Sunny Notes: 01.28.26 - Renee Nicole Good & Alex Pretti
I write to you on January 26, the Monday following a weekend in which another protestor, Alex Pretti, has been shot dead by ICE in Minneapolis. The recent deaths of protestors Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti are in addition to many others who have been killed by or died while in the custody of ICE over the last year.
In times like these, when it is difficult for me to articulate my outrage, confusion, and lament, I am grateful for the poetry of others—their words give voice to what is happening in our world in a way I cannot. I share here two poems, one from retired UU minister Bob McKetchnie (thank you, Rev. Barbara Wells ten Hove for sharing this with me), and one from poet and activist Amanda Gorman.
*
Renee Nicole Good
by Bob McKetchnie
We thought we understood the shape of violence. We gave it outlines: crime scenes, courtrooms, history books, the distant past or the far-off war.
Then a body fell in a familiar city, Behind the wheel of her car, under a winter sky that did not intervene. The shock was not only death but who stood holding authority when the life was taken.
This is how trust fractures—not with a speech or a policy memo, but with a sudden silence where a human voice should have continued. The shock is physical: lungs forgetting their rhythm, hands clenching with nowhere to go.
We are told to wait for details, to soften our language, to suspend our outrage until it is properly footnoted. But grief does not wait. Neither does terror, especially for those who have learned that uniforms and masked militia can mean danger. Minneapolis knows this ground. It remembers knees, batons, orders barked as if humanity were a procedural error. So the city recoils again, not surprised, but wounded anew— because repetition does not make violence normal, it makes it unbearable. What does it mean when the machinery of the Federal government moves through a neighborhood and leaves a body behind? What words are adequate when enforcement eclipses mercy, and power forgets restraint?
We stand stunned, holding the unbearable truth that laws can be lethal, that silence can be complicity, and that justice, if it is to exist at all, must be demanded aloud— for the dead, and for the living who now fear they could be next.
*
For Alex Jeffrey Pretti
Murdered by I.C.E January 24, 2026
by Amanda Gorman
We wake with no words, just woe & wound.
Our own country shooting us in the back is not just brutality; it’s jarring betrayal; not enforcement, but execution.
A message: Love your people & you will die. Yet our greatest threat isn’t the outsiders among us, but those among us who never look within.
Fear not the those without papers, but those without conscience.
Know that to care intensively, united, is to carry both pain-dark horror for today & a profound, daring hope for tomorrow.
We can feel we have nothing to give, & still belove this world waiting, trembling to change.
If we cannot find words, may we find the will; if we ever lose hope, may we never lose our humanity.
The only undying thing is mercy, the courage to open ourselves like doors, hug our neighbor, & save one more bright, impossible life.
I also encourage you to access the toolkit available through the UUA's organizing strategy team, Side with Love, which offers both support and learning from Minneapolis, including UU Statements and organizing resources.
As the situation in Minneapolis and beyond continues to unfold, I close with words from Side with Love:
May we grieve. May we refuse the normalization of state violence. May we be one of the many.
— Sunny, minister