January 25, 2026: “The Saw, The Drill,” Another Shooting, “Laundry Day”

WARNING;  I am going to be writing about yesterday’s shooting in Minneapolis.  

Another day, another shooting.

Some things are impossible to ignore, and I’m not sure that ignorance is bliss in this situation.  To ignore is to be complicit, and I simply can’t pretend that everything is sunshine and chocolates in the United States at the moment.

A little over two weeks ago, Renee Good was murdered on the streets of Minneapolis by a masked ICE agent whose only response after shooting here in the face was to call her a “fucking bitch.” Yesterday (Saturday, January 24, 2026) a group of ICE agents murdered another innocent protestor in Minneapolis.  His name was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who worked for a Veterans Administration hospital in the city.  Trying to protect a woman, Pretti was pepper-sprayed, forced to the sidewalk, brutally beaten, and then shot multiple times.  (I’ve watched the video of the killing.  The ICE agents fire at least ten shots into Pretti’s prostrate body in the space of about five or seven seconds.)  After they shot him, one ICE agent can be seen clapping while the others turn Pretti’s body to count bullet holes.

I know I said I was going to try to remain positive in my posts, but I just can’t tonight.  I . . . just . . . can’t.

Marie Howe writes about how humans break things . . . 

The Saw, The Drill

by: Marie Howe

There’s always a chain saw somewhere,

the high whine of a drill, somebody building something or

tearing it down—fastening metal to metal.

When did wood give way to iron?

Then to plastic?

Almost everywhere the sound of the human will:

the bluster of engine, the grind of a blade, the wheel:

hammering, construction, repair.

Someone nailed to a cross, someone leashed, lashed.

Someone hung from a scaffold:  listen:  the squeak of the rope

the hammering.

Kill him with his own gun, a woman shouted,

Kill him with his own gun.

What have we made?  What are we making?

And who or what made us that we should make

such things as we do and did?  We grow smaller.  We break things.

Then turn to each other and beg for what no human can give.

This is a difficult poem for me to read tonight.  It’s all about humankind’s inherent need to break things.  We create, we destroy.  The line that sticks with me:  Kill him with his own gun.  I’m tired of ruthless mercenaries patrolling our streets, tear-gassing and detaining legal protestors, and un-aliving mothers and poets and nurses.  Yesterday, after seeing the video of Pretti’s assassination, I said to my wife, “I don’t recognize the country I live in anymore.”  

As I’m typing these words, I’m trying to formulate a message that isn’t all anger and retribution.  I’m failing miserably because I want these federal thugs to be arrested, convicted, and punished.  The Winter Olympics will be starting in Italy very soon, and, if I were an athlete, I’d be ashamed to represent the United States.  (Keep in mind that the fear and righteous anger we all feel right now is the same fear and righteous anger that African and Indigenous Americans have been experiencing for hundreds of years.)

I haven’t lost hope completely, though.  As Ann Frank said, 

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Ann Frank was right.  The cruelty did end, but not before she was killed in a Nazi concentration camp.  Renee Good and Alex Pretti are martyrs for democracy, freedom, kindness, and compassion.  One day, plaques and statues should be erected in their honor.  They should never be forgotten.  

That is Saint Marty’s hope.  

A poem for tonight . . . 

Laundry Day

for Alex Pretti

by: Martin Achatz

I sit with the normal Saturday-morning crew, watch underwear, socks tumble and agitate as if I’m binging some Netflix series.  Martin and Malcolm have loads going, too, built up after a week of marching and teargas in the Twin Cities.  They huddle in a corner, drink hot coffee, compare notes, bruises, scars from the good old days, wonder when the good old days will end.  Alex comes in, fills a washer with towels and sheets, finds a seat, asks no one in particular, Is this a dream?  Martin and Malcolm laugh, offer him a stick of Juicy Fruit.  All three watch the machines cycle and spin, cycle and spin, trying to remove stains that just won’t come out, even after hundreds of years of scrubbing.