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by Lawrence Winnerman, COO
We are being asked—implicitly, aggressively, whether we consent or not—to choose our martyrs.
That alone should terrify you.
But if we are living in a country where people feel compelled to declare which dead American they stand with, if we are sliding into some dystopian moral Hunger Games where allegiance is expressed through slogans and bodies, then I want to be perfectly clear:
I am Renee Good.
Not because martyrdom is noble. Not because death should ever be the price of citizenship. But because if this country is going to demand that we choose who represents “real America,” then the choice should not even be close.
Charlie Kirk represents a nightmare vision of this country.
Renee Good represents its fragile, endangered soul.
Charlie Kirk was not an American patriot. He was a professional arsonist of the civic fabric—someone who built a career on fake outrage, bad-faith argument, and the systematic erosion of the American promise. He made millions telling people that their neighbors were enemies, that cruelty was strength, that fear was wisdom, and that democracy itself was something to sneer at if it failed to produce the outcomes he wanted.
Renee Good was a queer mother of three. A poet. A neighbor. A human being who cared about her community and the people in it—especially the ones with less power, less safety, and fewer voices.
She lived compassion in a way that didn’t require a microphone or a donor list. And that compassion is almost certainly what put her in the path of federal agents who never should have been there, doing a job they were wildly unqualified to do.
She did not die because she was reckless.
She did not die because she was violent.
She did not die because she was dangerous.
She died because she cared.
She died because she believed that warning her neighbors—her fellow Minneapolis residents—that ICE was conducting raids was the right thing to do. Because she believed community mattered. Because she believed people deserved to know when armed agents of the federal government were sweeping through their lives.
And for that—for what at worst amounts to a trivial vehicle or parking issue, for trying to move her car, for trying to comply—she was shot in the face in front of her partner, after dropping her child off at daycare.
That is not law enforcement.
That is not protection.
That is not America.
Let’s dispense with the official lies immediately.
The narrative coming out of the Department of Homeland Security and the White House is bullshit. It collapses under even the slightest moral or factual pressure. Renee Good did nothing to deserve harassment, intimidation, or death. The ICE officers involved did not de-escalate. They did not protect. They did not help. They panicked. They reacted to a minor, solvable situation with lethal force.
And then they prevented help from reaching her as she lay dying by the side of the road.
That is not a tragic accident.
That is a systemic failure.
One of the stated duties of ICE is to help and protect. They did neither. Instead, they proved something we have been refusing to face: we have armed the least prepared, least accountable, least morally serious people with extraordinary power over life and death.
And they are using it.
Renee Good is not an anomaly. She is a warning.
We are in a battle for the soul of this country. Renee Good is among the first people dying in the open—not in some distant war zone, not under a foreign flag, but here, at home, in broad daylight.
This is what the early stages of authoritarianism look like. It is not tanks in the streets, or dramatic declarations. It is normalization. Bureaucracy. Federal agents operating with impunity. Official statements that insult our intelligence. And a steady drumbeat of “justified” violence against people who were never threats to begin with.
What is coming—what will be required of Americans who want to reclaim the soul of this country—is not going to be comfortable. It is not going to look like flag pins and slogans and nostalgic speeches about a past that never quite existed.
It is going to look much closer to what Renee Good experienced.
It is going to involve risk.
It is going to involve standing up when it’s inconvenient.
It is going to involve protecting people the state has decided are expendable.
For decades, white middle-class America has been insulated from this reality. We have told ourselves that brutality is something that happens “over there,” to “other people,” in communities we don’t have to think about too hard. Renee Good shatters that illusion.
She was one of us.
She was America.
And that is precisely why she is dangerous to the Charlie Kirk vision of this country.
Because Charlie Kirk’s America requires fear. It requires enemies. It requires a population so divided, so suspicious of one another, that they will cheer when the state crushes the “right” people, the ones they hate.
Charlie Kirk’s America is hierarchical, cruel, and deeply comfortable with violence—as long as it’s justified by ideology and aimed downward.
Renee Good’s America is the opposite.
Her America is communal. It is empathetic. It assumes shared responsibility. It believes that citizenship means looking out for one another, and not turning neighbors into targets. Her life, and her death, expose just how hollow the other vision really is.
If you find yourself wanting to declare “I am Charlie Kirk,” you should ask yourself what that actually means.
It means you are choosing power over people.
It means you are choosing cruelty over care.
It means you are choosing a vision of America where the machinery of the state is more sacred than human life.
That is not patriotism—it is submission to the iron fist of authoritarianism.
Real patriotism is refusing to accept a country where kindness is punished with a bullet. Real patriotism is saying no—loudly, publicly, and repeatedly—to federal violence carried out in our name. Real patriotism is honoring people like Renee Good not as symbols, but as standards.
If we must choose, then choose the person who lived their values without profit. Choose the person who showed up for their community without applause. Choose the person whose instinct, when faced with injustice, was to warn, to protect, to care.
Choose Renee Good.
Say her name not as a slogan, but as a commitment.
Because the nightmare America that killed her is already here—and the only way it doesn’t win is if we decide, collectively, that we will no longer tolerate it.
I am Renee Good.
And if you still believe in the promise of this country, you should be too.

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