A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #1-26 - Rushing into the abyss. The killing of Renee Good: the face of Trumpism (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A whistle, then another, and another: ICE has arrived. Then comes the 
long explosion: whoops! ICE has taken someone. ---- These are the codes 
that immigrant response groups are using to alert their neighbors and 
coworkers when ICE is spotted and kidnaps someone. ---- Federal agents 
are armed like military guns. Against them, ordinary people have 
whistles, boundless courage, and the acronym S.A.L.U.T.E. for the 
information they need to gather: the size of the federal agent 
deployments, the actions they are taking, the specific location, the 
uniforms they are wearing, the weather and equipment, or the type of 
weapons.

During training sessions held across the country, responders simulate 
how to show solidarity with immigrants and overcome fear to challenge 
terror. Grassroots activism and direct action have played a fundamental 
role in the popular history of the United States, a history of struggles 
that led to the abolition of slavery, secured the freedom to organize 
unions, and won civil liberties.

Thirty-seven-year-old Renee Nicole Good was a champion of solidarity and 
the fight for freedom. Like countless other Americans from all walks of 
life, she served as the eyes and ears of her Latino and Somali 
neighbors, alerting them to the presence of ICE and other federal agents.

Good, a mother of three, was part of an informal emergency response 
group, ICE Watch, made up of parents from her son's private school. "She 
was trained on how to deal with these ICE agents: what to do, what not 
to do, it's very thorough training," one parent told the New York Post, 
a conservative tabloid that tried to paint her activism in a negative 
light. "Listen to the signs, know your rights, whistle when you see an 
ICE agent."

The Trump administration has labeled Renee Nicole Good a "domestic 
terrorist." But people who knew Good described her as an avowed 
Christian, the widow of a veteran, a queer woman, a singer, and a poet. 
"What I saw in her work was a writer who was trying to illuminate the 
lives of others," said one teacher, describing her interest in the lives 
of seniors, veterans, and people from different countries and eras.

Like many of us who lead busy lives but find time to be around others, 
she had accompanied her six-year-old son to school shortly before ICE 
killed her. A three-angle analysis of video footage by The New York 
Times shows Good appearing to drive her SUV away from federal agents as 
ICE Agent Jonathan Ross walks in front of the vehicle. Ross then fires 
three shots at point-blank range into the vehicle, killing her in broad 
daylight not far from her home, as seen in the footage.

Her partner was at the scene with her. "On Wednesday, January 7th, we 
stopped to help our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns," Rebecca 
Good said in a statement on Friday. "We raised our son to teach him 
that, regardless of where you come from or what you look like, everyone 
deserves compassion and kindness."

Last September, chef Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was shot and killed 
during a traffic stop in Chicago, shortly after dropping his two 
children off at daycare, while allegedly attempting to flee. Farmworker 
Jaime Alanís García broke his neck in July when he fell from the roof of 
a greenhouse in Ventura County, California, while trying to escape 
pursuit by ICE agents. He died after being hospitalized. Thirty-two 
people have died in ICE custody in 2025-the deadliest year for the 
agency, now transformed into a paramilitary force, since its founding in 
2003.

Unlike Villegas-Gonzalez and Garcia, both immigrant workers from Latin 
America, Good was a white US citizen. She shouldn't have been on the 
list of people ICE brutalized with impunity because of their origin or 
immigration status. But she refused to stand by and protect her 
neighbors. She wasn't required to take sides, but she did. In fact, some 
members of her family would have preferred she not to.

We often say that solidarity is a very important practice, and Good took 
action, exercising the rights we all have, regardless of immigration 
status, to document violent police activity and to express our opinions.

A union activist linked his solidarity action to labor struggles. "In 
our union, we have a tradition of wearing red every Thursday to honor a 
very special CWA (Communications Workers of America) member, Gerry 
Horgan, who was killed while exercising his fundamental right to strike 
and picket. Just like Gerry, Renee Nicole Good was killed while 
exercising her right to express herself and stand in solidarity with her 
community, a right that should be protected by the Constitution."

