To witness.
News weeks like this it’s like spitting in the wind.
Immediate. Excruciating yet essential.
With all-too-many echoes.
on today’s title-topic
As for many or most of us, since Wednesday morning newShrink plans, focus and attention are on tragedy in Minnesota and unfolding aftermath across our nation. Unlike in previous years some readers may recall, there was to be no focus on cross-cultural traditions and myths on Epiphany (the 12th Night completion of Christmas on the Christian liturgical calendar) — or commemoration of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol five years ago.
The earlier plan was to introduce broadly the phenomenon of epiphanies as a way to think and talk periodically about overarching, cross-cultural, archetypal themes when they show up in newShrink news and issues. On a psychologically themed post on today’s title topic, for example, it would be subtitled and numbered, something like ‘26 epiphany #1: To witness.
More on this to come in later newShrinks, in less intensely charged news-weeks. (Should we ever have any of those.)
One more disclaimer: Today’s post is likely to have a patchwork quality and may or may not be cohesive. It’s one of those coming to life spontaneously, with so much material touching so many levels. Maybe that’s a quality or cue that intentional witnessing approach is needed.
🔵
Just before compiling today’s edition, this strangely apt (and rather strange) little piece showed up:
Rumi
In a dream I asked him
what can I do
if I can’t change it?
And he pointed to the graves
and whispered witness it.
— by a Harvard grad poet I never read or heard of, Joseph Fasano. The poem is titled and about (not by) Rumi.
🔵
First, facts (to the extent they are discernible, valued and relevant)
For the first day/night account, for measured tone, thoroughness, context and attribution I have to recommend Heather Cox Richardson among multiple news organizations’ credible accounts.
You can browse to her or read on the substack app.
#1. Letters from an American, January 7, 2026
This morning, a federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she was driving away from ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Minneapolis leaders, Good was a legal observer: a volunteer trained to observe police conduct in case of future legal action…
In similarly factual form Richardson details reported, attributed early accounts from video and witnesses on-site — where no administration officials were before or after issuing sweeping, false accounts.
On the Trump Administration’s official pronouncements on the case.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insists that its actions are protecting American citizens from “the worst of the worst” criminal immigrants, so the shooting of a young white woman, the mother of a young child, and how that would look, made it appear eager to smear Good.
It immediately put out a statement that looked much like what it said after officers shot 30-year-old Chicago teaching assistant Marimar Martinez in October when it claimed she had “ambushed” agents, ramming their vehicle before an agent shot her five times. Footage showed that, in fact, the agents had rammed her car, and after the shooting one had sent a text message bragging: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” The Department of Justice dropped the charges it had filed against her, asking a judge to “dismiss the indictment and exonerate” Martinez and her passenger.
Today, DHS posted on social media that “ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life and that of his fellow officers. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. This is the direct consequence of constant attacks and demonization of our officers by sanctuary politicians who fuel and encourage rampant assaults on our law enforcement who are facing 1,300% increase in assaults against them and an 8,000% increase in death threats.”
Trump jumped in with his own fact-free post lying that the shooter had been run over: “I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot at her in self defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe that he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
That both DHS and Trump posted false accounts of the shooting even as there are four videos circulating that reveal those accounts to be lies shows they no longer are making any attempt to justify their actions. Instead, they are demanding Americans abandon reality in favor of whatever the administration says. If this works, it would be a demonstration of totalitarian power, the ability to control how people think. Accepting that lie is a loyalty test.
But it is not working…
🔵
As HCR’s matter-of-fact statements and many others illustrate, seldom in memory have official, very public and repeated lies been so bold and blatant that not naming them as such becomes tainted and dishonest. More than a few times a very old exclamation has flowed naturally in broadcasts from staid professionals and elected officials:
“Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own [lying*] eyes?”
This is the 1933, earliest known version of the expression. It’s from Chico Marx, impersonating the Groucho Marx character Rufus T. Firefly. He’s sticking to his denial when confronted with damning evidence by Mrs. Teasdale, who’d protested, “But I saw you with my own eyes!”
[*The more commonly quoted, “lying eyes,” came decades later, then was popularized by the late comedian Richard Preyor in his 1982 film performance, Live on the Sunset Strip.]
🔵
Also regarding this essential process of collective witnessing underway, here is a posted wise and thoughtful take on “both sides,” from Justin Perry. Justin’s one of my favorite long-time virtual, local Charlotte friends — whom I have never actually met IRL. In his own words Justin is a “Husband. Father. Therapist. Community Activist. Passionate lover of sports, people, and progress.” (I would add, Pretty Rabid Tar Heel and Compelling Thinker & Writer.)
🔵
#2. Context & sequence
Here’s a range of thorough coverage and analysis — including video sequencing from different angles that challenge and remind us of the need to slow down, look closely and put ourselves, our embodied selves not just soundbite ideas or labels, into the scene and action.
Here is where witnessing both requires and helps us develop empathy. That emphasis on being able to empathize with others and on what we experience with our own bodies (including their emotions) is why even in the therapeutic context I prefer witnessing awareness to the “headier” term mindfulness. (For most people in Western culture that wrongly includes only thinking, separate from the body.)
This and a couple of the other move-by-move analyses from different angles are approached from a witnessing perspective.
