the pronouns in her bio and her antipathy towards Donald Trump. A few days later, people have heard ICE agents refer to her as “that lesbian bitch,” while asking protestors if they’ve “learned [their] lesson yet.” She and her wife, cast as undeserving of sympathy, and as a warning.
(Note: I am, myself, a divorced mother who is bisexual, who cares about trans people, who is critical of Trump, and who engages in activism, so I am already seeing the playbook they will use if they shoot me.)
Before Renee Good, they could relegate all victims of ICE’s kidnappings, shootings, torture, deportations and deaths in confinement to the “them” category, the category their viewers didn’t have to feel bad about because they were Black or brown or because they were immigrants or because Noem accused them—however baselessly—of criminality. And this worked, especially when the victims were photographed with their forcibly shaved heads at CECOT in El Salvador. But it worked even when they were 6-year-old Chinese American boys with glasses and sweet smiles or young American citizen children with cancer and even when they were mothers crying and clutching their infants or beloved teachers and superintendents. Or when they were dedicated single fathers like Silverio Villegas Gonzales shot dead by ICE in September. It especially worked when we didn’t have video footage of the brutality from multiple angles or audio testimony from doctors who tried to render aid but were denied the chance.
But in the case of Renee Good, even with the footage and even with a white woman victim, they have found ways to “other” her—to frame her as someone deserving of her death—so that they can convince those who still want to be convinced they made the right choice in Trump that she had it coming. That it wouldn’t happen to you, the Trump supporters, because you’re the “right” kind of American (and she was very clearly the “wrong” kind).
But I think some people are cracking on what they’re willing to believe that is in direct contradiction to their own eyes.
I met a Korean American man at a public assistance office back in September who had voted for Trump three times and even he admitted that ICE was going too far. I met a conservative white man in a gun store in November who said he was worried about “illegal immigration” but admitted the same thing, that ICE is out of control. And this was before ICE was throwing and spraying tear gas into cars full of children and infants. Before they were shooting mothers in the face!
I hope sincerely that those of you with family, work, or community connections to Trump voters—or even to non-voters who think this stuff doesn’t affect them—will show these folks the photo of Renee Good’s blood-soaked airbag next to the glove compartment with her 6-year-old’s stuffies sticking out and ask them if they want to live in a country where ICE can do this to mothers, to people, to you or to anyone.
Because with this killing, as with the nine ICE shootings into cars since September before Good’s, as with the shootings that ICE has committed in the last two weeks that I can’t even keep track of and the strangling of a man in confinement, people have a limit somewhere. Just as with the thousands of people ICE has disappeared and tortured for being Black or brown or speaking another language and as with the incontrovertible evidence that Trump is covering up the Epstein files and plays a large role in them, and and as with the economy free-falling and millions losing health insurance, again, people have a limit, somewhere.
We just need to move people, somehow, from wanting to believe whatever slander and lies their media tells them about the illusion that this is good or that it doesn’t affect them to believing their own senses. Approval of ICE has declined more rapidly among Republicans than among Democrats in the past few months. Perception is changing on ICE and on other issues.
If you know them and especially if you talk with them about anything, whether it’s football or fishing or hunting or work or their grandchildren or recipes or the neighborhood, please also help them see that this could be their daughter or son or friend or themselves. That it can and will come for them eventually. That there is no point at which this violent force will be satisfied and rest. That there is no “right” kind of American who is safe when ICE has impunity to kill.
And I get it, they shouldn’t have to see themselves in the victims in order to care. They should be moved by oppression against anyone. I am! Many of us are! But they’re not or they haven’t been yet. Rather than give up on ever moving them, I believe we have to figure out how to put a wedge in the cracks that are forming and widen those cracks.
Say “Look at the blood and stuffies.”
Say “Believe your own eyes and senses.”
Ask “What is your pocketbook telling you every time you go grocery shopping?”
Ask “Are you feeling a little skeptical about the Epstein files and why there are so many redactions of the powerful men and what they did?”
Ask “How do you feel about your rising health premiums? What are you afraid might happen with your healthcare?”
Say “You’re an independent thinker, so it’s okay to believe your own senses over whatever Jesse Waters or Tucker Carlson are saying. Look at the blood-soaked airbag next to the children’s stuffies and know that this could be me. This could be your grandchild.”
Ask “As you look at that blood, those children’s toys in that mother’s car, or as you read about the 6-month-old who laid there limp with foam around his mouth after ICE threw tear gas into the family’s car as they tried to get home, ask yourself: Who do you really believe has been telling the truth to you? Is Kristi Noem and Donald Trump or is it the people videotaping and protecting their neighbors from ICE while getting pepper sprayed or shot in the face?”
Please ask these questions. Show them these real images (and differentiate them from the AI images being generated to tell a different story). Please help push back against the mythologies that have kept people in support of the rise of fascism. Please help them, gently, to take the first steps away from it. Too many people have been avoiding these conversations with their colleagues and family members because they’re afraid of arguing; I get that. And I don’t think arguing will work, actually!
But appealing to the overwhelming evidence of their senses, to their emotions, to their wallet as they try to afford groceries and health insurance, to their lived experiences and values about democracy or about the safety of children, to the question of what kind of country do they want to live in, appealing to their doubts about how this all adds up—that could work. Taking out your phone to pull up a photo and appealing to the viscerality and relatability of that image of the dashboard could—just as the images of police dogs attacking teens in Birmingham, Alabama, did in the 1960s. We need everyone who has a personal connection that allows them to have these kinds of conversations to do so. Not everyone will shift, but many have and many more could.
And please, whatever you do, don’t contribute to the mythologies by conceding those points that the right-wing media is making to cast Good or any other victim of ICE as deserving of their fate. Renee Good doesn’t have to be a perfect person with a perfect history to deserve to still be alive. Neither do any of the dozens who died in ICE custody this year, or Silverio Villegas Gonzales or Sandra Bland or George Floyd. Rather, we want to live in a country where secret police can’t kidnap and execute people at will.
Hold the line and don’t let them distort what we are seeing. And please help others see it too. We have an opening; let’s widen the cracks.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.