As a life-long conflict avoider, it’s unnerving for me to put myself in a position where it’s likely others will disagree with me. I’m a people-pleaser. I never want to rock the boat.

This is not me trying to get an “atta, girl” from you, my patient readers and friends, but this past Sunday, Mr. NOA and I participated in a rally to protest the infiltration of federal ICE agents in Minneapolis. There are many people, some whom I know and love, who don’t “get” why I participate in these things. And truthfully, I don’t actually want to participate in these rallies and protests. Because I don’t want there to be a reason in this country, the “land of the free”, to have to do so in the first place.

Yet I must bear witness.

When the first Trump administration began separating children from their parents at the southern border of Mexico, and putting these children into detention facilities (many are still there, a truly disgusting fact), I began praying that these kids would be reunited with their families again, ASAP. I imagined my daughter at the time, who was in her mid-twenties, a mom to our beautiful grandson, and in a very challenging marital situation. I imagined her being in a foreign country where she and her son’s life was in danger due to rampant violence by members of a drug cartel. How I would support her fleeing that country to come to America where she and her son could be safe. And then when they got across the border, after a harrowing journey, feeling weak and cold and hungry-having my grandson taken from her and put in a detention facility where he knows noone and there is nobody who can tell him when (or if) his mom was coming to get him. The cruelty is astounding to me. It’s un-American, inhumane, and it fills me with rage.

The murder of Renee Good, a mother of three, only 4 years older than my daughter, by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, fills me with rage and breaks my heart at the same time. To add insult to injury, the responses of some of my fellow Americans to this event have been quite disappointing. The amount of folks driving by as we waved and held signs opposing this administration and it’s American Gestapo, ICE, who flipped us the bird, was shocking to me. It did give us a little satisfaction, however, when a cop pulled over a speeding driver who was clearly attempting to use his speed and truck tires to splash slop on us on that bridge connecting Wisconsin to Minnesota last Sunday. The comment sections on social media regarding this crime was largely disappointing as well. People stating their belief that Renee Good was attempting to run over the ICE officer as she turned her SUV’s tires to the right, away from the officer. People believing she got what she had coming to her. Seriously? Like, the officer couldn’t have simply shot out her tires to stop her from using her vehicle as a weapon? It makes no sense.

May the Universe bless Minneapolis, and may we summon our better angels as a collective. May there be justice for Renee. I know in my heart that we can do better than this.