Becca Good attends memorial for wife Renee, offers statement: 'Renee always showed up'

Becca Good, Renee Nicole Good’s wife, on Saturday made her first public appearance since Renee’s death, attending a memorial service at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis.

Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent January 7 while driving through a section of Minneapolis where ICE was operating. Her death and that of Alex Pretti at the hands of Border Patrol January 24 have increased the outrage over the Trump administration’s brutal crackdown on immigrants and anyone seeking to assist them. Good and Pretti were U.S. citizens who were simply observing.

Related: Who was Renee Nicole Good? Remembering the Minneapolis poet and mother killed by ICE

Becca Good did not speak at the service, but Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg read a statement from her, The New York Times reports.

“Becca Good, Renee’s wife, has had to grieve alone for weeks,” Rabbi Lekach-Rosenberg said. “This is a really important moment. Rebecca gets to share words back to you. So it is my honor to get to offer Becca’s words.”

The full statement, as posted by Minnesota Public Radio:

"Minneapolis has shown me that even in the middle of grief and fear, people still show up for each other. For that, I want to say thank you. Thank you to this incredible community for showing up again and again — organizing food and rides, making sure our kids get to school, checking in on neighbors, and standing together in the cold. I am so proud to call Minneapolis my home.

“Renee was not the first person killed, and she was not the last. You know my wife’s name and you know Alex’s name, but there are many others in this city being harmed that you don’t know — their families are hurting just like mine, even if they don’t look like mine. They are neighbors, friends, coworkers, classmates. And we must also know their names. Because this shouldn’t happen to anyone.

“Renee always showed up — as a volunteer, a teacher, a mom, a friend — always helping out, making things a little better for others. Seeing the world now celebrate the parts of her that I’ve always known — the kindness, the humor, the warmth — reminds me of her spirit. Renee and I believed that if we lived every day in the world as we wanted it to be, we could build toward making that world a reality. So I am doing that every day — and every night, as I kiss my son at bedtime and tell him things are going to get better.”

Related: Alex Pretti 'had a way of lighting up every room he walked into'

Renee Good’s sister, Annie Ganger, spoke at the service. “We who do not live in this area of Minnesota see this powerful work that you’re doing despite the pushback, and it encouraged us to dive into our own communities,” she said, according to the Times. “We are so proud. My family is so grateful for you. Thank you for being my sister’s home.”

She recalled her sister’s sense of humor. “Renee was completely hilarious,” Ganger said. “Every time I talked to her, I laughed until I cry-snorted, but she cried-snorted with me.”

“I think Renee’s advice to us right now would be to take care of ourselves, care for our neighbors,” she added. “Receive care from our neighbors, rest and eat, and play and show up.”

Renee Good’s brothers, Luke and Brent Ganger, testified before Democratic members of Congress Tuesday about the effects of her death. “The most important thing we can do today is help this panel understand who Renee is and what a beautiful American we have lost,” Luke Ganger said.

Protests of ICE, Border Control, and their parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, have continued in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Indigenous activists demonstrated Saturday at the Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. The building is named for Minnesota’s first Episcopal bishop, Henry Whipple, who advocated for the rights of Indigenous people in the 19^th century.

“It is both a both a painful irony and a bitter scandal that the reckless state-sanctioned oppression that he spent his life opposing is now being carried out in a building that bears his name,” Jim Bear Jacobs said at the event, according to MPR.

The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death but not Good’s. The DOJ and other federal agencies have seen an exodus of attorneys since the deaths of Good and Pretti. Jim Stolley, chief counsel for ICE in Minnesota, left his job this week without comment, “exiting as a crush of litigation stemming from the immigration crackdown in the state has overwhelmed the court system,” the Times reports.