Redesign America with Mustafa Ali-Smith

This episode of Redesign America features a reading of an essay by Mustafa Ali-Smith, published on January 4, titled “The Price of Freedom: On Clemency Power and the Selective Nature of American Mercy.” Get full access to Redesign America at redesignamerica.substack.com/subscribe

I was sitting at home when my phone began to vibrate repeatedly, notifications stacking on top of one another from various news outlets. The repetition alone suggested something serious. My first thought was what foolishness has President Trump unleashed on the world now? Just days ago, he kidnapped a country's president, Nicholas Maduro of Venezuela, boasting ‘f**k around and find out.'By the time I opened the articles, the details were already sinking in. On Wednesday, January 7, ICE agents shot and killed a woman named Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota during an anti-immigration operation. Video footage, now widely circulated, shows her attempting to drive away from a road blocked by federal agents. Within moments, multiple shots were fired, killing her.Renee was present in that neighborhood as a legal observer—someone there not to interfere, provoke, or obstruct, but to document state conduct and protect civil liberties. Legal observers exist precisely because history has shown what happens when law enforcement operates without scrutiny. According to early reporting that Wednesday, Renee was there “watching out for our immigrant neighbors,” a quiet act of solidarity in a political climate increasingly hostile to community care.The context matters here because, just days earlier, the Trump administration deployed 2,000 federal agents to the Minneapolis area, escalating an already tense city. This is the same city where, less than a mile from where Renee was killed, George Floyd was murdered by police in 2020. And we must not forget Philando Castile, who was shot and killed in his car by police in nearby Falcon Heights. That history of violence isn't past us, it's present and ongoing, it's why Renee was there. Her presence was a direct response to that escalation, a form of accountability in a moment designed to intimidate.And yet, almost immediately after her death, the familiar machinery of justification began to turn.Within hours, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, claimed that an agent opened fire only after Renee “weaponized her vehicle” in an attempt to kill federal officers. This framing, which transforms a car into a weapon and an officer into a victim, has become a well-worn tactic in the defense of state violence. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded bluntly, calling the explanation “b******t” and stating plainly that this was “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.”Mayor Jacob Frey is right, it was b******t.The mayor's response was important, but it also revealed something deeper. This wasn't simply a disagreement over facts. The video is clear in what transpired. This was a clash between two narratives—one grounded in demanding accountability toward a system that produced harm, and the other in institutional self-preservation. And as is often the case, the state's version—the latter—began to unravel immediately.There are multiple videos from different angles capturing the shooting. Together, they contradict DHS's account of the sequence of events and call into question the claim of self-defense. These videos underscore why documentation matters, why legal observers exist, and why law enforcement agencies fight so hard against being watched. Visibility disrupts impunity and evidence destabilizes the power that enables ICE to function.It is no coincidence, then, that legislation is quietly advancing across the country to restrict people's ability to film police and ICE in public spaces. These efforts are often justified in the name of officer safety, but their practical effect is to limit accountability of the officers and agents. Because when violence occurs without witnesses, it's easier to deny, though as history shows, witnessing attrocity often isn't enough either.Rodney King, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Sonya Massey, Laquan McDonald—the commonality between all these people, aside from them all being Black, is that they were all murdered on camera by the state. Moments like this force us to reckon with a reality many witness: when agents sanctioned by the state do the killing, the state will always tell us not to believe our own two eyes. Truth becomes whatever the state says it is, despite documentation. Despite what we see.And sure enough, faced with video evidence that contradicted the official narrative, President Trump intervened to provide his own.On his social media platform, Truth Social, he described Renee Good screaming in the footage as “a professional agitator” and characterized her as “very disorderly,” claiming she had “violently, willfully, and viciously” run over an ICE officer. He framed the shooting as self-defense and concluded by blaming the “Radical Left” for targeting law enforcement, insisting that ICE agents were simply doing the job of “MAKING AMERICA SAFE.”This narrative relies on familiar tropes of disorderly civilians, embattled officers, and righteous violence. It reframes accountability as hostility and solidarity as extremism. Most importantly, it shifts attention away from the act itself and toward the supposed threat posed by those who resist or observe state power.But even as Trump's framing took hold, another narrative emerged—one that centered Renee Good herself as innocent, civilian, U.S. citizen. I understand the impulse behind these descriptors. In a country where empathy is rationed, people reach for language they believe will make violence undeniable. Citizenship, for example, is often treated as a moral credential, a line that, once crossed, turns tragedy into outrage.But this framing should worry us deeply.Because it suggests that state violence is only a problem when it reaches the wrong people. That the real issue is not violence itself, but misdirected violence. It implies that there exists a category of people for whom such force is acceptable or even deserved.This logic demands we ask a more fundamental question: should we be comfortable with ICE using violence against anyone? The answer is no. Not undocumented people. Not people with criminal records. Not people deemed guilty. Not people whose lives are already devalued by law and policy. Otherwise, we are not opposing violence, simply negotiating its targets.And that negotiation is precisely how the roots of violence remain untouched. It is how it remains defended.ICE is not a neutral agency that occasionally oversteps its bounds. It is an institution built around detention, deportation, and intimidation. Its purpose is not community safety as much as it is social control. When an agency designed to police movement and punish vulnerability embeds itself into everyday life, violence becomes an inevitable outcome.Understanding this makes clear that shooting someone during an anti-immigration operation is not a failure of enforcement. It is enforcement functioning as intended within a system that prioritizes control over care and impunity over accountability.We must discard the idea of violence at the hands of ICE as being a policy failure and call it as it is. It is a moral indictment of a nation that repeatedly chooses punishment and force over repair. It is indeed a choice. We are told that violence is an unfortunate byproduct of maintaining order, but order for whom, and at what cost? When the state responds to social conditions—migration, poverty, instability—with armed force, it reveals its priorities. It treats complex human realities as threats to be neutralized rather than conditions to be addressed, thus ensuring that violence becomes a governing logic.Angela Davis once warned, “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you at night.” Davis learned this truth through generations of Black struggle—from enslavement through Jim Crow, through mass incarceration, and through ongoing police terror. Black people have endured state violence that is ever present, and a state that perfects its violence on Black bodies doesn't stop there. It simply finds new applications for the tools it's already built. This violence adapts and expands, looking for new targets once old justifications lose their usefulness.We're watching this in real time. Just one day after Renee Good was killed in Minneapolis, on Thursday, January 8, federal agents shot and wounded two people during a traffic stop in Portland, Oregon. Since the news broke, protests have erupted across the city calling for accountability. The pattern of violence Renee's death exposed didn't end with her, it continued. Because when violence is treated as a tool rather than a crisis, when agents exist to harm, when the system defends rather than corrects itself, the cycle continues.The real question, then, is not whether ICE went too far this time. The question is not asking why ICE carries guns. The question is why we continue to accept institutions whose very design requires someone else's suffering in order to function. The state will always find a way to defend its violence through spokespeople, through narrative reframing, through the language of threats and agitators and self-defense. It will tell us not to believe what we see. It will cast accountability as hostility and solidarity as extremism. And that, too, is a choice.Mustafa Ali-Smith is a social justice advocate who has worked around criminal justice issues for several years. His work examines race, justice, and the politics of reform and power in America. Get full access to Redesign America at redesignamerica.substack.com/subscribe

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