Alex Pretti Was a Good Man at Time of Great Evil

On Saturday morning in Minneapolis, federal agents murdered 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse at a local Veterans Authority hospital. Pretti was trying to help a woman whom federal agents shoved violently to the ground. A fellow ICE observer, the woman flew a few feet through the air and landed hard; it had to hurt. “Are you OK?” Pretti asked her, according to bystanders. Those were his last known words. He kept trying to help the woman, and the agents kept trying to stop him, finally shooting him in the head at close range, execution-style, and then at least nine more times. (You can see videos, and a still photo of his execution I wish I hadn’t seen, all over social media.) Pretti died on the scene.

The last Minnesotan murdered in the federal occupation of Minneapolis, just more than two weeks ago, was Renee Good, a mother, a poet, and a lesbian, whose last words to her murderer, Jonathan Ross, were, “I’m not mad at you, dude,” as she smiled at him. According to his own phone video recording, Ross’s first words after he shot Good were “Fucking bitch.”

Much has been written about the misogyny behind the murder of Good, as well as the defamation of her wife, Becca. The Department of Justice is investigating Becca Good, not Ross, for her alleged activist ties. Renee seemed to die for the crime of being a happy lesbian with a spunky wife who was confronting ICE, respectfully, and with humor. In Becca’s last words before her wife’s murder, she told Ross to take a lunch break.

Federal law enforcement officials are smearing Pretti, just like they did Good, claiming he was “brandishing” a weapon. (He was legally carrying a holstered pistol.) Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called him a “domestic terrorist,” and Border Control commander at large Greg Bovino, the mini-Nazi, said he tried to “massacre law enforcement.” Multiple videos from multiple angles showed their claims to be slanderous lies.

How do we make sense of Pretti being murdered for coming to the aid of another female ICE victim? We don’t. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s related. We know the fascists don’t want white people standing up for immigrants and other people of color, who are the main victims of Operation Metro Surge (and all the other perversely named federal invasions, including Maine’s revolting “Catch of the Day,” as though immigrants are fish to be caught and killed.) And apparently, they don’t want men coming to the aid of the women they assault.

But it was not lost on Pretti’s devastated parents that he died “while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper-sprayed,” they said in a statement. They wanted us to know that fact. “Please get the truth out about our son,” they added. “He was a good man.”

Alex Pretti was a good man at a time when very bad men are running our country.

Right-wingers from Nazi Stephen Miller to the former Project Veritas fraud James O’Keefe keep insisting that Minneapolis ICE observers like Pretti and the Goods are being paid. You know why? Because the right wing has an infrastructure of billions of dollars available to fund lying scum like “videographer” O’Keefe to malign liberals and the left. They cannot conceive of the genuine, spontaneous mutual aid and support we see in Minneapolis, and in other American cities, like Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and most recently, Portland, Maine. Neighbors are coming to the aid of neighbors—many of them white people coming to the aid of Black and brown people, immigrants and citizens alike, who are being snatched off the streets, mostly illegally, by masked invaders sent by Trump. They do their laundry, they bring them food, they walk their children to and from school so they can stay at home and try to stay safe (although that strategy is failing as ICE agents increasingly hunt their prey door to door).

Trump, an adjudicated rapist, has declared, “I cherish women.” The entire right-wing project to strip women of their rights, to thwart their progress in the workplace, to keep them out of combat, is often defended as an effort to protect women, when of course it’s intended to restore women to their “rightful” place as breeders and tenders of children and helpmates to men.

Pretti is being remembered on social media as a dedicated VA nurse who always spoke up if he thought his female colleagues on the wards were being disrespected. He was chosen to honor a veteran he tended after the man died. (The veteran’s grateful son posted the tribute to Facebook.)

“Today we remember that freedom is not free, that we have to work at it, nurture it and protect it, and even sacrifice for it,” he read to a small memorial in the hospital ward. Pretti did that work, and he sacrificed for our freedom. Let’s honor his sacrifice by stepping up our efforts to stop this lawless assault on immigrants, people of color, and democracy itself.