Renee Good is dead.
Alex Pretti is dead.
The organizations that trained them, funded the operations that put them in harm’s way, and designed the confrontation tactics that led to their deaths are still operating. Still funded. Still recruiting.
And they’re using the deaths to raise more money.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s the business model.
“Defend the 612” and the Casualty Strategy
One of the primary organizations driving anti-ICE confrontations in Minneapolis calls itself Defend the 612 — named after the city’s area code.
City Journal investigated the group and identified a strategy so cynical it reads like a war crimes manual.
“This cycle reveals the core strategy of Defend the 612’s leadership: using casualties as a catalyst for further escalation. Organizers continue to push volunteers into unpredictable scenes, ensuring continued confrontations between residents and federal agents, while the professional architects of the chaos remain shielded from the consequences.”
Read that again.
Using casualties as a catalyst.
The organizers — the people designing the tactics, writing the training materials, deploying the volunteers — are shielded from consequences. They don’t stand in front of ICE vehicles. They don’t confront armed federal agents. They don’t get hurt.
Their followers do.
The Training That Kills
Defend the 612 and similar organizations don’t just encourage confrontation. They train for it.
Their training materials instruct followers that the mission is “about interfering with immigration enforcement, confusing them, slowing them down so they can’t take more people, and doing it so well that they never want to come back.”
The goal isn’t protest. It’s operational disruption. Physically preventing federal agents from executing lawful arrests.
Volunteers are trained to make enforcement “uncomfortable and inefficient.”
They’re instructed to refuse compliance with law enforcement orders.
They’re encouraged to physically insert themselves into the paths of agents conducting operations.
They’re taught to get arrested deliberately — to divert officers and resources from arresting criminal aliens.
Every one of these tactics places untrained civilians into direct physical conflict with armed federal agents conducting dangerous operations.
The predictable outcome: people get hurt. People die.
The organizers know this. They plan for it. They fundraise on it.
Two Dead. Organizers Untouched.
Renee Good drove her vehicle into an ICE enforcement operation. She allegedly aimed her car at agents. She was shot and killed.
Alex Pretti brought a loaded 9mm handgun and extra magazines to a confrontation with federal agents — his second confrontation in 11 days. He was shot and killed.
Both were participants in the anti-ICE movement that organizations like Defend the 612 cultivate, train, and deploy.
Both are dead.
The organizers who designed the confrontation tactics? Safe. Anonymous. Still operating.
The funders who bankroll the operations? Untouched. Still writing checks.
The trainers who taught followers to physically obstruct armed federal agents? Still training. Still recruiting.
The casualties are absorbed into the propaganda machine. Their faces appear on fundraising emails. Their names become hashtags. Their deaths justify further escalation.
And the cycle repeats.
The Propaganda Cycle
Step one: recruit volunteers through emotional appeals about “protecting neighborhoods” and “acts of love and caring.”
Step two: train those volunteers in tactics guaranteed to produce dangerous confrontations with armed federal agents.
Step three: deploy volunteers into the field. Ensure confrontations occur.
Step four: when volunteers are injured or killed, use the casualties for fundraising, media coverage, and recruitment of new volunteers.
Step five: repeat.
The casualties aren’t failures of the strategy. They’re the product. Dead and injured volunteers generate more sympathy, more media attention, more donations, and more recruits than successful operations where nobody gets hurt.
A peaceful protest that ends without incident doesn’t make the news. A dead protester dominates the news cycle for weeks.
The organizations know this. Their strategy depends on it.
Foreign Funding Powers the Machine
This isn’t a grassroots operation funded by Minneapolis residents passing a hat.
Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow reported in October that these groups are heavily funded by foreign billionaires, including George Soros and Neville Roy Singham.
The Government Accountability Institute identified Singham as connected to dozens of radical left-wing organizations and funders of left-wing domestic activity in the U.S.
Foreign money. Flowing to American organizations. Training American civilians to physically confront American law enforcement officers executing American laws.
The organizers aren’t local community leaders protecting their neighborhoods. They’re operatives in a funded network that spans multiple states, multiple organizations, and multiple funding streams — some originating overseas.
“An Act of Love and Caring”
Defend the 612 describes its work as “an act of love and caring.”
Their statement reads like it was written by a PR firm — because it probably was.
“Minneapolis will not accept federal occupation and we will not accept the violent invasion by immoral storm-troopers who have been given orders to terrorize our community and riot in our streets.”
Federal agents executing arrest warrants for criminal aliens are “storm-troopers.” Lawful enforcement operations are “violent invasion.” Removing illegal immigrants with criminal records is “terrorizing the community.”
“Masked agents try to kidnap our babies and tear families apart.”
ICE agents executing warrants are “kidnapping babies.” The language is deliberately designed to dehumanize law enforcement and emotionalize the response.
This isn’t community organizing. It’s psychological manipulation deployed against vulnerable people to convince them that physically confronting armed federal agents is a moral obligation.
And when those people get hurt — or killed — the organization uses their suffering to raise more money and recruit more bodies.
The Human Shield Strategy
Military organizations call this using human shields. Embed fighters among civilians. When civilians are harmed, blame the opposing force.
Defend the 612 operates on the same principle. Train civilians to obstruct law enforcement. When civilians are harmed during the obstruction, blame law enforcement.
The organizers aren’t standing between ICE and the community. They’re standing behind the community, pushing people forward into confrontations designed to produce casualties.
ICE agents don’t want to hurt anyone. They’re executing warrants. They’re removing criminal aliens. Every confrontation with a civilian is a confrontation they’d rather avoid.
But when trained volunteers physically block operations, refuse orders, insert themselves into arrest scenes, and drive vehicles at agents, the agents have no choice but to respond.
The organizations know this. They depend on it. The response is the product.
Joe Rogan Was Right
Joe Rogan said the Minneapolis protests weren’t organic. He said they were “coordinated to induce chaos.”
City Journal’s investigation confirms it. The confrontations are trained, funded, organized, and deployed by professional operatives who remain insulated from the consequences they create.
Rogan saw what most of America sees: the protests look coordinated because they are coordinated. The escalation patterns look manufactured because they are manufactured. The casualties look like strategic assets because to the organizations that deploy volunteers, that’s exactly what they are.
The Deputies Die. The Generals Live.
In every conflict, the people at the top survive. The people at the bottom absorb the damage.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti were at the bottom. They were foot soldiers in an operation designed by people who would never personally stand in front of an ICE vehicle or bring a gun to a federal enforcement scene.
The organizers wrote the training materials. The funders signed the checks. The PR teams crafted the messaging. The lawyers prepared the lawsuits.
And two people are dead.
The organizations will use those deaths to raise millions. To recruit thousands. To escalate further. To push more untrained civilians into more dangerous confrontations.
Until someone — Congress, the DOJ, federal prosecutors — holds the organizers accountable for the casualties their strategies produce, the body count will continue to grow.
The volunteers are disposable. The funding is permanent. And the organizers sleep safely every night while the people they deployed sleep in coffins.
