We Examine You Arrived Before The Bullet

Words / 2026 Variety

01.15.2026 ... Minneapolis ... Saint Paul

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We are looking at the words that came before the violence.
Examining them.
Holding them up to the light like evidence.

This is what we do now.
We examine you.
You arrived before the bullet.

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A woman named Renee Good was killed in south Minneapolis on January 7th.
She was thirty-seven years old.
She was white.
This matters because the story of who gets shot and who gets protected is never colorblind.

The news will say "woman killed."
We say her name.
Renee Good.
We say murdered.

There was no calm after that storm.
Peace belongs to everyone but peace did not come.

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Seven days later a man was shot in the leg.
He ran from a car.
Someone raised a snow shovel.
The federal agents called it self-defense.

A snow shovel.
In January.
In Minnesota.
Where clearing the sidewalk is what good neighbors do.

A tool for helping became justification for shooting.

False that he was not human.
Of course he is.
Of course.

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Between the two shootings ... protests filling the streets.
People with signs.
People with phones.
People with grief they could not hold inside anymore.

After the protests ... a threat from the highest office.
After sorrow fell from the sky ... tears that froze before they could dry.

January holds the temperature and the sorrow the same way.

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The President announced he would invoke the Insurrection Act.
Signed it "President DJT."

An 1807 law.
Used about thirty times since founding.
The last time ... Los Angeles ... 1992 ... sixty-three dead.

Now the same law is aimed at Minnesota.

Will these fears never disappear?

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The language arrives before the bullet.
Always.

Shiny shells waiting in chambers.
Cold dark steel in holsters.
The vocabulary loads the weapon.

"Patriots of ICE" ... the phrase makes the agents untouchable.
Beyond question.

"Professional agitators" ... the phrase makes the protesters into actors.
Not real citizens.
Not real grief.

"Illegal alien" ... the phrase erases humanity.
Not belonging to those who deserve to live.

But he is human.
False that he was not.
Of course he is.

"Defensive shot" ... the phrase means the bullet was justified before anyone could ask.
The language acquits before the trial.

Even a murderer may be immune from charges now.
Federal agents operating under federal authority.
A fascist grin or grimace could come for you.
For anyone.

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Three thousand federal agents.
Six hundred local police.

Five to one.

The ratio reveals what the official statement conceals.

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The snow shovel became justification for sending more troops.

We have not forgotten the other hate murders that happened in Minnesota this year.
The names accumulate.
The grief has no container large enough.

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"Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

The exclamation point.
The cheerful sign-off.
Over and out.

The tone of a memo about parking violations.
Applied to military deployment against American citizens.

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