Tag: Rise Up Times social media

  • Federal Goons in Minneapolis, by Susu Jeffrey

    Federal Goons in Minneapolis, by Susu Jeffrey

    Pictured: ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, of Chaska MN, who shot Renee Good to death on January 7, 2026

    Federal Goons in Minneapolis

    By Susu Jeffrey / Original to Wings of Change / February 6, 2026

    The two masked federal officials who shot intensive care nurse Alex Pretti are Texans, Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. Ochoa, 43, joined Border Patrol in 2018; Gutierrez, 35, has been with Customs and Border Protection since 2018. The January 24 killing of Pretti has been ruled a homicide, that is, an unlawful killing of a person.

    Although Pretti’s autopsy has not been released he was shot perhaps 10 times according to a The New York Times frame by frame review of video footage. Ochoa and Gutierrez were whisked out of Minneapolis soon after killing Pretti as part of the federal brotherhood protective practice.

    Jonathan Ross, 43, who shot Renee Good three times plus a bullet graze while she was sitting in her car on January 7 has a long military career. He served with the Indiana National Guard in Iraq in 2004-5 as a machine gunner on a combat patrol truck.

    In 2007 Ross joined the U.S. Border Patrol and worked out of El Paso, Texas. He moved to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2015, working in a deportation unit. Ross is a firearms instructor, on a SWAT team and specializes in tracking down “higher value targets.” Ross lives in “a large house on a quiet street” in Chaska, a southwest suburb of Minneapolis. He is described by his father as a “conservative Christian.”

    ICE is the wealthiest law enforcement agency in the country. Ross’ Minneapolis attorney, Chris Madel. a law enforcement defender, ended his gubernatorial run after the Pretti murder saying “national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.” However Madel said he  still supported President Trump’s cliché about the immigration hunt for “the worst of the worst.”

    The Twin Cities are still overrun with armed, masked enforcers (at least 2000) who are terrorizing citizens into staying at home, and missing school and work. Business is suffering. Nevertheless, thousands and thousands of peaceful neighbors turn out for frequent demonstrations and attended the February 3 political caucuses. Besides the regular protests, neighborhoods are organized to act if ICE comes into their territory, trained legal observers are tracking ICE agents, and people are donating food and other items to distribution centers. People are also delivering food to those who are housebound by choice. Others are driving to and picking up children to and from school. Defying and standing up to ICE in Minnesota is a community effort.

    Susu Jeffrey is a poet and writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
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    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media

     Join us on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration. Here in Minnesota we are particularly  targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are people of color. 

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    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Robert Reich: On War

    Robert Reich: On War

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    Trump’s War Footing

    His foreign and domestic policies are becoming one and the same, and their purpose isn’t complicated.

    Friends,

    At the same time agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are swarming into Minnesota and other states and cities, Trump is planning bombing raids on other countries.

    Domestically and internationally, he is putting America on a war footing.

    ICE is reportedly investing $100 million on what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed. Its recruitment is targeting gun and military enthusiasts, people who listen to right-wing radio, who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races. It’s calling for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

    Meanwhile, Trump has announced that he’ll ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year — a 66 percent increase over the 2026 defense budget Congress just authorized.

    There’s coming to be no difference between Trump’s foreign and domestic policies.

    Both are based on the same eight maniacal ideas:

    (1) Might makes right.

    (2) Law is irrelevant.

    (3) America is at war with the world’s “radical left,” who are defined chiefly by their opposition to Trump.

    (4) Fear and force are better weapons in this war than hope and compromise.

    (5) The U.S. stock market is the best measure of Trump’s success.

    (6) Personal enrichment by Trump and other officials is justified in pursuit of victory.

    (7) So are lies, cover-ups, and the illegal use of force. (Trump is invincible and omnipotent.)

    These ideas are at such fundamental odds with the norms most of us share about what America is all about and how a president should think and behave that it’s difficult to accept that Trump believes them or that his White House thugs eagerly endorse them. But he does, and they do.

    Rather than some “doctrine” or set of principles, they’re more like guttural discharges. Trump is not rational, and the people around him trying to give him a patina of rationality — his White House assistants and spokespeople — surely know it.

    The media tries to confer on Trump a coherence that evaporates almost as soon as it’s stated. The New York Times’s breathless coverage of its recent Oval Office interview with Trump — describing his “many faces” — is a model of such a vapidity.

    According to the Times, Trump “took unpredictable turns” during the interview. But instead of seeing this unpredictability as a symptom of Trump’s diminishing capacities and ever-shorter attention span, the Times reported it as “a tactic he embraces as president, particularly on the world stage. If no one knows what you might do, they often do what you want them to do.”

    Attempts to show inconsistencies or hypocrisies in Trump’s domestic or foreign policies are fruitless because they have no consistency or truthfulness to begin with.

    Nor is it possible for the media to describe a “big picture” of America and the world under Trump because there is nothing to picture other than his malignant, impulsive, unbridled grandiosity all the way up and all the way down.

    Trump has unleashed violence on America’s streets for much the same reason he has unleashed violence on Latin America and is planning to unleash it elsewhere: to display his own strength. His motive is to gain more power and, along the way, more wealth. (On Sunday, he even posted an image referring to himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela.”)

    “Policy” implies thought. But under Trump, there is no domestic or foreign policy because it is all thoughtless. It is not even improvised. It is just Trump’s ego — as interpreted by the toadies around him (Miller, Vought, Vance, Kennedy, Rubio, Noem) trying to guess what his ego craves or detests, or fulfilling their own fanatical goals by manipulating it.

    We must stop trying to make rational sense out of what Trump is doing. He is a ruthless dictator, plan and simple.

    All analyses of what is happening — all reporting, all efforts to understand, all attempts at strategizing — are doomed. The only reality is that an increasingly dangerous and irrational sociopath is now exercising brutal and unconstrained power over America and, hence, the world.

    Trump is putting America on a war footing because war is good for him as it is for all dictators.

    War confers emergency powers. It justifies ignoring the niceties of elections. It allows dictators to imprison and intimidate opponents and enemies. It enables them to create their own personal slush funds. It distracts the public from other things (remember Jeffrey Epstein?).

    War gives dictators like Trump more power and more wealth. Period.

    What are your thoughts? TO robertreich@gmail.com

    RELATED

    America’s Gestapo

    What you can do to stop ICE’s mayhem

    Robert Reich
    Jan 16, 2026

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media

    Please join me on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have so much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others. 

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Welcome to Wings of Change

    Welcome to Wings of Change

    These are perilous times, and we have much work to do. It is wonderful to see how much work is being done by activists locally, around the country, and around the world. But there is more to do.

    Let Freedom Ring! The Liberty Bell may be cracked but “that’s how the light gets in” says Leonard Cohen. Meanwhile “ring the bells that still can ring” with continued action everywhere in every possible nonviolent way as we continue to plant the seeds of justice and peace. You’ve heard the saying “every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings.” Now every time you take an action for justice and peace from a phone call or email to civil resistance you use your Wings of Change.

    On this my new website and blog I will still be posting some articles just as I did on Rise Up Times, with the addition of a blog. I am so glad to have a website again.

    Subscribe today! Access is always free. Wings of Change is  entirely reader supported. Your support is important and essential in these perilous times. Please donate here to WingsofChange.me.

    The original Rise Up Times website has been archived but these are still rise up times, and it is even more important that we continue to rise up! Rise Up Times is still on social media: Twitter (X), Facebook, Pinterest, Tumbler, Linked In, and under my name, Sue Ann Martinson, on my personal Facebook page. And also now on Instagram and Tik Tok.

    With peace and justice for all,

    Sue Ann

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