I Am Good
An Affirmation Against the Trumpian Machinery of Cruel Power
‘‘The best way to fight evil is with good. Not loud good. Not performative good. The kind of good that stands still, tells the truth, and refuses to become what power demands.’’
The best way to fight evil is with good. That is not soft thinking. It is hard. It takes more courage to stand in the open with clean hands than to hide behind a badge, a gun, or a lie. Good does not shout. It does not need uniforms or slogans. It does not fear witnesses. Good simply is.
Yesterday, the state killed an innocent woman.
Renee Nicole Good was not a threat. She was not a criminal. She was not an enemy of the public. She was a citizen, a neighbor, a legal observer, a human being doing what democracies require if they are to remain alive. She watched power, because power must be watched. For that, she was shot and left to die in her own car on a residential street.
That is not law enforcement. That is murder.
The videos tell the truth. Power always hates video. Power hates witnesses. Power hates memory. In the footage, the car turns away. No officer is struck. No life is endangered except the woman behind the wheel. The shots come anyway. Three of them. Calm. Final. A choice made without fear, because fear would have required danger.
Then comes the second violence. The lie.
Officials rush to the microphones and the feeds. They say she was a rioter. They say she used her car as a weapon. They say an officer feared for his life. None of this is true. It does not matter. Authoritarian systems do not lie to convince. They lie to test obedience. They want to know who will surrender their eyes.
This is the method of the Trump regime. Flood the space with falsehood. Demand loyalty to it. Punish those who refuse. Call brutality safety. Call dissent terror. Call truth an attack. Repeat until people doubt themselves.
But it only works if we let it.
Renee Nicole Good is dead because this regime has normalized force without accountability. It has treated immigrants as enemies, observers as obstacles, and cities as stages for performance violence. It has sent armed men into communities not to keep peace, but to create spectacle. Fear is the point. Cameras are the prize.
This is not governance. It is domination theater.
When a state fears its own people, it reaches for weapons. When it fears the truth, it reaches for propaganda. When it fears goodness, it calls it weakness.
We must reject that lie completely.
Good is not passive. Good is not naive. Good stands still when power wants panic. Good looks directly at violence and names it. Good remembers the dead and refuses to let them be erased by press releases.
Renee Nicole Good’s name matters. Her life matters. Her death demands more than outrage. It demands clarity.
We condemn this killing without qualification. We condemn the system that made it possible. We condemn the policies that treat human beings as targets and witnesses as threats. We condemn the deliberate corrosion of law into force and force into virtue.
And we choose a different answer.
The strongest response to authoritarian cruelty is moral refusal. It is the steady, disciplined insistence on human dignity. It is the refusal to mirror their hatred. It is the decision to become what they cannot tolerate.
Good.
Say it plainly. Say it without irony. Say it without apology.
I am Good.
This is not a slogan. It is a line in the sand.
To say “I am Good” is to reject the lie that safety requires violence. It is to reject the lie that order requires terror. It is to reject the lie that obedience is patriotism.
“I am Good” means I will not accept murder dressed up as enforcement. It means I will not surrender my judgment to power. It means I will not look away when a neighbor is killed in the name of politics.
Good watches. Good records. Good shows up.
Good insists on investigation. Good demands accountability. Good protects the right to protest, to observe, to dissent. Good understands that democracy does not survive through force, but through restraint.
The Trump era has taught us something brutal and useful. Institutions do not save us if people abandon their conscience. Laws do not protect life if they are enforced without humanity. Flags do not sanctify cruelty.
Only people do.
Say the affirmation not as comfort, but as commitment.
I am Good, so I will tell the truth even when power lies.
I am Good, so I will stand with the vulnerable.
I am Good, so I will not confuse fear with authority.
I am Good, so I will remember Nicole Good.
They want us angry and reckless. They want us to be loud and easy to dismiss. They want chaos so they can justify control.
Do not give it to them.
Give them something they cannot command and cannot destroy.
Give them goodness. Clear. Public. Unyielding.
Renee Nicole Good did her part by showing up. We do ours by refusing to forget, refusing to obey lies, and refusing to become what killed her.
I am Good.
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well, I am Good too, but by recent polls 1/3 of voters are bad, 1/3 indifferent, and 1/3 who knows.
I am reminded of the Chinese finger trap puzzle — the more you resist the trap, the more forcefully it seizes you.
So the affirmation of ‘I am good’ statements may help protestors & immigrant supporters to remain calm & focused on higher human realities when encountering LE authorities.
Today’s protesters may also find it helpful to consider how Black children - esp boys - are given ‘The TALK’ at a certain age, on how to react when (not if) they are unfairly accosted by Law enforcement. 🔹 “Keep your hands in sight, no sudden moves, restate what you understand their instructions to mean & what you are doing to comply with them” etc.
— Why? because ‘illegal immigrants’ are today’s new ‘Blacks’, according to the way Trump & his admin wish to regard & treat them. And your life - esp in that moment of danger - is more important than ‘exercising your rights’.
This young woman was apparently White, and perhaps reacted as justified in exercising her rights as a free citizen to come & go - failing to appropriately appreciate that Trump’s new goon squad has been trained to consider immigrants (& associates) as illegals & even subhuman, undeserving of due process — they are the virtual ‘enemy’ in the Trump sphere.
A 50 K signing bonus & forgiveness of student of debt etc confirms to ICE enforcers their
a) indebtedness / fealty to Trump(ism), b) superior social status vs their victims.
It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is for the time being. It’s going to be a long journey back to ‘normal & fair’.
https://www.visaverge.com/news/what-to-know-4-ways-ice-is-expanding-training-and-recruitment/
🔹 HSISAT (HSI Special Agent Training) — Duration: 13 weeks 🔹
“Focus: core law enforcement skills, investigative techniques, case development, and operational readiness”