The Cost of Staying Human
Remarks from a vigil for Renee Nicole Good
Tonight, I was honored to speak at a vigil for Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier today. Over 200 people gathered in Winnemac Park on Chicago’s North Side. Many of those in attendance are part of ICE Watch and Rapid Response efforts in the area. It was cold, and the planning was last-minute, but in this moment, many of us felt a profound need to be together. The event was organized by the Ward 40+ Community Response Team and was one of several held across Chicagoland tonight.
I have been asked to publish my remarks from the event. You can find them below.
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Greetings friends,
I’m Kelly Hayes. I’ve been organizing for justice for years in this city, and I’ve had the honor of working and thinking alongside many of you in recent months as we’ve held our ground in defense of our neighbors. We are gathered here tonight in the cold, among people of conscience, among neighbors who see themselves in the person who was gunned down in Minneapolis today. She was 37 years old and her name was Renee Nicole Good. She was the mother of a six-year-old child. Her mother described her as “loving, forgiving and affectionate,” and called her “an amazing human being.”
We grieve for Renee, her family, and her community, but even before we knew anything about Renee — including her name — many of us were shaken by her violent death, because a moment that feels inevitable can still be shocking.
Even though we know ICE has killed before — and will again — even though they shot a woman in Chicago and told lies like the lies they are telling now, even though they are fascist purveyors of violence — their brutality has not hardened or corrupted us. We are still shaken and heartbroken by their violence. That is the cost of staying human in inhuman times — and it’s a cost we pay in defense of our neighbors and in defense of our own humanity. We feel what they would have us ignore, and we grieve the violence that their cultish followers applaud.
There is power in grief, because grief draws us together in moments when our enemies would tear us apart. Trump, Miller, Bovino, and DHS want us to believe their violence is inevitable. They want it to become the background noise of our lives — not something we respond to with love, tears, and action. They want us to give up on what the world could be, abandon our decency, and abandon each other. They want us to submit to their violence, and to accept that the cost of disrupting their attacks on our communities is death. And if we refuse to forget our neighbors — if we refuse to become dead inside — they want us to live in fear. They want us terrorized, afraid to show up for each other the way the people of Minneapolis have shown up — and the way Chicago has shown up.
And while this violence didn’t occur in our city, we know what it’s like to have their guns drawn on us. We understand the terror Minneapolis is facing, and we feel their loss deeply. A federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. And with that shot, ICE took aim at every city where people have dared to organize against their violence, every place where neighbors have chosen each other over fear. But people of conscience will not be cowed. Today, I saw our siblings in struggle in Minneapolis chanting, “You can’t kill us all.”
I am grateful to the people of Minneapolis tonight. Their courage in the wake of this violence is a bright light for us to rally around. They have mobilized — just as we have mobilized — to protect one another, to love one another, and to tell ICE to get the fuck out of their communities. And what they have found together — what we have found together, what so many communities have found together through collective efforts to create as much safety and justice as possible — will not be destroyed by acts of violence and repression.
They want us to scatter in fear, to give up hope, and to give up on each other. But we will hold more tightly to one another, plan more strategically, and care even more deeply. We will resist the normalization of their violence, the immobilization of fear, and the sense of inevitability they would impose upon us. We will do what our courageous friends in Minneapolis have done today. We will be a light to all those who resist — to those forced to hide or live in fear, to those who want to love and practice care bravely. We will be a reminder of what people can do when they refuse to give up, and when they refuse to give up on each other.
I also want to urge us to exercise caution about the language we use in these times. I have heard too many people echo talking points about how poorly trained these fascist kidnappers and murderers are — and I want us to stop and think about that for a moment. Complaining about poorly trained kidnappers and killers. What do we want? Greater professionalism in the violence they perpetrate, or an end to that violence? Polishing impunity only comforts the unaffected. It’s true that many federal agents are sloppy and unprepared, but years of organizing against police violence have taught me that more training doesn’t stop violence. It just makes the death-making more respectable and more expensive. Piling on more money to further professionalize the people committing state violence doesn’t change the core dynamics: what they’re there to do, who they target, and what they can get away with doing. At least 35 people died in ICE custody last year. That is not a failure of training. That is the manufacturing of premature death. And what we want is an end to that violence — however it’s dealt out, however it’s dressed up, however it’s defended.
We will not get through this by demanding that the system simply operate more smoothly, nor should we demand a return to the status quo. We are not here to ask for a gentler boot on our neighbors’ necks. Nor are we in search of a detour back to the road that brought us here. We are here to say no — no to the kidnapping of our neighbors, no to the normalization of fascist violence. We are here because our love and decency are stronger than our fears, and because we know we will find courage in each other.
It’s often said that none of us has to ask what we would have done had we lived during some past moment of historic injustice, because you are doing it right now. That statement is often framed as an admonition. I say it here tonight in thanks and in praise. You are already doing it.
So let’s stay brave, stay committed, and stay together. We will remember the fallen, fight like hell for the living, and when this terrible moment is over, we will still have each other, our potential, and the hope of building a better world.
