On Renee Good: Jan 2026

I'm just going to get real for a moment and speak my own mind and truth instead of sharing posts that get buried by the algorithm. Maybe someone will see it. Maybe they won't. Either way, the catharsis of writing it gets it out of my head and keeps me from another sleepless night.

The thing that struck me the most about Renee Good, besides the blatant fascism and indisputable extrajudicial cold blooded murder, is that it could've been me. She was 37 years old, she'd gone out to protect her friends and neighbors. Something Jon and I would do in a heartbeat, and something we did when the jack booted thugs came to our city. We never encountered any in person, but what if we had?

I would've done the same thing. Nonviolent resistance. Looking at someone who is armed and violent and choosing love, saying "I'm not mad at you" is an act of bravery. It is the heart of a hero. When masked thugs reach for my door handle and tell me to get out of the car, I am also driving away.

That's important to keep in mind here. Masked thugs refusing to identify themselves, with no legal basis for stopping an American citizen.

A lot of people have said "if she had just complied." Did you hear the venom in his voice as he called her a fucking bitch after he shot her? If she had complied, what would've happened?

Any woman who has been abused or experienced violence at the hands of a man with no moral compass knows that tone of voice. Knows that venom, knows the danger, and knows the smart thing to do is to disengage. Get away. Of course, they've also already done the math of what happens when they do disobey - will the reaction be worse?

Turns out, it was. He shot her. Three times. What law enforcement triple taps an unarmed woman?

But back to the heart of the post. Because it doesn't end there. It continues with a government regime who immediately gaslights an entire nation about what happened and whisks the offender away into hiding so they don't face consequences.

As a woman also harassed and taken advantage of by men who experienced no repercussions, no change to their lives while the victims were left picking up the pieces of their actions and the trauma, watching this unfold in real time on a national scale is triggering.

Even more triggering is when you see yourself in the victim, and then you go looking for comfort or wanting to reach out just to see if this was maybe a breaking point for the people you love but keep at arms length and hope that one day they come to their senses through that love. And then you find your father posting how this woman you see yourself in deserved to die because she'd been brainwashed by the queer agenda and didn't obey. Strike one.

I have nothing but love for my father, but I'm done. I finally blocked the profile so I couldn't go searching again for another heartbreak. I can't keep believing in a redemption that clearly isn't coming.

I'm patently afraid to reach out to any of my maternal family, those who grew up with and alongside me, because I know their predispositions for MAGA Christianity. The ones who share it openly have already made their allegiances clear. I am all the identies they hate, I am the outlier. They've already ostracized me. And frankly, I am too scared of how much it would hurt to know the ones I do think highly of still would say the same things if I confronted them to their face.

These children of immigrants who came to the United States over six decades ago themselves to make a better life in a country that wasn't recovering from the horrors of facism.

That includes my mother, who vehemently shushed my sister for trying to make a political joke around her last time. Who my husband and I walked on eggshells with to make sure that nothing got brought up that would start a fight so we could all just have a decent time in each other's company. Do you know how exhausting that is? Do you know how many sleepless nights I have had replaying going to give my mother a hug and her putting her hand up towards my face to stop me and tell me to back off?

Tell me what's left for a scared soon-to-be 37 year old woman who dares to love women and has a car covered in bumper stickers and would take to the streets tomorrow to do the very same thing Renee was shot for?