Pastor Doug Pagitt talks about this moment of crisis in the aftermath of the ICE shooting death of ICE observer Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of 3. Vote Common Good organizes religious activists to take action against the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Yeah. Look, in so many ways I’m so proud of our city for the response that we had. Just hours after Renee was shot dead by an ICE agent, I was down on the scene and there were already hundreds of people gathered. The area was cordoned off by the police. And for a lot of us, we recognized the neighborhood we were in. I’ve known the neighborhood very well. I’ve owned property in that neighborhood at a church in that neighborhood. And it was right around three blocks away from where George Floyd was murdered. So many of us gathered right in that same neighborhood five-and-a-half years ago when there was another, in that case, a Minneapolis police killing of a person in our city. And so here we saw a number of organizers and protesters and city activists having to gather again. And so there’s a lot of ways I’m so proud of the way that the different communities, the faith communities, the civic communities, the on-the-ground street organized communities came together.
And that’s partly because we’re well-versed in this. Our little city here of Minneapolis has suffered in the last five-and-a-half years under the murder of George Floyd. A terrible school shooting that killed a bunch of Catholic children at their Catholic school, starts the beginning of the school year. Political assassinations of a state senator and state representative for the election last November. And now this killing of Renee Good by federal agents. And the number of vigils that we’ve had to organize and the number of rallies and the number of calling out to our public officials, “You have to do something about it.” Too many of us are getting too good at this and we shouldn’t have to be this good at figuring out how to raise a moral voice in opposition to laws that provide too many opportunities for harm and for these kind of brutal activities, half of which have come at the hands of people that we’ve been invested with so much power and trust in our communities through our law enforcement agencies.
SCOTT HARRIS: Since the shooting on Jan. 7, Pastor Pagitt, there’s been an active campaign to smear the victim of the shooting, Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother of three. They’ve described her as a domestic terrorist and a brainwashed, far-left insurrectionist that caused her own death. Those words are paraphrased by … or that’s a paraphrase of what Vice President J.D. Vance said just a few days ago. It seems that the objective here is to demonize and criminalize Renee Good to convince Americans that it was legitimate and to normalize her death. How do you respond to what really seems to be a very ugly campaign?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Despicable way in which members of this Trump administration seem to slander and speak hateful of Americans is heart-breaking. You know what we expect out of our leaders from J.D. Vance and Donald Trump and Secretary Noem is for them to say anytime an American citizen loses their life, we grieve. Anytime a law enforcement officer uses deadly force, we need to take it seriously. Anytime there’s a community that’s in fear, they need to be able to turn to their governments, their state government, local government and federal government for solace. Instead, we hear just the opposite. We hear J.D. Vance blaming Americans for their own homicide. We hear Kristi Noem spreading lies about what happened. We hear Donald Trump being so conflated with the information that he’s received that he can’t speak clearly. It is a smear campaign, not just against Renee Good, is a smear campaign against Americans, against anyone who opposes this administration for what they do and how they do it.
And this kind of thing is so fundamentally below the offices that these people have been given the privilege of being in and so below human decency. It’s not hard to write the speech for J.D. Vance or for President Trump or for Kristi Noem. That’s boilerplate stuff. You could go on the Internet and download the speech that you say because it’s the same one that they say every time, but this group can’t even say the most basic statements of consolation and care. And look, I’ll tell you, as a pastor, we spend our time with people in the most serious times of life. And fundamentally, the people running this administration, they are not serious people. They cannot meet the serious moments. This is life and death from a federal agent in an American city and they have the gall to somehow say they have the right to do it.
I mean, if you take their comments seriously, Scott, if you just think about what they’re saying, none of the things they have claimed about her are true. And if they were true, they still wouldn’t be the rationale for a federal agent to point blank, shoot a person in the face and execute her. None of those are in the hands of an ICE agent. An ICE agent isn’t even an officer of the state. He has no ability to control or command anything out of an American citizen. He is enforcing civil law, which violation of immigration law is. It is civil law. He’s not even here arresting criminals. So the criminal activity is done by the person committing homicide. And frankly, it’s criminal to be so bad at your job of vice president, president and secretary of Homeland Security that you can’t speak the truth and speak issues of consolation.
And I’m sorry to be on a pulpit about this, but it is so beneath Americans and they are drawing all of us down to this most pathetic base political level. This is an American citizen regardless of her beliefs, and they should stand up to protect every American.
SCOTT HARRIS: Absolutely well said. We’re speaking with Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the Minneapolis-based national organization, Vote Common Good. We’ll give the website for that before we say goodnight, pastor. But as you know, and our listeners have heard reports of, the Trump Department of Justice and the FBI are blocking an objective investigation into the shooting of Renee Good, precluding the city and state authorities from accessing evidence in the case and to conduct the usual joint investigation that usually is a standard procedure when there is a homicide at the hands of a federal agent in a state jurisdiction. What’s your response to what to many appears to be an effort at a coverup?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: We all recognize that the federal government can’t be the solution to all of our ills and struggles and problems. But they shouldn’t be the problem. And this administration finds a way in every significant situation to make it worse. As you say, there is absolute protocol for when a federal agent or an agent of law enforcement from any other jurisdiction is involved in a homicide in the state.
