Renee Good's Wife Speaks Out: A Radiance of Resistance

The Alchemy of Grief and Generosity

Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent with a reported history of extremist sympathies, fired three fatal shots into an SUV on a Minneapolis street last Wednesday, killing Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three who had just dropped her child off at school.

This violence occurred amidst what the Department of Homeland Security boasted was its “largest immigration enforcement operation ever,” transforming a quiet residential neighborhood into a militarized zone.

Video evidence and witness accounts contradict the Trump administration’s claim that Ross acted in self-defense against a deadly threat. Instead, they depict a woman attempting to drive away from a chaotic scene where agents shouted conflicting commands.

Ross, a veteran of the Iraq War who friends say flew pro-Trump flags at his home, brought the logic of the battlefield to a city street. The result was the death of a woman described by her community not as a combatant, but as a source of “pure joy.”

The War on Sunshine

Federal authorities wasted no time in attempting to demonize the victim. They labeled Renee a “threat” and a “terrorist,” using the cold language of law enforcement to obscure the humanity of the woman they killed.

Becca, Renee’s widow, dismantled that narrative with a single, luminous descriptor in a public statement released shortly after the shooting.

“Renee sparkled,” Becca wrote. “She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores.”

This characterization offers a stark, heartbreaking counterpoint to the darkness of the agent who took her life.

Ross represented an ideology of “fear and anger,” a worldview that sees neighbors as enemies. Renee, conversely, had moved her family from Missouri to Minnesota specifically to find a “safe harbor” for her diverse, queer family.

She believed that “there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it.” The tragedy of January 7 is that this search for kindness was met with lethal force.

A Tidal Wave of Care

In a stunning alchemy of grief and generosity, collective sorrow instantly transformed into collective power in the days following the shooting. 38,500 strangers rejected the state’s narrative and chose to support the grieving family, raising over $1.5 million in less than 72 hours.

This “tidal wave of care” shattered the original fundraising goal of $50,000, proving that the public saw Renee not as the monster the DHS portrayed, but as the “sunshine” Becca described.

The donations poured in from across the globe, creating a financial fortress around Renee’s three orphaned children.

Mattie Weiss and the campaign organizers then made a decision that stands in principled opposition to the greed often displayed by the political right. Once the fund secured the family’s future, they stopped accepting money.

“We’ve closed this GoFundMe and will place the funds in a trust for the family,” Weiss announced. “If you’re looking to donate, we encourage you to support others in need.”

This act of capping the fund signals that this movement is about justice and sufficiency, not accumulation. It ensures the family is held without draining resources from other vital causes.

Whistles Against Guns

Becca’s accompanying statement cuts through the noise to expose the grotesque asymmetry of the killing with four simple words: “We had whistles. They had guns.”

This line encapsulates the entire struggle.

Renee and Becca were armed only with tools of community alert, engaging in the civic duty of looking out for their neighbors. Ross and his team were armed with military-grade weaponry and the impunity to use it.

The “whistle” represents a belief in mutual aid and collective safety. The “gun” represents a belief in compliance through terror.

Violence may have silenced Renee’s whistle on the street, but the community’s response has amplified it until it is deafening. Becca describes a family that “moved to make a better life,” only to have their sanctuary violated by federal agents who invaded their city like an occupying army.

Her youngest son, just six years old, has now lost his second parent to tragedy. Yet even in this abyss, Becca refuses to let the violence define them. She reclaims the story, insisting that “kindness radiated out of her” and that this kindness is a force more durable than any bullet.

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A Better Way Forward

Resistance to this authoritarian creep requires us to teach the next generation a different set of values. Becca is now left to raise her son alone, but she is doing so with a heroic resolve.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him,” she wrote.

This is the ultimate act of defiance. To teach a child that the world is defined by the “people building a better world” - the donors, the protesters, the neighbors - rather than the men with guns is to deny the oppressors the fear they crave.

A newly created trust fund establishes a tangible foundation for this lesson. It ensures that Renee’s children will be educated and protected by the very “kindness of strangers” their mother believed in.

We honor Renee not just by mourning her, but by living her values.

We must reject hate, choose compassion, and recognize that when we come together to protect our neighbors, we are powerful enough to build a safe harbor that no agent can destroy.

The donors have done their part. Now the rest of us must pick up our whistles.

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