By now, we’ve all seen the various videos of the recent horrific event in Minneapolis. TrumpCo and MAGA are pressing the view that the shooting was justified. What they want you to hear is that Jonathan Ross is a highly trained, experienced law enforcement officer who shot and killed a professional radical agitator who attempted to murder him with her car. His behavior, they claim, was justified because he was in fear for his life.

Another perspective. Renee Nicole Good was a 37-year-old mother of three (a daughter and two sons), a poet, and a stay-at-home mom married to Rebecca Good. They’d recently moved to Minneapolis from Kansas City. She volunteered to be a legal observer monitoring ICE operations in her new home. She and her wife (and dog) were surrounded by masked and uniformed armed men who were yelling at her and aggressively attempting to open her car door, She attempted to leave the scene, likely because she was in fear for her life.

There’s no doubt that fear makes people do stupid stuff. Fear makes people act on impulse rather than reason. Fear is valid.

But the law, it seems, prioritizes the fear of policing agents. The law prioritizes the fear of the only people at the scene who are carrying weapons. The law prioritizes the fear of the only people at the scene who have the legal authority to shoot people. The law prioritizes the fear of the only people at the scene who are trained when and how to use deadly force. The law prioritized the fear of the only people at the scene who have been trained NOT to give in to their fear. The law not only prioritizes their fear, it justifies it.

The law does not consider the fear of a woman surrounded by several masked armed men yelling at her and attempting to drag her and her wife from their vehicle. The law does not value the fear experienced by Renee Nicole Good.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Patriarchy must be smashed. The shattered splinters that remain must be ground into dust. That dust must be encased in lead and buried in an unmarked grave in the deepest desert.