Day: January 9, 2026

I write blogs each day of the week unless some appointments or special events crowd the hours of my day. My essays are somewhat spontaneous, reflecting how I am feeling in the moment. The words generally flow from my mind into my hands that tap tap on the keys of my laptop. I marvel at how many ideas pop into my head and seem to demand to be recorded on paper. Sometimes though my emotions are in such an upheaval that that I cannot calm them enough to make my thoughts clear. The chaos in my mind is too disjointed and heavy to make sense of how I am feeling or what I truly want to say. 

January 8, 2026, the day after Renee Good was shot by an ICE officer in Minnesota was one of the days when I struggled to keep the depth of my emotions in check. I managed to spend four hours tutoring students in mathematics but that kind of task is second nature to this old teacher. I learned long ago how to curb my feelings when my duty is to care for my students. 

It was only after my sessions with earnest young people that I internally fell apart. I felt anger and grief for the loved ones of Renee Good and for the citizens of Minnesota and all of the United States for that matter. What happened to Renee on a cold Wednesday was horrific and triggering. It was something that was bound to happen sooner or later in the super charged atmosphere that Trump has so unnecessarily created. Sending hoards of ICE agents dressed like storm troopers to American cities that he does not like simply because he is angry with the leaders and the people in those places is a show rather than a solution.  

It is a true fact that my state of Texas has more immigrants than almost any other state in our union. I have no doubt that many of those immigrants are here illegally and yet there has been hardly a stir here compared to places like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis where the voters generally lean toward Democrats and the leaders often criticize Trump’s actions. It is obvious that he is punishing particular places while somewhat looking the other way in locales where his support is higher. It is as though he is purposely causing mischief and riling up populations to create a false impression that insures his grip on citizens who blindly believe his lies without checking the facts. 

The stage was set for tragedy and sadly it came to pass. Renee Good was protesting the door to door invasion of the homes of Minnesota immigrants, with a particular emphasis on those from Somalia. I thing that she believed that she was doing good work in observing what was happening and attempting to protect her community from what she saw as unfairness. She seemed to be not a radical but someone with a good heart and so on a cold day she tried to block the progress of the ICE agents in what she probably hoped would be a peaceful manner. She must have thought that she was doing her part to protest what she believed to be wrong just as I have participated in three marches in my city and written countless blogs criticizing what I see happening with the present administration. I doubt that she had any idea that she was going to be killed on that day.

I don’t know what I would have done in her situation. I suppose that having camo clad men bearing arms surrounding her car must have been terrifying. My guess is that her brain went into fright and flight mode just as it was designed to do. She might have stepped out of the car but maybe she was terrified about what would happen if she did so. I doubt that her thinking was clear at all in the fateful moment when she chose to drive away, not to attack one of the agents. 

The videos are quite clear that she had no intention of harming anyone. Her only mistake was attempting to get away from the situation. At that point it would have been quite easy for one of the agents to record her license plate information and track her down later if they wanted to press some kind of charges against her. In the heat of the moment drawing a weapon and shooting not once but three times into her car was a move even more egregious than her decision to flee. Lying that she was aiming her car at the ICE officer does not help any of us feel a sense of justification for her death. Shooting at someone should be an act of last resort as should invading a city with armed officers putting on a show of force. The unnecessary creation of tension made it almost inevitable that someone would be hurt. 

I do not believe that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist anymore than I am when I voice my opposition and concerns to what I see happening in my beloved country. She was simply asserting the freedoms granted to all of us by the bravery of the individuals who fought for a new kind of government of the people and by the people two hundred fifty years ago. I grieve for Renee Good and those who loved her just as I grieve for America. This is not who we should be. 

When I was a young woman attempting to find my purpose in life I entered college hoping to encounter the foundations of a possible career. I changed my majors so many times that I finally settled on unspecified arts and sciences for a time while I enrolled in one differing course after another hoping that a spark of interest would lead me to the career that I would follow. 

My first experiences in the Department of Education were far from inspiring. A general music class convinced me that I was way out of my league if I was ever asked to head a class in the basics of singing and playing instruments. An introductory class in the science of education lead by a brilliant professor piqued my interest enough that I made my major official and embarked on a series of courses where I learned how complex excellent teaching would actually be. Along the way I finally decided to take a required course called ‘Multiculturalism in the Classroom.” I would lie if I did not admit that this sounded like a fluff piece that would give me an easy A without much effort. Boy, was I wrong!

The professor was a young Black man, the first nonwhite teacher I had ever had. Before college was a student in the mid- nineteen fifties until nineteen sixty six. Living in the segregated south my only interaction with the Black people in my city was in passing until my senior year of high school when a talented Black student came to our campus. Since I had no classes with him I generally only knew of him. I knew immediately when I saw a Black man leading the multicultural class that it would be much more interesting that I had imagined, and it was.

Our professor was a gifted speaker and he made every topic enchanting. He challenged us and showed us a world that we had never known. He even poked fun at himself by telling a story of his own innocence about the people of the world. He recounted a time when he did enough research to determine what part of Africa had been his ancestral home. With great excitement he even learned what the historic garb was for that region. He purchased clothing that he believed would put him in good standing with the people that he would meet in the land where his ancestors once lived. Dressed in what he hoped would instantly impress the people he would encounter he stepped off of the plane to the amusement of those who were meeting him. They were decked out in western clothing and he instantly realized that he had insulted them by stereotyping who they were. 

This same man required us to choose an older part of the city of Houston to learn the history and evolution of the area. Because my grandparents had settled in the east end when they arrived from the Slovakian area of Austria Hungary I chose that part of town to study. The paper that I wrote was massive in its analysis of the demographics and economic aspects of how things came to be. I learned that Harrisburg was initially the capital of the Republic of Texas and that most of the land was dedicated to farming. After the devastating hurricane of 1900 in Galveston enterprising entrepreneurs decided to dig a waterway from the Gulf of Mexico to the east end of Houston. That big ditch eventually became one of the busiest ports in the United States. It was no doubt one of the reasons that my grandfather decided to move to Houston just before World War I broke out.

I found out that the movers and shakers of Houston aggressively advertised, sometimes falsely, to draw immigrants from around the world. There was a need for workers to build the infrastructure that would one day make Houston the fourth largest city with the most diverse population in the United States.

I treasured everything that I learned in the multicultural class long before DEI was even a thing. The professor opened my eyes and my mind so that I would forevermore meet my students and their parents with great respect. What I learned there was a key to my success as a teacher. It made me incredibly aware of the dangers of stereotyping and prejudice. I learned how to meet my students and their families just as they were. I realized how all of us have the same hopes and dreams for ourselves and our children. I saw that we each celebrate our backgrounds and our cultures and that there is much beauty in allowing each person to have the freedom to live as they wish rather than according to some dictate that forces them to change. Embracing multiculturalism not only helped me grow in the classroom but it became the strength of our great city. 

We are many nations, many cultures in Houston, Texas. We know many languages and take pride in our respective histories. Each individual has something special to offer the world and teaching became a way for me to help each of my students to find themselves just as I had done in the long ago. 

I will forever be grateful to the incredible man who lifted the scales from my eyes. He did not use propaganda to get me there nor did he pit one race or culture with another. He simply showed me how to value everyone that I would meet in the adventure called my life. He was perhaps one of the most consequential people in my life who helped me to fully understand that diversity, equity and inclusion do not hurt anyone but instead they help everyone.