GOFFSTOWN, NH – Approximately 225 people attended a candlelight vigil in Goffstown’s town square Wednesday night in clear but very cold weather to bear witness to the nine lives lost to ICE agents around the country.
Reverend Jason Wells of Goffstown’s St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church was an event organizer with Hospice Pastor Shellie Anne Brook offering an opening prayer. The concerned attendees sang America the Beautiful and This Land is Your Land with guest speakers James McKim (Manchester NAACP), Nichole Bump (Chair, Goffstown Democrats), Oliver Welch-Erdahl and Judi Lanza (former Goffstown Representative and nurse).
After the opening song Rev. Wells thanked both the Goffstown Police Department and the Department of Public Works for their assistance with the vigil. The latter cleared the town square of considerable snow.
“This is a vigil, not a protest,” were among Rev. Wells opening remarks. “We likely would have met at the church,” he said, “but St. Matthew’s is serving meals tonight.”
“We stand here with courage,” Rev. Wells continued. “This is our time.”
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As Americans each of us is left with indelible impressions of major national events both triumphal and tragic. We all have been affected by the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the pressure hoses and dogs unleashed in Selma, and “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” to name but a few. Political rhetoric is cheap these days. Opinion is a right but total dismissal of truth, as we saw in Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Stalin’s purges, is an end game.
Troubling current events in these United States are cascading down with a depth and a rapidity that leaves us searching for the ropes after a punch to the gut. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this week, “We are at a precipice.”
An attempt is made here by me to present a slice of recent events in America, rhetoric-free. You be the judge:
- Otto Warmbier being carried off a plane in Cincinnati after spending 15 months in a North Korean hospital.
- January 6th: Officer Brian Sicknick. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. The shooting of protester Ashli Babbitt. Howling QAnon buffalo shaman Jacob Chansley. “We’re going to walk down there and I’ll be with you.”
- President Trump’s 20 steps into North Korea, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea. Supreme leader and dictator Kim Jong-un’s status goes from “Rocket Man” to “We fell in love.” They shake hands. Tucker Carlson immediately navigates for a Nobel Peace Prize.
- Trump telling Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy, “You have to be thankful. You don’t have the cards.”
- President Biden at the 2024 presidential debate saying “…with the COVID. Excuse me. Dealing with everything we have to do…Look, we finally beat Medicaid.”
- Alex Jones and Sandy Hook.
- The withheld Epstein Files. Virginia Roberts Giuffre and the Survivor Sisters.
- Trump in a January, 2021 phone call to Georgia: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” Repeat in January, 2026.
- Venezuelan oil.
- The thirteen US service members and 170 civilians killed by a suicide bomber at Kabul International Airport during the withdrawl from Afghanistan. The Taliban take over.
- Saudi Arabia executing 345 people in 2025, up from 172 in 2023. Most are for drug offenses but some are for crimes committed as juveniles, a violation of international law. Arms sales to Saudi Arabia currently account for 12% of total U.S. exports.
- 72,437 Palestinians and 2,109 Israelis killed in the War in Gaza to date. Israeli imports 69 percent of its arms from the United States. In a war that Trump said would end on “Day One,” 2025 is the deadliest year yet in the four-year war in Ukraine. According to the website Russia Matters, Russia is gaining approximately 171 square miles of Ukraine monthly. In just one measurement, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that 84,568 Russian troops are missing in action.
- Trump overseeing Operation Warp Speed which rapidly and effectively prepares and distributes the COVID-19 vaccine. He signs a bill securing $255 million annually and permanently for historic Black colleges and universities. He oversees a long-overdue audit of the Pentagon.
- 17 year-old Kyle Rittenhouse bringing an AR-15 to the then ongoing protests in Kenosha, WI, and killing two people. His friend Dominick Black, who purchased the gun for the minor, is given a $2,000 fine. Rittenhouse is cleared of all charges.
- Trump rallying his base with the term America First, perhaps unaware that the name was first used before WWII, then attracting demagogues, antisemites and at-any-cost isolationists. The movement culminates in a well-attended Madison Square Garden rally with thousands giving the Nazi salute in front of 30-foot banners of George Washington. The movement ends overnight on December 7, 1941.
- Citizens of Denmark donning red MAGA-style hats with the lettering “Make America Go Away.”
- Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. Windmills. Clean coal. Things heat up.
- Trump meeting with the elderly surviving Navajo Code Talkers at the White House beneath a newly-hung portrait of Andrew Jackson.
- The U.S. Space Force launch as the sixth branch of the military.
- Tariffs come and go. Soybean farmers see their exports to China dry up overnight. Many farmers receive bailouts but tariff whiplash leaves federal workers wondering if they can survive Elon Musk. Nate Vince, a 20-year Yosemite National Park staffer suddenly laid off, unfurls a giant upside down American flag partly covering the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan. Vince claiming it took eight years for him to be fully trained in every security precaution in the 1,200 square mile park.
- Accusing Fed Chair Jerome Powell of lying before Congress and the alleged misuse of $2.5 billion earmarked for the construction of… a new Federal Reserve building. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook called to defend herself at an unprecedented Supreme Court hearing.
- Minneapolis: George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.
- Self-defense is stated as the reason by ICE for the public shooting of mother of three Renee Good in the city. Less than two weeks later Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the VA, is also shot and killed in public with ICE shooters making the same claim. Detailed video of both shootings is readily available. Within hours of Pretti’s shooting Secretary of Homeland Security and cosplay fan Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino rely on identical texts at separate press conferences. The phrase, “He wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” is read by both. Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller remains the most likely architect of the document.
- Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being taken by ICE from Columbia, a suburb of Minneapolis, and sent to a Texas detention center with his father. At the time of apprehension Ramos is dressed with a Spider Man backpack and a wool hat with floppy bunny ears.
- Bruce Springsteen releasing the song Streets of Minneapolis.