Minneapolis Deals With Grief, Anger After Renee Nicole Good Killing

E
arly on the morning on Thursday, Jan. 8, Portland Ave. between 33rd and 34th street was blocked off not by the City of Minneapolis, but by activists. After the shocking death of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross the previous day, 10,000 people gathered to express their outrage at Good’s death and at ICE’s continued presence in their city. Now,  residents of the block where Good was killed had come together to honor her memory.

A makeshift wall, made of wooden pallets,  traffic cones, recycling bins, and even a discarded Lime scooter, bore the words “PROTECT THE LIVING & HONOUR THE DEAD!” 

That morning, Jenny Linnay, one of the local activists who helped set up the site, squared off with the agitated driver of a white SUV. As organizers directed him west down 33rd street, he rolled down his window and yelled, “How much are they paying you to protest? How much? Twenty bucks?”

Linnay, who had up until this point been quietly organizing supplies behind the barrier, didn’t miss a beat. “How much are they paying you to be an asshole?” Other protestors shouted down the man in the van, instructing him to move along. 

“They say get a job, I say get a community,” Linnay tells me, shaking her head, “They have to justify their cruelty somehow. They gotta believe that they’re doing better. Like, this would never happen to me because I’m not like them.”

The goal of the barricades wasn’t to bar anyone entry, but rather to make the space safer for those who lived and mourned there. The walls would prevent any further incursion from ICE vehicles while also keeping traffic out of an area where so many now stood on the street to pay their respects. 

“These are people in the neighborhood,” she says. “This is the formal protest of people taking the streets and holding them and more importantly holding each other right now because people need a place to go and cry.”

Not even 24 hours after Good’s death, speculation had erupted about what was about to happen in Minneapolis. Would the grieving city do things the “right” way, interpreted by most to mean the way that causes the least harm to property, or would this be a repeat of the painful George Floyd protests in 2020 that caused over $500 million in damages and saw widespread instances of police brutality against protestors and journalists alike? In a country that so often resists grief, the push and pull of sorrow and outrage is one that protestors on Portland Ave would struggle with in the days to come.

“This woman was out here being a neighbor, trying to help people out,” Linnay says, as other activists take over her job of redirecting traffic while we speak. “She was taken from us the way that ICE is trying to take all our neighbors. If we just sit here and allow things to happen like this, what does that say about us?”

EARLY DHS STATEMENTS CLAIMED GOOD “weaponized her vehicle” against ICE agents on Wednesday morning. Eyewitness footage corroborated by further video evidence from her killer’s own cell phone, though, showed Good flanked by two ICE agents giving contradictory orders before she attempted to move her car away from them. ICE agent Ross then drew his weapon, pointed it at her head, and fired three times at close range, killing her. So far, no charges have been brought against Ross. 

By Thursday, a memorial for Good had sprung up on the block, covered in flowers, candles, and handmade signs surrounding a large wooden cross. A growing procession of visitors were arriving to lay tributes of their own. 

Early that morning, Minneapolis resident Amber Mattern, pushing her young child in a stroller down the street, was overcome with emotion. “It’s scary,” she says, eyes fixed on the growing memorial. “Our leadership is supposed to be for the people and that doesn’t seem to be the case.” She carried a handmade sign that read “Rest In Power, Renee,” which she later left at Good’s memorial. “I just want something to be done and I feel like we have to come together. We have to stand up.”

Minneapolis’ Somali-American community, a major target of recent ICE operations, mobilized large numbers of volunteers to administer hospitality and mutual aid. All afternoon and evening, a procession of women moved through the crowd to keep people fed, hydrated, and caffeinated. A woman moved back and forth between the intersection, passing out steaming styrofoam cups of tea carefully balanced in her hands. Another woman presented a tray of freshly baked sambusas to anyone who looked hungry. “So many of us fear to take our children to school,” she tells me. “All Minnesotans feel unsafe, this is not about color.” 

As night fell, the crowd at the memorial continued to celebrate Good’s life, with the memorial having nearly tripled in size since that morning. As the sun set on the corner of 34th and Portland, a yurt had been constructed so that people could warm themselves in advance of the cold night ahead. An icy rain began to fall, but protesters played music and lit fires as the young Somali women continued delivering hot tea, sambusas, and sweet mandazi. The remainder of a protest march made its way to the intersection of Portland Ave and 33rd Street, alive with drums and chants of “Whose streets? Our streets!” 

“Things have been really peaceful and wonderful since the police have left. The community has been great,” says Francesca Taylor, a local resident in the hospitality industry. 

In the hours after Good’s death on Wednesday afternoon, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz had called ICE’s actions “recklessness” and had already floated the idea of deploying the National Guard to Minneapolis. Mayor Jacob Frey’s comments told ICE to “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” His use of the expletive drew fire from the right. Kristi Noem, accused Good of being a domestic terrorist and later told Frey and Walz to “tone down the rhetoric,” accusing them of “inflaming the public.” 

