In Minneapolis

Tomorrow Project Challenges

In Minneapolis

Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed Jan. 7 by an ICE agent who is part of the Trump administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surge in Minneapolis. Good was 37 years old, a U.S. citizen, a mother, and a poet. 

 

 


Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the U.S. government’s account that the ICE agent was acting in self-defense was untrue, a "garbage narrative." He called on ICE to leave his city, but he and Gov. Tim Walz also urged calm among their residents. “Do not take the bait,” Walz said. “Do not allow them to declare martial law.”

At Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, where Good (then Macklin) had been a student in 2020, university president Brian Hemphill said her sudden death was "yet another clear example that fear and violence have sadly become commonplace in our nation." He remembered her time at Old Dominion where she studied creative writing and won a prestigious undergraduate poetry prize from the Academy of American Poets. "May Renee's life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace," Hemphill said.

In a similar spirit, Frey urged residents of Minneapolis to rise above the Trump administration's ICE activities and show something “far more beautiful than the kind of division they’re trying to stoke. ...We are going to meet that hate with love,” Frey said. “We are going to meet that despair with hope.” 

What are your thoughts about this tragic incident and ICE's presence in U.S. cities?

[Photo credit: CBS News]

Submissions

  • What is left

    [This is a reposted edited version of a previous poem of mine.]

     

    when all we have is spent–

    what will we have left?



    people once before us–

  • I feel sick

    Renee Good just wanted to go home

    To her kids

    6, 12, and 15

    I've watched the video

    I didn't want to

    But I needed to see for myself if she really tried to run the agent over

     

    She didn't

  • Speechless

    I am speechless.

    All the bullshitting and lies 

    from our government.

    OUR government.

    They say that they are protecting us.

    That's not what I see,

    "Don't believe your eyes."

  • Poetry

    By LGC

    How

    How do we live 

    Knowing others cannot?

    How do we breathe 

    Knowing our comfort is at the hands of hidden devastation?

    How do we laugh

    when all around us Tears seem to be the only logical response?

  • We All Bleed

    Blood spills onto our streets too much.

    The streets were once safely kept

    but now they're permanently stained

    with cries, sirens, and death. 

     

    The harrowing cold of the family house,

  • down the street

    i walked down the street
    the streets i once used to know 
    filled with regrets and heavy with burdens 
    of what once happened here

    i walked down the street 
    a block or so down 

  • Good Bye Good

    Greed overtook them

    Only those in power shoot their guns in fear

    Of the potential held in the palm of our hands

    Delicate and rough fingers intertwined through every color to shoot back.

     

    Bye Good,