A Statement on the Killing of Renée Nicole Good, from Dzanc Founder Steve Gillis
The murder of 37-year-old Renée Nicole Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross is shocking on several levels. The systemic inhumanity put forward by the Trump administration, the callous disregard for life by the ICE agent, the fact that 32 other individuals have lost their lives to ICE agents during this campaign of terror by Trump and Stephen Miller is so unequivocally unacceptable that we must continue to speak out.
As an independent press, some might think it is not our place to get involved in politics. I completely disagree. First of all, this is not a political issue. It is an issue regarding our very humanity. It is an issue that touches the soul. It is an issue that must be addressed with everything we have, every minute of every day.
We at Dzanc stand strong with those who reject the inhumanity of Donald Trump and his administration. Jeff Kass, Poetry Director for Dzanc Books, has written a beautiful poem, which he read at a vigil for Renée Good on Friday night. My wife and I were in attendance and we stood shoulder to shoulder with those who will not allow our humanity to be ripped apart by one individual. Justice must prevail. Jonathan Ross, the agent who murdered Renée Good, must be brought to justice. Not for vengeance, but to restore our faith in a system that is broken. To restore our faith in humankind. If you stand in agreement with us, please lend your voice in every way you can to make certain these atrocities stop.
Below, the poem from Jeff Kass:
I want back my rocking chairs
is the first line of a poem by Renée
Nicole Good, mother of three children
executed yesterday by an ICE agent
in Minneapolis
I imagine she meant she wanted a moment
to settle, to ease off from the hum of mom,
of world, wanted a moment to lean back,
drink something warm from a mug, watch
moisture evaporate from the leaf
of a tree
Why does my brain work like this, plunging
into what feels like a TV commercial
engineered to sell a gas-guzzling 4 x4
to a young couple of means
who recently signed papers
for a weekend chalet in the mountains
where they can wake with the sun, without
alarm, warm sweaters draping their chests
while they sip?
If I need to tell you the video is horrifying,
windshield exploding into a spray of pulverized
glass when one man, all chest and vest and mask,
screams at her to get the fuck out of the car,
and another fires and fires and fires, Renée
Nicole Good’s torso folded sideways
across the dashboard … if I need to tell
you the Director of Homeland Security
is lying, the Vice President is lying,
the President is, well, listen …
I keep picturing that stupid commercial,
the couple in rocking chairs, probably hand-
crafted, on their lovely, serene front porch
of bleached, blonde chemically-protected timber,
nothing in front of them but green mountain
awe, nothing behind but that hulking SUV
parked slantwise in a driveway of imported
gravel
I don’t begrudge anybody a vacation. I don’t
begrudge anybody a rocking-chair morning,
still, let me be the floorboards of that porch,
let me be the supporting beams that hold
the floor up, let me vibrate the warm
mugs in the hands of that couple
until they feel the need to join me
and be the droplet of crisp mountain
moisture evaporating from the leaf
of that tree. Let us be the wood
and the water and the forest
and a sea in the streets. Let
us mix into Renée Good’s
blood spattered on the steering
wheel.
Let us evaporate in the Minneapolis
breeze and reform in the veins
of three children. Let us course
through them and whisper, your
mother, your mother, your mother
became a hurricane, a cyclone,
a wind, a forest, a sea, a movement
a light, a light, your mother is a light,
let us rise from our lawn chairs, let us
rise from our porches, let us be our own
new hum, blood and wood and water
and loud and crashing