3 Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis (The New York Times)
An analysis of footage from three camera angles show that the vehicle appears to be turning away from a federal officer as he opened fire.
(Highlights from the video transcript — embedded in the video link)
..[O]ur analysis of bystander footage, filmed from different angles, appears to show the agent was not in the path of the victim’s SUV when he fired three shots at close range…
…The driver (Renee Good) rolls forward slightly, turning left, then stops and waves for others to go ahead…
…[from the most revealing of the 3 video angles — and the 4th one released separately on a conservative news outlet Friday.]:
… Let’s look at the scene again more closely. This is the agent who shoots the driver. He walks around the car filming and disappears from view. Other agents pull up and order the driver to exit her vehicle. One of them grabs at the door handle and reaches inside. The SUV reverses, then turns right, apparently attempting to leave. At the same time, the agent filming crosses toward the left of the vehicle and grabs his gun. He opens fire on the motorist and continues shooting as the car moves past. The moment the agent fires, he is standing here to the left of the SUV and the wheels are pointing to the right away from the agent. This appears to conflict with allegations that the SUV was ramming or about to ram the officer.
Renee Nicole Good said ‘I’m not mad at you’ before ICE agent shot her, video shows
(The Guardian)
Clip first posted by partisan outlet Alpha News shows perspective of ICE agent as Good was fatally shot
Frame by frame analysis of Alpha News video released Friday is reportedly from ICE agent’s point of view. It more thoroughly profiles Good, with statements from her wife and wide range of family, friends, former professors and colleagues who knew her over decades. Some well attributed facts about her:
Good was earlier married to ex-husband in Colorado, widely quoted here and elsewhere, who is the father of her older two children. He and others describe her devout Christian faith, caretaking-kindness and strengths as a mother. Several say she’s never been an activist protestor.
She later had moved and had made her home over several years in Kansas City, Missouri. There she had remarried. Her second husband, an Iraq war veteran who suffered from PTSD, died at age 36.
Former longtime neighbors in Kansas City and her wife/now widow, Rebecca Good, describe how increasingly red Missouri became less warmly inclusive for same-sex couples and families like theirs beginning with the 2016 first election of Donald Trump. Wanting the best possible community and life with their son reaching school-age, they had relocated to Minnesota this past year.
Per accounts from Rebecca Good and several others, as well as her presence on one video, Renee Good and Rebecca had just dropped off their son at school. They’d stopped at the ICE protest as part of their volunteer training. Being done in very disciplined, systematic program across the nation now — in cities like Charlotte back in November — this aims at de-escalation skills, keeping immigrant neighbors safe and ensuring ICE actions are lawful.
The agent’s video focus and reference to the Good vehicle’s (out-of-state) license tag immediately became “paid-outside-agitator” propaganda at the very highest tiers of U.S. government. Far more (tragically) mundane, logical and likely, in early months of a big relocation the couple’s focus and time had been on getting their son settled in school and their family in a home community. Re-registering vehicles for most of us would wait until the next annual renewal date.
.
Visual Forensics from The Washington Post
Video shows ICE agent in Minneapolis fired at driver as vehicle veered past him (WAPO)
An analysis of video footage raises questions about claims by President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem about the fatal shooting in Minneapolis.
.
And here is another view of this series of events over days from abroad, along with the above account from The Guardian, here from the BBC.
Minneapolis shooting latest: Protests after woman killed by ICE agent
🔵
which moves us more generally to
#3. Responses & aftermath
Here I found the Philadelphia Inquirer’s overall editorial an excellent capture of what’s unfolding in Minnesota and other blue states and cities nationwide.
The killing of Renee Nicole Good and the moral rot of Trump's reckless immigration enforcement plan
.
Another, larger protest in my hometown is scheduled today — joining the many regular pop-up No Kings and Free Speech protests happening every week around town.
Hundreds protest in Charlotte after woman fatally shot in Minneapolis by ICE agent (The Charlotte Observer)
.
In an immediately penned poem posted on X, Renee Nicole Good is memorialized in verse by former Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman. You may remember her poise and compelling poem at the 2021 Inauguration of Joe Biden
And for a closing note of wisdom, hope and laugh-aloud wit, there can only be Anne Lamott…
#4. …“Pat Buchanan without the charm…”
…It felt like we were in free fall. How would we even go on? How do we come through this, fight back, and not give up on this country, on democracy, on the preciousness of life? Where would we even start?
I said to everyone who called what I always say: We breathe, take care of the suffering and poor, including ourselves, donate whatever we can afford. We get outside and look around at the miracle. Praying people pray.
And for me, most of all, we set Stephen Miller as our North Star: Every day we think of one thing we can do that would make his head ache.
(Do I think he is the anti-Christ? I don’t know; I’m a drop out. It’s just that I don’t think the anti-Christ would wear his belt up so high. He’s Pat Buchanan, without the charm. And maybe this is harsh and beneath a nice Sunday School teacher like myself, but I am not sure he is Trump’s best conduit.)…
🔵
Then there actually is more light: Each day’s definitely longer and brighter — at both ends.
Here was a brilliant full moon-set last week — still visible long after daybreak.
And, that is all I have. Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
🔵