For Minneapolis, today

I don’t quite know what to do with myself right now. I am home, in a place that feels safe and a little removed from the violence of the world, getting ready to hunker down for the approaching storm. But the storm is already here. It’s been here since Inauguration Day, or maybe since Trump started separating children from their parents at the southern border, or maybe since the day he came down that damn escalator or called for the execution of five innocent Black teenagers. Or more accurately, the storm has always and forever been a part of what America is, and Trump is just the latest burst of lightning to further intensify already raging winds. The storm is in my home, brought to me by push notifications and social media reels, reminding me that the quiet of my street might not be there tomorrow.

I don’t know what to do with myself right now, so I will do the thing I return to when nothing else feels right. Find words. Try to find the right words.

And while I am writing this as the news still emerges of the latest shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis, there are themes. Patterns and themes and hard truths to name, especially in light of the misinformation campaign the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is already waging in service to justifying their wanton violence. I believe nothing they are telling us and my heart shatters into a million pieces knowing that the family of Alex Pretti will never be given the grace of a federal investigation into his death. Just like Renee Good’s family and Keith Porter’s family will never see their federal government take any responsibility or hold any curiosity about their deaths and how they might have been prevented.

I write this as Greg Bovino finishes a press conference claiming that Alex Pretti approached federal agents “violently with a 9mm handgun” though no one can see that on the video. That the agents had to defend themselves because Alex “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement”, though how in the world would he know that to be true. As Stephen Miller calls Alex an “assassin” and a “domestic terrorist”, setting a narrative about what happened that automatically makes the dead man into the villain and absolves the shooters of any potential responsibility whatsoever. A repeat of the demonizing of Renee Good and her wife that sends a clear message to federal agents holding hate in their hearts and guns in their hands: shoot first, and trust that we won’t be asking questions later. JD Vance claimed that Renee Good’s shooter had “absolute immunity”, something questioned by legal experts and lamented by me. But now does it even matter what the legal experts say, when five minutes after a shooting federal authorities turn cartwheels and engage in verbal calisthenics to defend your innocence? Federal agents are being handed a get out of jail free card from their bosses before they have even committed the crime. You know what that ensures? More crimes, more shootings, because they know there won’t be any accountability.

All this, the legacy of racist stand your ground laws and centuries of qualified immunity for law enforcement, projected at the speed of the bullets that killed Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti. Too many people told they have a right to shoot when they feel uncomfortable and they will be given cover. Too many people in uniform allowed to cause harm and hide behind the badge that protects them. All of it, playing out on the frozen streets of a city under siege.

I write this thinking about every damn thing — and there are so many damn things — over the past year that brought us to this very moment. I need to be very clear: none of the current violence would be happening if the federal government hadn’t decided to invade our cities in service to their war against Black and brown immigrants. There is no reason for federal agents to be in Minneapolis right now. None. White supremacy is at the root of this. I am thinking about DHS’ claim that Alex Pretti, a legal gun owner, was shot because he had a gun — not that we can see him brandishing anything but a phone on the multiple videos circulating on social media. And I am thinking about another legal gun owner who was also killed by law enforcement in Minnesota almost ten years ago — Philando Castile. How being a legal gun owner doesn’t protect you from being shot by authorities if you’re Black or seen as disloyal to an extremist political agenda. That too is rooted in white supremacy.

And as I still sit with the violent misogyny of Renee Good’s murder and the federal government’s response to it, I am struck by an important detail of today’s shooting. In the video, you can clearly see Alex Pretti get in between a woman and the federal agent who has just shoved her. He is then pepper sprayed and tackled, and of course we know what happens next. I have spent my adult years speaking to the need for more men to do something about violence against women. What I see with my own eyes is a man doing just that. A woman is assaulted by an agent of the state, and he steps in. Gets in the way. Doesn’t remain a bystander.

And now he is dead. Shot by a member of a federal agency that buys more and more guns to aid them in their campaign of terror against Black and brown immigrants and those who seek to protect them. Immigrants who too often leave their home countries fleeing violence perpetrated with guns that are trafficked from the United States, only to be hunted by federal agents armed with U.S. guns. Something I will continue to shout from my tiny rooftop: we cannot talk about immigration to the U.S. without talking about the role of U.S. guns.

I will finish with the same thing I said after Renee Good was murdered a few weeks ago. We will never be able to solve gun violence in the United States when the perpetrator of the gun violence is the government of the United States. We will never have safe communities when federal agents are running around them committing violence with impunity and without accountability. We will have no peace in this country when our own government is waging war against us. We know what keeps our communities safe. What happened today to Alex Pretti, and our government’s response to it, is exactly the opposite. We know what keeps our communities safe, and we have to be brave and keep building the world we want even as our own government tries to tear it down.

The storm is here. It’s been here all along, as the communities of color and native people who have always been targeted by our federal government will remind us. The storm is made even more ferocious by the violence of Trump and his cadre of abusers and chaos makers. But every time we build coalition, offer aid to those targeted, and create new systems of care, we open an umbrella against that storm. We need a lot of umbrellas right now. We have a lot of folks to protect right now as we also work to make broader change.

I needed to find some words today. Tomorrow, I will try to open another umbrella and do what I can to protect us from the storm.