It's Everyone's Fight
On the aftermath of Renee Nicole Good's Murder
I wish I could say it was just Tennessee. After all, we tend to end up on the news for the wrong reasons. Expelling two young black legislators from the state house for speaking up after a horrific shooting for example. It feels like every time my state makes national news it’s for something terrible. Either terrible people being terrible or else a natural disaster.
So when a local news station covered the story of Renee Nicole Good’s murder this week, I wish all the terrible comments underneath were just Tennessee. But I know better. This disease isn’t limited to just one state, just one part of our so-called union. The number of people who are fine with those they’ve deemed “other” being executed in the street by anyone they deem legitimate is appalling.
I learned this lesson the hard way in 2012 when George Zimmerman got exonerated for murdering Trayvon Martin. As a youth minister, all I could see when I saw Trayvon’s picture was one of my kids, walking along, looking forward to a snack at home, only to be murdered for the crime of existing while black, wearing a hoodie to keep his head warm on a chilly February day, chilly by Florida standards anyway. It seemed so straightforward to me that Zimmerman was guilty. His acquittal shook me to my core and woke me up. I’d been lulled to sleep by all the pretty lies told by our nation meant to make sure I never saw the reality. Pretty lies of liberty and justice for all were rightly shattered in that moment, and I’ve discovered since there seems to be no end to learning the truth. It’s not terribly difficult to find as it turns out, it just takes a lot of time to peel back the whitewashing of history at literally every turn and find out what really happened.
And now a white woman was shot in broad daylight by a federal officer. She was unarmed. She had just dropped her child off at school. Apparently her last words were, “It’s okay, dude, I’m not mad at you,” with a video still capturing a nervous smile, right before the ICE agent stepped in front of her car, and opened fire through her window.
And so the outrage began. Good’s murder was captured from multiple angles on video, witnesses who refused to step down, refused to stop recording, even in the face of such horrific violence. ICE was responsible for the deaths of thirty-two people in 2025, and while there have been widespread protests against them, and widespread denunciations of them over all, I have yet to see this much spontaneous outrage as I have over Good’s shooting.
Now I’m not trying to downplay this at all; it is truly terrible. But if they will shoot a white woman in her face in broad daylight surrounded by cameras, what have they been doing to the brown and black folks they’ve rounded up and disappeared? People whose families and lawyers can’t find them because they’ve been moved so rapidly from one detention center to another. I can almost guarantee that there’s been more than thirty-two people who have died in ICE custody. Since July of 2025, there have been sixteen shootings by ICE, with four people killed and seven injured. The day after Good’s murder, two more people were injured by an ICE shooting in Portland. Luis David Nino-Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras were shot by ICE on Friday after an incident where ICE and Portland law enforcement claim they “weaponized their vehicle.” Except this time there were no cameras. And since they tried the same line about Good even with ample video evidence to refute it, I’m skeptical, to say the least. The DOJ policy on the use of force stipulates that “Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, the firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in such a manner that threatens death or serious physical injury… and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle” (emphasis added).
Thursday’s shooting of Renee Good was notable in how well-documented it was, showing just how egregious the violence from our government truly is. I cannot stress enough that I’m not attempting to downplay what happened, but I need to stress as well that this is actually not really “new.” It’s just the latest iteration of state-sanctioned violence against minorities and their white allies. White and black folks alike were beaten, injured, and killed during the civil rights movement. Read for example about Viola Luizzo, who saw the civil rights movement as “everybody’s fight.” She drove from her home in Detroit to take part in the march from Selma to Montgomery. She was shuttling marchers, most of them black, after the march when a carload of Klan members spotted her with a black man in her passenger seat. For this she was murdered, and her killers were acquitted. After her funeral, Klansmen in Detroit burned a cross on her lawn where her five children were mourning the loss of their mother.
It’s never been as many white folks as people of color, but it has happened before and will happen again. I highlight Viola next to Renee because she immediately came to mind when I’d heard what happened in Minneapolis this week. Both shot in a car while trying to be allies, while trying to stand up for justice. I highlight them because we know their names, and we don’t know the names of everyone else killed in the civil rights movement, or who have been killed by ICE in our day. We know their names because they were white women.
The violence that immigrant communities face now, that people of color have always faced in this country, isn’t so readily extended to white folks. It’s part of the shiny lie that these folks must have done something to deserve the violence, that good, law-abiding citizens (read that as white people), don’t have to worry about such things. And yet violence once it’s let out, just spreads and spreads. The first ICE shooting in Trump’s second term was just six months ago and now there have been sixteen. Once the restraint is broken, more officers will be empowered to react with increasing levels of force. Just a few months ago Stephen Miller went on national TV and claimed that federal officers have immunity for their actions. And even though that’s not true, it does seem to be the way it’s going for Jonathan Ross, who murdered a woman for perceived disrespect. Instead of investigating him, federal resources are being directed towards trying to smear his victim.
Again, we’ve seen this happen before, many times. It’s again notable in this case because he shot a white woman. The cowboy individualism of white supremacy usually includes the so-called protection of white women. This involves framing men of color as rapists and therefore dangerous. It’s actually never really been about the protection of white women, rather white women have been used as a weapon, often with their consent and complicity, against men of color.
If these events this week shocked you in the sense that you were surprised, it’s time to follow that shock down the rabbit hole, unplug from the matrix, pop the bubble of pretty lies, and discover that white womanhood has never been the defense you may have thought it was. It will only protect us in so far as we allow ourselves to be used as tools of oppression. White male patriarchy and supremacy has never had our best interests at heart. It has always been using us. It’s time to for our bubble to pop. We can’t let the pretty lies lull us back to sleep. Everything is at stake.
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“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributor to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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Well said Anna!👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