Leslie Merry, along with her spouse, Rem Merry, were among a couple hundred people who turned out for a protest in downtown Dayton Thursday evening after Renee Nicole Macklin Good, 37, was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Jan. 7.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
“We’re horrified with the direction this country is taking,” Rem Merry said.
The Dayton to Minneapolis Stop ICE Terror protest in Courthouse Square in Dayton was organized by a local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, organizers of which said Macklin Good’s death was a “brutal murder.”
“This is the Dayton instance of a nationwide call,” said Alec Johnson, of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Protesters chanted phrases like, “We will not put up with ICE” and “Trump has got to go” along Main Street in downtown Dayton before later marching to the federal building.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
“A year into the Trump administration, he looks weaker and we look stronger,” Johnson said. “This is an instance of that. Overnight, the nation has responded to this, so we’re not done.”
President Donald Trump commented on the deadly shooting on his social media app Truth Social, blaming the incident on Macklin Good and the “Radical Left.”
“It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” Trump said on social media.
Local protesters, though, weren’t buying that argument.
“We all saw how this woman died,” Johnson said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
Macklin Good was a mother of three children ages 6, 12 and 15 years old. She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket, according to the Associated Press.
“I’m the father of women who are about this woman’s age...and I have to push down my anger and bile to really function,” Johnson said about knowing Macklin Good’s children will be without a mother now.
Macklin Good’s ex-husband told the Associated Press she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind. He further described her as being a devoted Christian, saying she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.
The incident is being investigated by the FBI, according to the Associated Press.
Maxx Bowman, also of the local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said the ICE agents showed a “lack of de-escalation.”
Macklin Good was shot in her vehicle in a residential area of south Minneapolis.
“You see him pulling the gun while she’s steering away from him,” Johnson said about the video of Macklin Good’s death.
Johnson and Bowman were hopeful that, even hundreds of miles away from Minneapolis, showing up in protest of Macklin Good’s death could inspire change.
“We need to build a mass movement,” Johnson said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
They have also heard discussions of a general strike across the U.S., which would be a mass work stoppage simultaneously across multiple industries.
“If tomorrow Trump didn’t show up in the White House, we wouldn’t notice...If the billionaires didn’t show up, we wouldn’t notice. But if we did not show up in large numbers, they will notice,” Johnson said.
Fear over potential future ICE involvement in the region has been rising. People in Springfield are bracing for the scheduled end of temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants, who make up anywhere between 12,000 to 15,000 of residents.
Members of the Miami Valley Immigration Coalition have reported a “high level of fear and anxiety among community members” amid ramped-up immigration enforcement in Ohio.
An analysis by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance last month reported more than 200 people were allegedly detained from Dec. 17-23 as a part of Operation Buckeye, a series of immigration enforcement raids that have primarily impacted the Columbus area.
The analysis found that 137 of these people were detained at Butler County Jail following their arrests. Additionally, 10 arrests of men who have criminal histories were included in an ICE press release about Operation Buckeye earlier this month. At least three of these were arrested before the operation began, according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance.
Sydney Dawes and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
About the Author
