Renee Nichole Good was killed after a confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a Minneapolis street on January 7. Three days later, Ann Arbor Indivisible had managed to drum up several hundred people for a protest march from the heart of the University of Michigan to the seat of Ann Arbor’s government.
“I’ve been following ICE, and what they’re doing in cities. I knew that this was going to happen because of how reckless and lawless their behavior is,” Renee Bayer, one of the protestors holding a No War On America sign, said before the march started. “I’ve been there. I’ve been to those streets. I know where she was killed, so it had a real personal meeting as well.”
American flags, protest signs and a sense of camaraderie filled the chilly, overcast winter sky over the Diag where everyone gathered at 10:30am. They marched to the plaza between City Hall and Huron Street for a protest rally.
“I think there’s that saying that how each of us as individual people feel pretty powerless to help our neighbors. Collectively we can do something, but none of us know what to do individually,” Jaime Moore said while mid-march in front of the Michigan Theater. She was holding a sign saying: Hey Congress, It’s Your Fault And I’m Pissed. “And truthfully the power to do something lies with out elected representatives, and they’re not doing anything. I’m tired of the excuses… We’re relying on the people who we’ve elected and give the power to do something about what is happening on the streets, and check the power of the presidency. So that’s what this is. I’m trying to make this statement, as little as it is with the small voice I have to say to the people who have the ability to do something, to please do something, because it’s just going to escalate and get worse.”
Moore specifically said that she wanted to see an end to foreign military action without the say so of Congress. She also wanted to stop ICE’s behavior towards immigrants and an end to immunity for their behavior; like a lot of protestors, Saturday.
“This rapid response is new for us, to allow the community to express its outrage and shock,” Gus Tescke, an organizer with Ann Arbor Indivisible, said.
The Ann Arbor Police Department provided an escort and closed streets, so the protestors could safely march down State, Liberty, Division and then Huron. The hundreds of protestors were only beset by one heckler at the corner of State and North U, who was ignored.
“Minnesota’s had a pretty tumultuous past, especially with law enforcement—ICE agents,” Kathryn Anderson, a student who says that she is from Minnesota, said. “And since I’m not there to support my fellow Minnesotans in Minneapolis, I decided I had to support them somehow.”
This was the second event Ann Arbor Indivisible has organized since Good’s death. As Current Magazine has previously reported, the other was a memorial vigil in Liberty Plaza.
Like at that vigil, poems were recited into a blow horn and chants critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, of the Trump Administration’s treatment of the immigrant community, and of Border Patrol, echoed and echoed across Ann Arbor’s steadily enlarging skyline. Ann Arbor Mayor Chris Taylor, a Democrat, was in attendance to support what Ann Arbor Indivisible was there for.
“I saw what happened online like everyone else and it’s devastating. It was a murder. The murder of Renee Good is the natural extension of the Trump Administration’s effort to sow chaos and fear in our community,” Taylor said. “The murder brings to stark relief what we always knew. ICE under the Trump Administration is operating as a lawless agency. They’re not here to enforce the law, to protect; they’re here to sow fear, division, chaos, discord; that’s their goal. The reason for this is to denigrate and suppress black and brown people. It is part of their effort to define America as for being for so called ‘heritage Americans.’”
Heritage Americans is a euphemism used by racists on the extreme right wing of politics. It is essentially code for white people used by white supremacists in an attempt to normalize and gain acceptance for bigoted views and goals; which Taylor called out and pointedly denounces for being blatantly racist.
Taylor added: “It’s blood and soil, it’s wrong, and it’s racist.”
A municipality like Ann Arbor does not have the power to stop ICE, Border Patrol, or any agency of the federal government from doing what it is doing. But Taylor said that the city is speaking out against their actions, vowed to never cooperate with the anti-immigrant agenda of the White House, to not honor detainer requests and to be vigilant about what they’re doing.
Future protests and marches are in the planning stage, including one on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Organizers and speakers on Saturday’s march and rally encouraged everyone to stay engaged and to vote in the midterm elections next fall. This included Washtenaw County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi (Democrat – District 8), who said that his recently becoming a father made him see the situation differently. His speech can be viewed on Facebook.
“I have a baby now and I was with him when I saw the news. And just looking into his eyes, and thinking about what this country has become, what it is spiraling into, and thinking about his future, and what’s going to happen to him. All of those things were rushing through my mind at once, underpinned by deep sorrow for her and her family, and morning her loss,” Rabhi said.
The midterm elections are less than a year away. Rabhi encouraged everyone to educated themselves on how the election process works, and the tactics used to dispute the 2020 election results, “the words that are being said by our leadership”, find ways to strengthen election integrity, as well as, obviously, to vote in November.
Good was shot dead while sitting in her car. The place she was killed was less than a mile from where former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in 2018.
“I was just there for winter break. ICE has been really cracking down on just [immigrants] presence in general. …. I have a lot of friends in the [Twin] Cities that try to post this web of where ICE is, where they see it. I have a friend who runs an ICE Instagram page, which tries to let people know where they are and when. Especially in the cities, the last few months have really been difficult,” Anderson said. “I think having especially witnessed the footage myself when George Floyd was murdered, having also been supportive through those [protest] efforts, it’s especially important to know that ICE isn’t just now murdering people. They have been. It’s unfortunate that Renee Nicolle Good essentially serves as a martyr for our case. It’s good that it’s garnered such a backlash, but I think it’s also really important to know that people have been abducted, disappearing and been murdered at the hands of ICE long before Renee Nichole Good.”
She supports protesting and not utilizing constitutional rights “especially if you have the privilege of being white, it’s important to use that that privilege. We’re in Ann Arbor, not in Minneapolis, so people might think ‘this doesn’t matter’ but it absolutely is because it shows that this isn’t just a singular event; that people in Minneapolis are just now at their breaking point. This has been happening all over the country and there are people in every state, every city, that want the chance to fight back. It’s less of an optics issue and more about simply showing that they are willing to use their constitutional rights, and we’re not willing to give this up.”
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
