What does it mean that so much of the discussion around Renee Good emphasizes her vaunted status as a mother and a citizen, and tends to elide the fact and significance of her queerness? Which characteristics does this focus tacitly endorse as meriting protection and which are prone to fall out of our analysis? We are right to identify that these ticks in the boxes of ‘moral goodnesses’ did not and could not protect her – her whiteness, her status as a mother, her smile. But we also need to understand which characteristics endangered her and which are, further, responsible for the propagandistic effect of the snuff film DHS produced of her.

Renee Good was a non-conforming, unsubmissive, queer woman. This is enough for a Nazi to advance on her vehicle and shoot multiple rounds in her face as he calls her a “fucking bitch”. Good’s queerness, both in her choice of partner and her practice of solidarity politics, is material to her targeting and execution. To queer is precisely to intervene into and resist hegemonic structures of power; to queer is to bend the arc of normativity’s force. To queer is to insist on the dignity of a life that the supremacist state wishes to eliminate: to legislate or incarcerate or convert away. Renee Good’s queerness is thus manifestly relevant to her resistance, and to the state’s justification for her targeting and murder.

I argue here that we must also pay attention to the racialized violence that, as I discuss in an earlier piece, accompanies gendered violence and which tends to be even less articulated in mainstream discussion. Renee Good is not the first person to be killed by the secret police, or even shot at in their cars. And in the wake of her murder, DHS and ICE moved to occupy Minneapolis, adding to their terror-from-a-distance of threatening food stamps and childcare money. The occupation has made a beeline to the most vulnerable communities, among them Somali and Native communities, attacking and abducting people with a speed and volume that prevents the same depth of articulation of each resister’s life. Yet we see the same principle acting in all cases: the targeting of what white supremacist domestic policy has identified as threats to this oppressive order.

The inability to countenance the violence ICE is enacting as a matter of course on black and brown people and communities– or our susceptibility to the normalization of the agency’s charter to target these populations since its inception in 2003– has a meaningful impact on the kind of carceral abolition we can imagine and demand. We understand the history of police in america as a history of slave catchers: an agency devoted to the perpetuation of the legal status of Black people as owned property, as chattelized beings without bodily autonomy and without rights and protections. In this way the police as they exist now continue to be agents of the United States’ white supremacist project, the very same project that ICE and their terror tactics pursue. That is why, to every call to abolish ICE, we add the call to abolish the police: the existence of armed groups tasked with the ideological order of the country is a threat to everyone, even to those who have footholds within that order. 

Above, I call the video released by DHS of Renee’s execution a “snuff film”. I am not the only one to identify this as a propaganda tactic, as a call to the misogynists and gaybashers: ‘see, if you join ICE, you can execute “lesbian bitches” with impunity’. We can imagine the quickening of the fascist’s pulse as they take in this de facto recruitment video, even as all of our hearts sank watching (or avoiding watching) the same. I write this piece in an attempt to make plain the logic of ICE’s operation, so that we do not see Good’s execution as an exception insofar as she was white, a mother, and a citizen, but that we rather understand her queerness as dissent, understand queerness itself as a target for elimination, and understand how this is continuous with ICE’s genocidal plans against Black, Native, Latin@, and other racialized people. In my opinion this understanding is crucial to forging and enacting solidarities that are critical in this moment, and in the moments which develop from it. 

Bodily autonomy means: freedom from police, from incarceration, from state violence. 

Bodily autonomy means: choosing our communities and relations, and the forms of those relations. 

Bodily autonomy means: a right to migration, to assembly, to resistance. 

The struggle against ICE is fought precisely for these freedoms and autonomies, and this makes critical analysis of gender and race– and particularly their joint analysis– indispensable. 

Caitlin Murphy

Avelo Airlines announced it will cease its Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charter service that transports detainees for the Trump administration, closing its Mesa, Arizona base on January 27. The budget carrier said the program had delivered only “short‑term benefits” but failed to provide enough predictable revenue to offset the operational complexity and costs involved. Avelo’s spokesperson, Courtney Goff, confirmed the move in an email to the New Haven Independent, noting that the airline began running deportation flights from Arizona last May amid growing backlash.

The decision follows months of protests and a boycott movement led by groups such as Connecticut Students for a Dream (C4D), the New Haven Immigrants Coalition, Unidad Latina en Acción, and the Democratic Socialists of America. Activists condemned the airline’s participation in what they described as “sloppy, dangerous” deportation flights, citing an American Prospect report that highlighted safety lapses. Pastor Jack Perkins Davidson warned that “human suffering is not profitable,” while Tabitha Sookdeo emphasized how community organizing and refusal to patronize harmful practices can force corporations to change. CEO Andrew Levy had previously defended the contracts on financial grounds, arguing they were essential to keep Avelo’s New Haven operations running.

