NOT PRETTI GOOD, MARCHERS GET “NOT PRETTI GOOD” SIGNS
/NOT PRETTI GOOD
It would be pretty good and actually pretty damn easy to lower the tensions, the cuss word outrage emanating from Minnesota after the shooting death of Alex Pretti.
If that person in the White House simply called out the scaredy cat gutless coward Border Patrol agents who shot Pretti on a Minneapolis street last Saturday morning, that alone would help the country. In fact, if the President just immediately fired these people, it would be the greatest act of his presidency. Even more than acquiring Greenland. Just call the border agents cowards and it would help this nation. As in, “Well at least they called these guys what they are and fired them.”
I’m an old school gang reporter in Los Angeles, the gang capital of America. If Raymond Washington, the founder of the Crips, had seen what these punk ass border agents had done, he woulda called them cowards plus and beat the shit out of them.
When I saw the video, Pretti protecting the woman and then within two seconds, the five or six or seven agents against him and saw him get shot, it was maddening. But when I heard Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse at the Veteran’s Administration hospital my anger my outrage redlined. I can’t remember when I felt like this about a single shooting. And I’ve been around my share of shootings.
If Alex Pretti worked at candy store or a gas station it would be horrible too, of course. But that VA thing seems to turbo charge the madness of all of this. The VA! He took care of our soldiers who were ill. My father and uncles were at the VA many, many times. My dad, a World War 2 Army Air Corps pilot, died at the VA in Westwood. And here is a ICU nurse from the VA getting shot by United States agents.
Bruce Springsteen – the only star I have heard speak out against this ICE stuff, telling them to “get the fuck outta Minnesota” – came out with a song Wednesday called “Streets of Minneapolis.” Thank you, Bruce.
Shiftin gears, less than an hour after first seeing the video last Saturday afternoon, I had to get ready to meet my girlfriend at a benefit for the fire victims. I put on a shirt that didn’t work then tried on a maroon pullover that worked. I thought to myself “that looks pretty good.”
Immediately it hit me. Pretti Good. Renee Good had been the woman shot to death by ICE agent 17 days before Pretti. And now Pretti had been killed. Pretti. Good. Not pretty good.
Not Pretti Good. I kept thinking that. And I thought, I don’t know, frustrated that I couldn’t really do anything, I figured about the only thing I could do was write this and hope maybe people would start protesting with signs that read Not Pretti Good. Not Pretti Good.
I went to our garage, found a cardboard box and spray painted it. Clearly, I’m rusty. But i envisioned hundreds, thousands of cardboard or wooded signs that read that. Billboards. A movement. Not Pretti Good. I see an aerial shot of demonstrations with a sea of Not Pretti Good.
Everyone should be against this one. Even the Border Guards should speak out themselves against this. At the Veteran’s Administration in Minneapolis, maybe someday they might name something after Alex Pretti. And no, that won’t be pretty good.
