In tragedy and grief, sometimes the smallest details sear themselves in our minds. I can’t stop thinking about Renee Good’s knit cap.
Two days after an ICE officer fatally shot Good on January 7, a video was released of his cell phone footage, showing Good in her SUV right before her death. She was dressed in a hoodie, plaid shirt-jacket, and knit cap. It’s an outfit that a not-insignificant portion of the country’s queer women (and some cishet ones, too) wear at this time of year. I have such garb myself, and I’d gotten my own spouse a knit cap for the holidays. The outfit is common enough that it wasn’t a huge coincidence—but somehow, the very ordinariness of Good’s attire, and the similarity to our own, struck me like a gut punch. Or maybe I’m thinking of her cap so I don’t have to think about her child’s stuffed animals spilling out of the glove box, next to the bloody airbag.
I began to wonder, too, how much Good’s androgynous, queer-coded outfit, and that of her similarly clad and more masculine-presenting wife, had to do with the ICE officer’s actions. If Good had been dressed and coifed as she was in another photo that is circulating, with a strapless dress, flowing hair, and makeup, would he have shot her? If she had been with a man and not a woman, would he have shot her? Is her death in part another awful consequence of the administration’s insistence that there are only two genders, creating hostility to those who blur those boundaries even sometimes? We may never know the answers for certain, but we should consider the questions.
It is important to recognize, of course, that the shooting of Good, a White woman, is only one of many by ICE officers, and that most, if not all, of the other shootings (and deaths in ICE detention) have been of people of color, particularly Latine people. (See The Guardian, 1/4/2026, and NBC News, 1/16/2026.) That makes Good’s death no less a tragedy, and if it is what finally galvanizes the country against ICE’s overreach, so be it—but we should be just as outraged at ICE’s ongoing assaults on people of color, who remain the focus of the organization’s activities. We must work to end injustice everywhere, whether it is aimed at those who reflect our own identities or at those from whom we differ. We still all share a common humanity.
It is hard to find hope in a time like this, but I am trying. I have been heartened by the $1.5 million raised through a GoFundMe campaign for the Good family—and by the fact that the organizers have now ended the campaign, wanting any additional money to go elsewhere. They said on the campaign’s webpage that they will place the funds in a trust for the family, but “If you’re looking to donate, we encourage you to support others in need.”
I am inspired by the people who have turned out in Minneapolis and elsewhere to peacefully protest Good’s shooting and ICE’s other extreme and harmful actions. They are risking their own safety in order to protect others.
I have also been heartened by the six Minnesota federal prosecutors who resigned in protest after Justice Department officials tried to get them to open a criminal investigation of Good’s widow, Becca Good, “for ties to activist groups”; to not investigate the ICE agent who shot Renee Good; and to exclude state police from their work, as NPR has reported (1/14/2026). We need more people to show such integrity.
Most of all, though, I am finding hope in Becca Good’s statement, shared with Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) two days after the shooting. Becca said that “kindness radiated” from her wife, and that “Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.” She painted a picture of the two of them in their car with their 6-year-old son as they traveled to Minnesota to make their home, and the joy and community they had begun to experience there. On Wednesday, they “stopped to support our neighbors,” Becca said. That’s when Renee was killed.
Becca wrote of the three children Renee left behind, noting that their 6-year-old “already lost his father” (Renee’s second husband, who died in 2023). Renee also has a 12- and a 15-year-old from a previous marriage, living with other family. Becca explained: “I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”
Becca then shows her own deep kindness by saying, “We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.”
Those words should be emblazoned on our hearts as we move forward. Let’s put on our knit caps, warmth against the cold and ice, and get to work.
Dana Rudolph is the founder and publisher of Mombian (mombian.com), a two-time GLAAD Media Award-winning blog for LGBTQ parents, plus a searchable database of 1,900+ LGBTQ family books.
