The Rhyme: Kent State and Renee Good

On May 4, 1970, following Republican President Richard Nixon’s April 1970, announcement of the expansion of the Viet Nam War into Cambodia, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a group of Kent State students engaged in a peaceful campus protest against this extension of the War. The students were also protesting the Guard’s presence on their campus and the draft.  Four students were killed and nine others were wounded, including one who suffered permanent paralysis.

Fast forward. On January 7, 2026, Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen was fatally shot by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Johathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ross was described by family and friends as a hardcore conservative Christian, MAGA and supporter of Republican President Donald Trump.

 Good was a writer and poet and lived with her wife and 6-year-old child; she had just dropped her child off at school.

Including the recent Portland, Oregon shootings on January 8, 2026,[1] Good’s killing was the eleventh time ICE agents had opened fire on people since September 2025.  Four other people had been killed during the Trump administration’s deportation operations.

A number of videos of the shooting, show that Good was in her vehicle, bantering with the ICE agents engaged in these operations.  When she attempted to drive slowly away from the ICE agents, Ross fired three shots point blank, killing Good.[2] One video showed that Good was denied medical care even after the person offering her help identified himself as a physician.  An ICE agent responded “I don’t care.”[3]

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and their lickspittles defended the shooting as one of “self-defense”—i.e., that Good was trying run over the agent with her vehicle. Indeed, Noem went so far as to characterize Good as a “domestic terrorist.”[4]

By any fair viewing of the various videos, however, it is clear that Good was trying to slowly and carefully drive away from the ICE agent(s), not toward or into any one or more of them.[5]

Mark Twain noted that if history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes.[6]  And there are a couple of obvious parallels between the Kent State and Renee Good killings.

First, both military and law enforcement authorities were, among other things, forcibly trying to prohibit ordinary people from exercising their rights of free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government with their grievances, all guaranteed by the First Amendment of the federal Constitution.  Whether it be an unpopular military war or Trump’s war on immigrants, people have the right to raise their voices in opposition and interject their personal presence against such government actions without threat of being attacked or killed by their government’s agents.

Second, while it would be unfair to characterize all of these agents as trigger happy cowboys (and I do not), one can hardly deny that some of these operatives are exactly that—thugs with guns and the eagerness to use them.  The problem is not so much that these sorts of people become part of military or para-military authorities—absent effective screening processes that obviously do not exist—but, rather, it is the words and conduct on the part of these agents’ leaders and supervisors–and sometimes courts and juries–that tolerates their aggressive and wrongful—shoot first and ask later—conduct. At the very least there is a total failure of supervision.

For, example the Kent State Guardsmen were acquitted of criminal responsibility for their conduct, notwithstanding that trial evidence showed that none were ever in danger from the students.[7]  With the killing of Renee Good, the President and Homeland Security Secretary Noem (and their sycophants) immediately rallied around the ICE agents with the false narrative that she was trying to run over the agent(s) when the actual the video evidence is clearly to the contrary.

In short, when government agents wrongfully violate our constitutional rights and do so with impunity, with no accountability or punishment; when government agents run amok with the consent and approval—indeed, tacit encouragement–of their leaders or our legal system, then every one of us is at risk.

What few of us will chance speaking out or peacefully parading or protesting, where the consequences of doing so may result in our being shot and killed or seriously injured by some unsupervised government agent with an itchy trigger finger—indeed, one who knows he or she will never be held accountable.

The bottom line is simply this: if one cannot exercise a Constitutional right, then for all intents and purposes the right is chilled; it is effectively extinguished.

Kent State and Renee Good’s killing imperils the First Amendment rights of each of us. We should have learned that lesson from the first incident. Because we didn’t, Renee Good ended up a corpse in her car—the victim of a government agent who stated he didn’t care he killed her and the President of the United States and the Secretary of Homeland Security tacitly stating they didn’t care either; that Renee Good got what she, a “domestic terrorist,” deserved.

Notes.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/2-shot-federal-agents-portland-sources/story?id=129038573

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Renee_Good

[3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/doctor-blocked-helping-ice-shooting-201329607.html

[4]https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/11/ice-minneapolis-shooting-noem.html; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlnqaepEqXQ

[5] https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/live-updates/minneapolis-renee-good-ice-shooting-minnesota-bca-investigation/

https://www.axios.com/2026/01/11/noem-minneapolis-shooting-renee-good-jonathan-ross

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/09/archives/judge-acquits-guardsmen-in-slayings-at-kent-state-judge-acquits.html

The post The Rhyme: Kent State and Renee Good appeared first on CounterPunch.org.