This FBI statement that they’re not going to cooperate with the state of Minnesota is not going to be the final word on the matter. Of course not. It’s going to be litigated. They will be found—the FBI and the Trump administration—will be found to not be complying with the law and they will have to partner with the State of Minnesota’s criminal investigation. But in the meantime, they are going to make everything worse, everything more difficult and everything more convoluted.
It is so heart-breaking to know that the people who are supposed to be there to support in moments like this are the problem. The actual individual people … Normally you can say someone’s just doing their job and they have a difficult job and their job makes it hard for them to do their job. But it’s not hard to be the FBI director and know that you have to work with the states when agents of the federal government are involved in a shooting. It’s not hard to be the vice president of the United States and call for a clear confidence- producing investigation. It’s not hard to be the president and to offer condolences to a city that is scared, but these people can’t even do the base things because they are so profoundly incompetent at their jobs.
Sometimes I say this in slight or in jest, but Donald Trump’s single commitment, it seems to me, in the second term is to be sure that he’s no longer the worst person doing his job compared to those around him. I think he was humiliated by the fact that everybody else was competent at some level to do their jobs at the start of his first administration, and he was incompetent that he just started firing people. Well, this time he’s made sure that he’s not the most incompetent person in the room and has surrounded himself with people who are so profoundly inept that they are literally dangerous. The person in charge of ICE has no capacity to run this organization. Any law enforcement professional would tell you, you don’t put masks on law enforcement and you don’t ask them to go into places and to confront American citizens.
Those are the most basic starting points that everyone would know. And yet these people will break every single norm and then have to be brought back to account by lawsuit after lawsuit. And thank God for the judicial branch of our government—from lawyers and judges—to be sure that this administration who either doesn’t know what it’s doing or doesn’t care what it’s doing, continues to violate the laws that all the rest of us expect to operate under.
SCOTT HARRIS: We’re quickly running out of time. We only got a couple of minutes left. And I wanted to get your advice on what people should be doing. And there’s certainly a lot of outrage, anger, frustration, and fear about where this country is headed in the aftermath of this violence in Minnesota, but also what’s happening all over the country with ICE and these foreign invasions that have already happened in Venezuela, as well as threatened new invasions in other parts of the world. What would your advice be to listeners who are angry, upset, fearful and frustrated and not knowing what to do? What would your advice be?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: It’s so crucial that we don’t let our rage burn too deeply inside of us. Look, and I feel this, my wife and I feel this. A lot of people were like, “We don’t sleep well. We haven’t slept well in a week.” You can just become so overwhelmed by this. I heard somebody say today on another call that I was on, she said in the AA movement, they use the acronym HALT, H-A-L-T. Have you ever heard this acronym being used in this way?
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: I’m familiar with it. The H stands for don’t get too hungry, literally. Make sure you eat. The A stands for don’t burn too much anger. The L stands for don’t allow yourself to be too lonely. And the T stands for … Now I’ve forgotten. Oh my gosh. But what I really liked was the idea of don’t let yourself be too angry and too lonely.
So find someone to share that anger with so you don’t burn too lonely in the anger because the one thing that we know the Trump administration wants to unleash on America, on Greenland, on Venezuela, on Mexico is violence. The thing they know is how to use scorn and anger and words of violence and actions of violence and bullying. And to quote the president, “I want to punch them in the face.” And so anger and violence begets anger and violence. So when we feel our anger burn, find a way to direct it and then find someone to help.
Look, I mean, maybe you smile longer at a person you think might be an immigrant. Maybe you call a friend that you know is in a difficult time. Maybe you post something on social media that is encouraging. And I know for some people it can feel like there’s too many important things for me to worry about the trivial things of life.
But frankly, you know what people need in the moment of crisis and violence? They need beauty and care and kindness. Now, the great thing is that beauty and care and kindness is in abundance and violence will burn its way out and there will be more kindness and more goodness and more beauty. And so there’s a lot of beautiful things that we can share. There’s a lot of goodness and we can keep ourselves from being too alone and too angry. And I think that beauty and kindness and connection can really go a long way.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well said, Pastor Pagitt, thank you for being here. And leave our listeners with your website, if you would, for Vote Common Good.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: The work we do is at votecommongood.com. We work to help religious people who want to disconnect from a Republican voting identity and know how to do so. So we try to help people who are looking to make a change to know they can keep their faith and walk away from the Republican voting identity if that’s something that means something to them.
SCOTT HARRIS: All right. Love to stay in touch, although I know you’re going to be very busy and immersed in this crisis for a while, but we’ll give you a call in a bit.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: I appreciate the work you do. Yeah, you call me anytime and I’d be glad to talk with you.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks, Pastor. Goodnight. Bye-bye.
PASTOR DOUG PAGITT: Thanks. Goodnight now.
SCOTT HARRIS: That’s Pastor Doug Pagitt, executive director of the Minneapolis-based nationational organization, Vote Common Good.
