An age-old activist group popularized the protest tactic that 37-year-old Renee Good reportedly took on before being shot dead by an immigration agent in Minnesota.
Local and federal officials, as well as former acquaintances, attested that Good was in a Minneapolis neighborhood to monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity during the fatal altercation on Wednesday, labeling her a “legal observer,” according to multiple reports.
The leftist National Lawyers Guild mainstreamed the term through its “Legal Observer Program” in 1968, designed to appoint members to observe police responses to leftist Columbia University protests. These supposed legal documentarians have since become a fixture in American activism, including in the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, and other leftist groups use the label colloquially.
The NLG did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security alleged that Good tried to run over an ICE agent with her car before he opened fire. Video footage showed agents approaching her car in the middle of the road and asking her to step out. She then moved the car back, looked forward in the agent’s direction, and quickly moved the car toward him, prompting him to fire multiple shots, the footage revealed.
Good belonged to an “ICE Watch” activist network known for trying to interfere with immigration operations through confrontation, despite members calling themselves legal observers, federal sources told Fox News.
The phrase does not denote any legal protection for a protester beyond their First Amendment rights, but rather an informal title.
Legal observers exist to “create documentation during events which can later be [used] in defense cases, public statements, and litigation which aims to hold law enforcement agencies accountable for the actions of their officers,” according to the NLG’s website.
The group says it derived the idea from the violent Black Panther Party’s practices in the 1960s. The NLG registered the “legal observer” phrase for a trademark in 2017, copyright records show.
Twelve NLG legal observers won a collective $49,000 settlement in 2022 after suing over their arrests during New York City BLM demonstrations in 2020, Law360 reported. Another was charged in a racketeering case against 2023 “Stop Cop City” riots in Atlanta, Georgia, although the prosecutions face an uncertain legal future, The Guardian reported.
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