Renee Good's death and the rural-urban divide

Many rural Minnesotas see the state's bigger cities as dangerous and 
'out of control.'

The shooting death of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, Minn., sparked outrage among the state's urban residents and precautionary warnings from the state's more rural citizens. The fissure between the two creates a "story about America’s urban-rural divide," report Sheila M. Eldred, Elizabeth A. Stawicki, Ann Hinga Klein, and Kurt Streeter of The New York Times.

In Nisswa, a rural, red-voting Minnesota town roughly 150 miles North of Minneapolis, residents at the local pub,"Ye Old Pickle Factory," acknowledge the tragedy of Good's death but still point to the care U.S. citizens should take with law enforcement. The Times reports, “'You obey the law officer,' a man in a veteran’s ball cap said, 'and question it later.'"

"This is the divide, in a single sentence," the Times reports. "In Minneapolis, protesters saw an innocent woman killed by a federal agent and took to the streets. At 'the Pickle,' the regulars saw a woman who should have complied."

Location of Nisswa, Minn., left, Minneapolis, right

The responses to Good's death highlighted another common and increasing difference between rural and urban Americans, where rural residents "see the city as dangerous, out of control and something to flee," Eldred explains.

Rural residents in Minnesota and across the country often see big cities as epicenters of power and money that care little for rural residents. The Times reports, "This sense of alienation is not new. But in recent years it has become tightly bound to Republican partisanship."

Not all of rural Minnesotans see Good's death as a horrible, but justified death of a U.S. citizen by an ICE agent. Trever DePoppe from Pine City, Minn., considers himself an ICE supporter and solid Republican, told the Times, "I think it’s great to start to get some of the illegal immigrants out of the state, [but] I think it’s bad how they are going about it.”