“I’m sure Trump’s fucking pissed that our mayor and governor are telling ICE to get the fuck out, so I bet he’s going to send more fucking people here,” Taylor tells me. She says her roommates left town because they were worried the increased press presence would lead to more attention from ICE and the police. But Taylor plans to stay. “I just want the movement to continue. And I want everyone to continue honoring her life. For me, I think that’s worth it.”

THE MINNEAPOLIS FIRE DEPARTMENT REMOVED the barricades around 4 a.m. Friday due to what Deputy Chief Colm Black described as concerns about emergency vehicles’ access to Portland to the surrounding neighborhood, made up mostly of one-way streets. Police dressed in riot gear lined up where the activists and their wall had stood the day before. A young man walked past the line, voice dripping with sarcasm as he said, “Oh yeah, this’ll help.” 

City Council member Soren Stevenson’s ward makes up half of the street where Good was killed as well as much of George Floyd Square, the intersection where its namesake was murdered. On Friday morning, he explained how ICE’s presence since the New Year had disrupted everyday life in the neighborhood. With schools closed to protect their students and faculty, and many businesses reducing their hours in fear of daytime ICE raids, his constituents wanted answers.

“We are many things, but not easily satisfied on the murder of our neighbors. We’re in an unprecedented situation,” he says. “There are more federal agents here than there are police officers from Minneapolis, St. Paul, and many of the suburbs combined. Minneapolis has been invaded by an outside force.”

As more ICE agents were set to arrive in Minneapolis throughout the weekend, Stevenson underlined the importance of neighbors working together. “Do you know your neighbors? The first step is you’ve got to know who your neighbors are,” he says. “When city services fail, it’s your neighbors who are going to be right near you.”

Stevenson, who lost his left eye during the George Floyd protests over five years ago, after being shot by police with a rubber bullet, says the neighborhood’s residents are still experiencing residual trauma from that summer.

“We carry a certain pain about the government coming in here and killing our neighbors, and we also carry a certain trauma about the sound of helicopters circling our neighborhood, but at the same time, even in our pain, even in our sensitivity, our hurt, we also have connected with each other,” he says. “We’ve made bonds with each other to reach out, to take care of each other, to do that mutual aid, to get other people’s kids to school, to make sure that people are safe, that our neighbors are safe.” 

In addition to the massive march for Good in downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday night, demonstrations sprung up all over the country over the weekend. Vigils and protests were held in dozens of American cities. Red and Blue states alike voiced their outrage, with marches being organized everywhere from New York City to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 

But Stevenson’s advice would become increasingly important as a series of intense ICE raids were conducted throughout the Twin Cities area on Sunday, Jan. 11. Across the city, eyewitness accounts and video of erratic ICE operations began surfacing on social media. In multiple videos posted on social media, ICE agents address the person filming, asking if they’ve learned nothing from what happened to Good. These increasingly brazen operations gave credence to something else Stevenson had said, that Trump’s fixation on Minneapolis might be punitive.

“Part of the reason why Donald Trump is targeting Minneapolis is because we are a strong and a free people,” said Stevenson, “We are readying ourselves to take care of ourselves. We keep us safe. We’ve been saying that for years now. And other folks can do that, too. You can do that in your community.”

That afternoon, I met with Mayor Frey in his office after a morning press conference in which he’d demanded that the FBI cooperate with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in a thorough, independent investigation of what had happened to Good. He defended his choice to speak in a fashion that few would expect from someone in his position. “It was a truth,” he says. “Keep in mind what I had seen over those previous two hours. Minutes before I went out there, I saw the video. And seconds before I went out there, I learned of the narrative being concocted by the federal administration, by Kristi Noem.” The words felt like an appropriate channeling of his city’s anger. “I don’t apologize for that. I don’t.”

Frey had been busy. Outside of his efforts to secure the BCA’s involvement in the investigation, ICE activity in the Twin Cities area had ramped up. ICE observers, activists in the Minneapolis area that follow and publicize the location of ICE enforcement actions, encountered an agency not ashamed of killing Good, but emboldened by the federal support they’d received. 

“There are 435,000 people in this city that will stand rock solid with our immigrant neighbors,” Frey says. “[ICE is] coming in here, not for safety. This is terrorizing people. This is trying to rip apart families. This is indiscriminately picking people up. This is dragging pregnant women across the sidewalk. I mean, come on, this is not who we are. And everybody, Democrats and Republicans, all should be livid.”

Frey also urged caution for those looking to protest in the coming days: “Do not take the bait. The protests that we’ve seen, by and large, they’re peaceful. The ICE agents, Trump, they are looking for an excuse to deploy a full-scale military force in Minneapolis.

“We will meet that hate with love. We will meet that despair with a whole lot of hope. We’re going to stand by our communities and we’re going to, of course, push for justice,” Frey says, “but we’re not going to give them a reason to come in.”

But by Friday, Kristi Noem had already stated that ICE was sending additional troops in from Chicago. What would happen if, despite all attempts at peaceful protest and hope, Trump doubled down on ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis anyway? 

“We’re doing [situational reports] on the regular, we are executing full-on emergency operations plans,” Frey says. “We’ve got plans on plans.”