On Wednesday, a woman was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis. Video of the encounter has raised questions about the government’s claim the shooting was an act of self-defense and its subsequent description of the woman as a domestic terrorist.
I did not know Renee Nicole Macklin Good. But I recognize her — in my family, in my friends and in myself. And that recognition makes this moment frightening not just for the state where I was born but for all of us.
This shooting does not arrive in a vacuum — especially in Minnesota. It follows the killing of George Floyd, and before him Philando Castile, events that permanently altered how many residents understand encounters with armed authority.
More recently, the past year has been marked by targeted attacks on public officials and shootings in places once assumed to be safe, further eroding any sense that violence is distant or abstract.
That history does not predetermine what happened here. But it explains why official explanations are not met with automatic trust — and why sustained attention matters.
With the death of Macklin Good, the moment feels different. It is the latest in a series of confrontations involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in American cities. And it reflects a fear many have carried for the past year — that conflict is beginning to resemble something colder and more internal, splitting Americans along ideological lines rather than regional ones.
We should feel the emotion of this moment, just as we felt it after the killing of Floyd a mile away. But what this moment demands is different. Where one ignited shock and fury, this case calls for something steadier: a commitment to truth, to coherence and to reality.
When Floyd was killed in the street, a police officer’s knee on his neck, the outrage was not just about that moment. It was about recognition — another instance of racial violence that followed a pattern seen in Minneapolis and across the country.
Fear alone would be reason enough to pay attention. But fear is erratic — it does not listen, and it does not learn.
But fear, married to resolve, is where accountability is born.
Resolve is not reflex. It is not a leg kicking out against its will. Resolve is a commitment to examine facts from all sides. It does not blink at what makes us uncomfortable. It keeps gathering information. It questions claims of domestic terrorism, returns to the video and questions again.
Video of the shooting raises questions about the government’s account that Macklin Good was killed in self-defense and later described as a domestic terrorist. What is visible on the recording does not neatly align with those claims.
This is where accountability — and the public’s role — begins.
It demands careful observation, eyes open and raised. It demands skepticism grounded in a deliberate assessment of evidence. It demands a willingness to keep watching and reading, rather than shrugging and moving on.
