ICE Killings & How Galvanize Action Met the Moment
The Moment
On January 7, 2026, Renee Good, mother of three, was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota as immigration raids continued across the country. The fear and uncertainty that followed was only exacerbated when just two weeks later another US citizen, VA nurse Alex Pretti, was killed by ICE agents in the same city.
The urgency and importance of the moment could not be overstated. While Good and Pretti were not the first people to be killed by ICE in ICE custody or on the streets, this was the first time many ideologically-moderate women were confronted with what was happening and how close this violence is to their own communities.
What Ideologically-Moderate Women Needed
As our audience saw this crisis unfold, they needed trusted voices to make sense of what was happening, what they could do to protect their families, and the role they could play in saving our democracy.
In the wake of these fatal shootings, there was an outpouring of support for the families and for the many others who were trying to protect community members from ICE attacks. Yet, we also saw rhetoric that sought to put the blame on the victims. We know that women in our audience fear conflict and bad actors seek to exploit that fear as justification for extremism. In this moment of instability and uncertainty, as disinformation was flooding their feeds, our audience needed sense-making from trusted messengers.
How Galvanize Action Met the Moment
While we are not a rapid response organization, we are uniquely equipped to quickly connect with our audience of ideologically-moderate women. We met this moment by doing what we do best, crafting the messages we know they need to hear and delivering them in a way we knew would resonate.
Our core message was simple: This is wrong. This is not safe. This is not who we are.
The Agreement
Our ad, The Agreement, which has over 1.2 million views on YouTube, validates feelings of wrongness and instability, places blame on elected officials who break our social contacts, and ends with a clear call to action: call your representatives, tell them we did not vote for this.
This fights against messages that put blame on the victims, which we know from our January Current Events Survey our audience are exposed to, and combats inaction with a concrete step the viewer can take.
Chaos to Stability
We also created a series of videos where real people, not actors, gave a human voice to the messaging, modeling how our audience can process and put words to their feelings.
Watch more here.
We are not sugar coating what has happened. These videos speak candidly about the fact that people who posed no threat have been killed by our government. This is not and will never be acceptable. Clear, moral language helps our audience face what is happening and overcome the impulse to let their fear and uncertainty turn them away from action.
We are not asking our audience to risk their safety or flood the streets, but to face what is happening and acknowledge that something is very wrong. They know that things feel chaotic, that’s a feeling they are well acquainted with. They do not want rage, yelling, or performative toughness, as that feels like more chaos. What they want is reassurance from trusted messengers that what they are seeing is real and their reactions are valid and that there is a path forward to safety and stability.
What is Galvanize Action Doing Next?
As ICE raids continue and US involvement in Iran escalates, we will continue to see rising fear, uncertainty, and growing economic and human costs. We are at a critical moment to protect our democracy and we can’t do it without the millions of women in our audience. Galvanize Action will continue to do what we do best—connect with moderate women to understand how they are making sense of what is happening and support them to take prosocial actions to create a better America.