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/2026/01/07/avelo-to-exit-deportation-biz/

by Andrew H

In 2025, the United States observed the first proper referendum on the second Trump Administration. Democrats performed well, winning gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey and prevailing in many local contests. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, received over one million votes in November; Mayor John V. Lindsay was the last person to draw such resounding support in that contest.

Within those local results, I want to highlight some specific victories of fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – especially given my current run for Justice of the Peace in Precinct 1 of Travis County, Texas. In Minneapolis, Robin Wonsley cruised to re-election on the Minneapolis City Council, and Soren Stevenson won in the first round of a ranked choice system after narrowly losing in 2023. Katie Wilson prevailed in the mayoral race in Seattle, and Denzel McCampbell won a seat on the Detroit City Council. Two democratic socialists in Jersey City, Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks, became the first open socialists elected in New Jersey in a century. Members of our organization celebrated victories from coast-to-coast on Tuesday, November 4, 2025 and Tuesday, December 2, 2025.

America renewed its interest in socialist politics across the past year. After Trump’s re-election, Council Member Mike Siegel, a fellow member of the Austin Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, won a runoff election for Austin CIty Council’s District 7 on December 14, 2024. Facing the various cruelties of many in power in 2025, including endless wars, extrajudicial murders by ICE, deep cuts to the American social safety net, and lawless military strikes, more people find themselves curious about what, exactly, socialism is. At doors and in the community, people continue to resonate with the message that kids don’t need to face criminalization in response to their actions, renters deserve due process in eviction proceedings, and quality of life concerns – such as homelessness – shouldn’t land a person in the court system. Democratic socialists are committed to preserving and building the public infrastructure in this era of mass privatization, with an emphasis on shifting money from carceral systems like prisons to social services like parks & libraries.

My own journey with socialism has been a long and fulfilling one. I first ran for office in 2022 as a democratic socialist, challenging a long-term incumbent. I lost decisively. I was thirty years old during my first election, and the Biden Administration was in power. Circumstances and conditions have changed rapidly in four years. One thing that has remained consistent across this period is my engagement with the Democratic Socialists of America. I joined the organization in 2021; after I was defeated in my first election, I went deeper into my organizing with the chapter. I knocked on doors for Prop A (and against Prop B) in 2023, attended the biennial DSA convention in Chicago, visited Cuba, spoke to voters about the campaigns of Jose Garza and Mike Siegel, and built invaluable relationships with other members of the chapter.

I spoke at Austin DSA’s org fair on Saturday, November 15, 2025. Ahead of my remarks, I noticed excitement all around me for DSA’s campaigns. Through our Austin Against Apartheid work, we’ve gotten scores of businesses in the community to adopt a boycott-divestment-sanctions framework and agree to not sell Israeli products. Our Trans + Intersex Rights and Bodily Autonomy (TIRBA) campaign is uplifting the incontrovertible fact that every person controls their own body; through our work with TIRBA, queer and trans people will experience freedom everywhere, and abortions will be easily available upon demand. We recently launched our Labor for an Arms Embargo work to push for an end to the incessant aid that the U.S. pours into the genocidal settler-colonial state of Israel. We are laboring with a clear vision of what the world will be in fifty years – one where socialism governs.

I must end with a reflection on the material realities of our time. In Austin, a broad coalition of socialists, labor leaders, and mutual aid organizers suffered a loss with the defeat of Prop Q in November 2025. This election occurred while millions of people faced uncertainty with their SNAP benefits. People are hurting in many ways right now, and an increase in taxes simply wasn’t going to fly. However, as we face this austerity budget in Austin – with its $520 million untouched police line-item – I want the public to know that me and fellow socialists are here for our neighbors. We are committed to building a political party that is truly responsive to the needs of people who – like me – live paycheck-to-paycheck, highlighting the harms that masses of workers experience under American capitalism. My second campaign is simply one piece of that puzzle; even if I lose again, I am so glad that I have found a political philosophy that animates me so clearly. As a Black socialist, I am committed to building a multiracial, multigender, and multinational movement for human dignity. I hope you will join us.

Andrew Reginald Hairston is a civil rights lawyer, writer, and democratic socialist based in Austin. He is running for Justice of the Peace in Precinct 1 of Travis County, Texas on March 3, 2026. More information is available at hairstonforpeace.com

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