On the dangers of cosplay

Protesting ICE was all a game to Renee Nicole Good, until it wasn't.

It was a small mistake

Sometimes that’s all it takes

Once upon a time in the Iraqi desert, north of the Shia city of Najaf, I found myself listening on repeat to the lyrics of “From a Balance Beam,” by Bright Eyes.

It was a small mistake

Sometimes that’s all it takes

It was a small mistake

It was a small mistake

It was…

I’d made a small mistake. A couple of small mistakes.

I had misjudged the world around me and my place in it.

I should have been dead.

I wasn’t, though. I was walking around an American base, listening to Bright Eyes.

I was very, very lucky.

—

(Because, among other things, if I were dead I wouldn’t get to write Unreported Truths!)

—

Renee Good wasn’t.

As you know, Good is the 37-year-old woman shot and killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis last week. The shooting, like everything else that happens in the United States these days, has become the object of a partisan fight. The Trump Administration keeps calling Good a “domestic terrorist.” The left wants to put up a statue of her alongside George Floyd, patron saint of fentanyl addicts who overdosed in the right place at the right time to get their families paid.

Neither side is right. Good was no saint. She wasn’t a domestic terrorist either.

Too bad for her. If she was she'd probably still be alive.

Like many of you, I have watched the videos of the shooting and the minutes leading up to it. What is striking is how much fun Good seems to be having as she blocks traffic in her Honda Pilot. She honks her horn and bounces along to its beat. When an officer approaches the car, she says, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.”

She wasn’t a terrorist, she was a thirty-something white woman who didn’t understand the mess she was making and the risks she was running, probably in part because she thought her white womanness would protect her.

—

The basic legal facts are these:

1: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has the right to arrest illegal immigrants — people who are in the United States without visas or other authorization — and ultimately to deport them. For a long time, it didn’t use that power except in very limited circumstances. Now it does. We can debate the wisdom of that policy, but it is what Americans elected Donald Trump to do, and he is doing it.

2: American citizens have the right to monitor ICE operations in public, as they have the right to monitor other public law-enforcement activities. Monitoring usually includes taping. They also have the right to protest ICE operations. Monitoring and protest are not terrorism.

3: But citizens don’t have the right to interfere with ICE. The line between monitoring, protest, and interference can be tricky. Yelling at agents from a sidewalk is protesting. What about blaring an air horn over and over? Trying to get between agents and someone they are trying to arrest is interference. But what about if an agent, or several agents, walk up to a protestor in an apparent effort to provoke him?

4: The line can be tricky, but it was not in this case. Good crossed it. She was blocking traffic on a public thoroughfare, giving the agents reason to arrest her. They didn’t do so immediately. A video released Saturday shows them ignoring her for a couple of minutes as she amuses herself honking her horn. But eventually they decided to act.

—

And in a matter of seconds, the situation escalated.

Eighteen months ago, I wrote about my experience at a sobriety checkpoint. In my strong opinion, such checkpoints are of dubious constitutionality.

Nonetheless, I did as I was told when I was stopped. Law-enforcement officers have pistols, and the right to use them if they feel threatened. In uncertain situations, it’s best to listen to them and respect their orders, not to escalate.

This is common sense.

—

—

Good didn’t display common sense. She thought she could break the law without consequence. The fact that she was in her vehicle probably played a role. I spend a lot of time driving. I can attest to the fact that a 4,000-pound SUV can become almost a second home, a cocoon of sorts. She was jamming away without a care.

But when the consequence — the arrest — came, she panicked and escalated. And what seems like a cocoon from the inside feels more like a beehive to a person standing outside a few feet away, a potentially deadly threat.

Good may or may not have been thinking about the threat she posed as her girlfriend told her, “Drive, baby, drive,” and she hit the gas. But the officer in front of her car had been dragged by another vehicle only a few months before. He understood the risk - and he had the legal right to react as he did. It’s hard to see how the shooting wasn’t justifiable.

—

(You know what else is justifiable? Subscribing to Unreported Truths.)

—

Good forgot that real life has teeth — just as the kids dancing in the basement of a bar in Switzerland had a few days before, as they pulled out their phones and watched themselves burn to death.

She forced a man with a gun into a split-second choice. She misjudged the world around her and her place in it. It was a small mistake.

And she died.