We are what we do. If the choice we face is between Good and ICE, the 
people of Minneapolis choose Good. An estimated 10,000 people attended a 
candlelight vigil on January 7th to honor his life.

The violence unleashed by the Trump administration on US soil will fail 
to achieve its stated goals.

No figure in the US administration has ever wielded as much power as 
Stephen Miller, Trump's Homeland Security Advisor. He wields 
extraordinary authority over an unusually broad swath of government, 
from immigration to criminal justice to even military operations on 
American soil. Much of what characterizes the Trump era-masked 
kidnappings on the streets of the United States, clashes between ICE 
enforcers and protesters, military patrols on the streets of the United 
States-was Miller's doing.

Yet, now that we are a year into President Trump's second term, it is 
clear that, in many important respects, Miller is failing to realize his 
most elaborate authoritarian plans. Deportations are far behind his 
expectations. He has failed to convince Trump to wield the dictatorial 
power he so desires. And he has unleashed a cultural movement in defense 
of immigrants that is more powerful than he anticipated.

Miller's dream of 3,000 daily arrests remains just that: a dream. Miller 
hopes to deport a million people a year, but at the current rate, he 
won't come close to achieving that. While the administration is still 
increasing ICE staffing, and deportations may increase, many experts 
expect Miller to fall far short of the target of one million 
deportations per year throughout Donald Trump's term.

But the US government's goal goes beyond the number of deportations.

Many sectors of industry would be in trouble if the government actually 
went ahead with its announced mass deportations. The hunt for migrants 
and the brutal and arbitrary manner in which it is carried out (migrant 
arrests are made in front of cameras as if to publicize their 
dangerousness) seems designed to spread fear and divide the working 
class. Fear (of migrants, of crime, of violence, of minorities, of the 
poor, of moral decay, and more) is constantly stoked and juxtaposed with 
the reassuring image of the confident, powerful leader and his team of 
fearless warriors. The Trump administration is spreading fear 
everywhere. Among the general population, to instill fear of an outsider 
infiltrating the national community, who will suffer the fate of the 
scapegoat, and by persecuting this scapegoat, the majority of the 
population is united by fear on common ground. This creates a false 
community and avoids the danger of a unified working class.

The experience of Nazism in Germany shows us how important the process 
of excluding an internal scapegoat is in forging the Volksgemeinschaft, 
the community of the people. What the Trump administration is waging is 
an ideological battle to create a national community, a 
Volksgemeinschaft willing to fight and die for capital. It is an attack 
on the working class's drive for unity and autonomy, a fundamental 
element of preparation for war, which is not just military preparation, 
but above all an attack on antimilitarist and internationalist forces.

In the face of the administration's arrogance and march to war, it's 
encouraging to see how quickly spontaneous and intense reactions to ICE 
raids have emerged in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Neighborhood 
organizing (alerting a network of solidarity activists when ICE agents 
enter an area) has also spread across cities. Renee Good's murder itself 
is a product of the government's reaction to this grassroots 
mobilization, while the reactions it has provoked in so many American 
cities testify to the depth of the movement.

The Trump administration uses any pretext to expand its repressive 
measures and accustom the population to the military's presence in the 
streets. This, too, is preparation for war. Trump has said that big 
cities would be good training grounds for the military. He is convinced 
that a terrible repression will enthuse his MAGA army and intimidate his 
opponents. It is nation-building to save Western civilization. 
Meanwhile, that civilization is producing the AI bubble, the 
cryptocurrency bubble, shadow banking, and many other phenomena leading 
to the abyss. Trump could be the Hoover, the Republican president of the 
1929 crisis, of our time. But it was Hoover's "progressive" successor, 
Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who proved to be the greatest 
obstacle to the growth of the proletariat's autonomous class consciousness.

Avis Everhard

https://umanitanova.org/corsa-verso-labisso-luccisione-di-renee-good-il-volto-del-trumpismo/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en