By Richard Mellor
The completely unprovoked killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis has created a storm of protest in the USA. Good spoke to an ICE agent, “calmly” and said “everything was ‘fine’ and ‘I’m not mad at you’” before slowly driving away and only seconds before she was shot. The following is from the Facebook feed of Richard Mellor in California
Today, Jan 7th 2025, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old US citizen and legal observer, on a residential street in south Minneapolis. I posted videos on my FB page as have others, that contradicts the Trump Administration’s claims of self-defense, showing agents approaching her vehicle and firing within seconds as she attempted to drive away.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, having reviewed the footage, called the federal narrative “bullshit” and described the killing as “an agent recklessly using power.”
This is not an isolated incident. It represents a dangerous threshold in the current administration’s escalation of federal power against communities, carried out by over 2,000 agents deployed to Minneapolis under “Operation Metro Surge.” What happened to Renee Good exposes the inherent violence of this administration’s policies, but it is not just Trump, he is a result of the crisis of capitalism, a system that prioritises profits and enforcement over human life.
This killing must be understood within a broader context. The capitalist system generates crises that ruling elites manage through coercion and increased repression. When capitalism enters crisis, when it fails to provide security, healthcare, housing, and dignified work, those in power deflect blame onto vulnerable populations—immigrants, refugees, and working communities—while expanding the coercive apparatus of the state.
This is what these events represent. As I have stated before, we can thank Trump for pulling the mask off. Does anyone actually believe Biden or Obama wouldn’t have done the same with regard to Venezuela? Biden put a $20mn dollar bounty on Maduro’s head, as he was hugging the war criminal Netanyahu and calling him a friend. Biden laid waste to Gaza.
ICE deployment is not about ‘public safety’
The deployment of thousands of federal agents to cities like Minneapolis isn’t about public safety. It’s about demonstrating state power, intimidating communities, and normalizing paramilitary-style operations in residential neighbourhoods; in short, it’s an escalation of the class war.
The killing of Renee Good shows where this logic leads: federal agents operating with impunity, claiming self-defense while video shows otherwise, protected by an administration and Congress that calls community resistance “domestic terrorism.”
We are in a new era. The old world order is breaking down and the UN, formed after WW2 to prevent another world war is a toothless institution, The US, a declining world power, is the most destabilising, violent force on the planet; it has the most powerful military and nuclear arsenal. I think we will see Greenland taken at some point, barring any serious mass movement from below.
The US working class is the only force that can drive this offensive back, but we are starting from a low bar. We have no political party of our own and the present leaders of organised labour at the national level are incapable at this point of leading any opposition at all.
They are held back by their own view of the world that aligns with the ruling class. They see no alternative to capitalism and the so-called free market as the answer to all things; so when capitalism enters crisis they move to bail it out at the expense of their own members and the working class as a whole.
We have no alternative to fight.
[Text from Richard Mellor’s Facebook feed, feature photograph from Bluesky]
