Yohuru Williams, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative and professor of history at the University of St. Thomas, published a commentary that ran on MLK Day in The Minnesota Star Tribune comparing the life and legacy of Dr. King and the “Be Good” slogan that emerged in the aftermath of an ICE agent fatally shooting Renee Nicole Good. Williams also coauthored an opinion piece in The Progressive Magazine, a national publication, writing how he believes the federal government’s actions after the Good crisis is turning Minnesota into a police state.
From The Minnesota Star Tribune:
“We should be wary of a familiar danger: turning real people into avatars and flattening their lives into symbols we can admire without obligation. It is of greater value to ask what a life like Renee Good’s demands of us now. What does it actually mean to be good in this moment, not as sentiment but as practice?
“It is about showing up – repeatedly – grounded in history, guided by conscience and unwilling to outsource responsibility to symbols, or someone else’s courage.”
From The Progressive Magazine:
“This is how police states are built – not by a single law or single leader, but through precedents set in moments of crisis. Through declarations made before facts are gathered. Through the steady retreat from the assumption that power flows from – and must answer to – the people.
“The killing of Renee Good demands more than reassurances and legal abstractions or thoughts and prayers. It demands fidelity to the most basic democratic principle we claim to that no one – not presidents, not sworn officers, not agents of the state – is above the law.”
