In wake of the death of Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year old poet, wife and mother shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis last week, poet Cornelius Eady has written a poem in her memory, titled “Renee Nicole Good is Murdered.” The poem begins:
Up rides the super cops,
The cancellation squad.
A dormant virus, melted from
The ice pack…
You can read Eady’s full poem HERE. Cornelius Eady was the featured poet at Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral inauguration on January 1. He dedicated his poem “Proof” to his former students of marginalized backgrounds at the University of Tennessee, encouraging them to see Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral race as proof that we can dare to imagine a different, more open society than the one we currently live in. You can listen to Paul Nelson’s interview with Eady HERE.
Renee Good herself was a poet, her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs” winning the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize winner at Old Dominion University. You can read the full poem HERE. As the news continues to flood with heartbreaking stories of violence inflicted both in and out of U.S. territory, we must keep our strength and hearts with the brave people protesting against tyranny in their communities. HERE you can find different ways to support the Minneapolis community.
Thanks for all this info, including from Greg Bem, and this amazing poem by Eady.
“I Stand With You, I Stand For You”
I stand with you, Minneapolis.
I stand for you, Renee,
and for all who stand no more.
I saw your killing on the news.
I watched the broadcast views.
I saw ICE come for you.
I watched ICE murder you.
I believe what my eyes see.
I disbelieve the flagrant lies
Trump, and Vance, and Noem decry.
I stand with you, the witnesses,
those who saw, firsthand,
a mother of three shot dead!
By all accounts I have seen,
by all accounts I have read,
Renee Nicole Good
merely dared to care.
When only the innocent protect the innocent;
When only the defenseless
defend the defenseless;
When the government of the people,
no longer governs by,
or for the people,
What then can we do?
What then must we do?
It is not for me to guide,
to try to help decide,
what America needs to do.
That is up to you.
I am a poet, not a leader,
but I will not stand idly by,
and watch more good people die;
at the hands of a federal government,
which abandons every norm,
defies the will of its own people,
and attempts to redefine
all that is good, as bad;
all who are good, as bad;
all that is right, as wrong,
and all who are right, as wrong?
What then can we do?
What then must we do?
I seek no revolution.
Whatever the resolution,
It must be a peaceful one,
or, my friends,
the enemy has already won.
My quest is to expose,
what, silently, everyone already knows,
what quietly we whisper to one another:
“Trump, and his cronies are out of control.”
Governor Walz questioned yesterday:
“Is this our McCarthy moment?
Have you no decency man?”
Today, he aptly quoted from “1984.”
Yes, this is Orwellian.
This feels like 1984.
What then can we do?
What then must we do?
Only by asking ourselves,
and only by asking each other,
the necessary, pertinent questions,
can we ever hope to find the answers.
We can peacefully oppose,
resist, speak out against,
that branch of our own government,
which has gone to war with her own people.
How do we resist though?
The devil is in the details.
We know the economy is consumer driven.
Do we flex our economic muscles?
Should we organize national work strikes?
Do we boycott companies,
known to be Trump supporters?
Should we cease our non-essential spending?
I’m not saying that we should,
but I’m saying that we can.
What else can we do?
What then must we do?
Why else I wrote the poem:
We must defend our people, all our peoples; our freedoms, all our freedoms. Our freedoms so many of our heroes died for, whom our president calls “suckers and losers,” must always be, especially now, must always be defended. As Americans are being targeted, harassed, arrested, teargassed, even killed on our own streets by masked, armed, militarized federal agents, licensed by an arm of our own government, at war with her own people, Trump continues to call his opposition, “the enemy within.” He says a day of reckoning is upon us. He says he hates his enemies.
Remember, always remember, the name, Renee Nicole Good. She was a mother, a wife, a poet, an American, a human being. She was one of us. She was not the enemy. She was no terrorist, domestic or otherwise. Pick up her torch, relight it, if it goes out. Carry it as long as you live, then pass it on before you leave. Remember, Renee’s final words she told the ICE officer, who would, in only moments, shoot her dead: “I am not mad at you.”