I didn’t publish anything here last week, and it wasn’t because I was busy or behind. I was unsettled by what I was watching unfold in Minneapolis and by how quickly it was being discussed, defended, and dismissed afterward.
I regret watching the video from the ICE agent’s point of view and hearing Renee Good say, “I’m not mad at you,” seconds before she was shot point-blank, followed by the agent’s reaction: “fucking bitch.” Since then, we’ve seen the federal government continue to escalate against people who are speaking out against these actions.
What has bothered me even more is how quickly so many people around us (including neighbors, longtime connections, people from our rural communities) have accepted an official narrative from the administration that clearly didn’t align with the video itself. There was no hesitation or questioning. They accepted lies as truth and labeled it justified.
When a man is shot, and people agree with his words, he’s memorialized in an arena with speeches from political leaders. When this woman was shot, and people disagreed with her, they called it justified and called for heavier enforcement.
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I try not to make things overtly political here, but what we’re seeing in Minneapolis, and increasingly in other cities, is an abuse of power and a clear display of inhumanity. No level of justification makes this acceptable.
Even though much of this is happening in larger cities, it still feels close to home.
Pride In Agriculture exists because disagreement already exists in rural communities around identity, visibility, belonging, and whose stories are allowed to matter. What feels different right now is how openly intimidation, force, and dehumanization are being normalized, and how many people are not just tolerating that shift, but encouraging it, as long as it’s aimed at someone they disagree with.
If this is how far things can go, what happens next? And what does it mean to keep speaking up when disagreement turns into justification for violence?
It certainly makes me wonder if visibility and speaking up is worth the risk.
Watching how quickly violence is defended forces you to think about what speaking up actually costs and who ends up paying that cost.
What the stories shared through Pride In Agriculture have shown, again and again, is that visibility isn’t just about the person doing the speaking. It’s about the people who don’t feel like they can.
There are plenty of people in rural communities who stay quiet because their jobs, housing, or family relationships feel too fragile to risk being more vocal about their beliefs or who they love. That’s been true for LGBTQ+ people here for a long time. It’s also true for people targeted because of race, immigration status, or political disagreement. Different circumstances, similar source of pressures.
Silence doesn’t cost everyone the same thing.
When people who have some level of safety or stability decide not to speak, it doesn’t keep the peace. It creates space for the loudest voices to define what’s normal and acceptable. And lately, what’s being treated as acceptable should concern all of us.
For me, it’s been troubling to watch how quickly those actions are defended, reframed, and moved past. There’s very little willingness to slow down and ask whether a line was crossed. Just a rush to justify it.
Visibility interrupts that pattern by refusing to let it slide by unquestioned.
I don’t think the answer is louder outrage or more escalation. I think it’s people being willing to say, visibly, that something isn’t right, even when they don’t have a perfect solution.
If you’re in a position to speak without immediate consequence, choosing not to does have consequences for someone else.
I don’t expect everyone to show up the same way. But I do think it’s worth asking what responsibility comes with being able to be visible when others can’t.
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