Renee Good: the song Remains the same
I am standing up typing this because sitting down hurts my back and I am sick and tired of hurting. I am writing this through tears.
Bobby Weir just died and the Dead are blasting on the stereo and I am sipping green jasmine tea and trying to gather my thoughts as way too many buttons are being pushed in my old, tired brain.
Neil Young wrote his famous song “Ohio” after four students were killed by the National Guard on May 4, 1970. They were protesting the Vietnam War. They were murdered. It was a turning of the tide for our generation because it sent a bolt of enlightenment across our country.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”
Fifty-five years later, on January 7 of our new year, Renee Nicole Good was murdered by Jonathan Ross, an agent of our Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. It’s an agency under Trump that has been given license to terrorize American citizens. We are watching what I believe is an effort of our government to control our citizens by spreading terror, putting people in cages and even murdering innocents without any purpose except to spread fear and curtail our freedoms. We now have a secret police, an American Gestapo.
Renee Nicole Good was a mother, poet, musician, wife, daughter and a kind and loving human being. Her wife was trying to get in the passenger seat, her dog was sitting in the back seat and her son’s puffy toys were stuffed in her glove compartment when Jonathan Ross shot her three times in the head.
A split second before, she calmly said, “I am not mad at you.” After the bullets hit her, Jonathan Ross exclaimed “Fucking bitch” as he walked away. We have all seen the video tape and know that whatever Fox News and the Trump Administration have told you is a lie. Shame on them.
Because of Renee Good (and her last name says it all) the temper of this country is at a heightened level I have not seen since the sixties. I think we are about to witness a revolutionary uprising that will pale in comparison to the sixties revolution.
Our young are witnessing all of this on social media. They are lifting up their eyes, opening their minds, engaging with the fear of a "freedom-less future." They are gaining the courage to fight against a corrupt and deeply deranged human catastrophe for our country–their country. They are, I think, on the verge of scaring the establishment like so many of us did more than a half century ago.
I will be joining them.
At 76 I should be content resting, reading, writing and enjoying the grandkids. But know this, I will not be content until this nightmare is over. My buttons are pushed. All my force, influence, will, power, energy and resolve I had at the age of twenty has come back.
As Neil Young wrote, “How can you run when you know?”
