It’s easy to oversimplify this life; to abandon nuance in favor of a simple, binary choice that leaves no room for complexity.

At times, we’re all guilty of such reductionism to escape the rigors of research and understanding.

But sometimes the occasion demands a simple decision.

Some moments are a sharp moral line, inviting us to declare a side.

Some moments are all-or-nothing, pass-fail tests of our very humanity.

This is where we are.

This moment is about whether we will stand with good or with evil.

Her name was Renee Nicole Good.

Good.

And she was good.

Goodness is easy to see.

Good pours itself out for its child.

Good does the same for others’ children.

Good writes and creates art and brings beauty into the world.

Good radiates warmth, generates laughter, and embodies kindness.

Good fiercely embraces both friend and stranger.

Good cherishes the disparate humanity around it.

Good loves its neighbors enough to move into harm’s way on their behalf.

Good bears witness to inhumanity and refuses to look away.

Good nurtures and protects life regardless of the cost.

And on a January morning in her Minneapolis neighborhood, Renee Nicole Good encountered Evil.

Evil declares a hollow, vicious, violent war on human beings for the color of their skin, all to curry the favor of a racist multitude.

Evil drives pregnant women’s faces into the pavement, it randomly kidnaps fathers, it zip-ties children, it abducts teenagers.

Evil terrorizes communities from behind the cover of armor and masks and unchecked power.

Evil brutalizes strangers without any rhyme or reason, emboldened by the belief that accountability will never come.

Evil brutally invades the life of a human being without cause or conscience.

Evil moves toward a terrified, fleeing mother, fires point-blank into her face, and casually walks away without a hint of remorse as she bleeds out.

Evil denies a dying woman medical care or any kind of tenderness in her final seconds.

Evil orphans a 6-year-old child and acts as if it has done something righteous.

And evil stands in front of the nation, and from the highest seats of power, lies through its teeth, adding insult to mortal injury, assassinating the character of an innocent human being, slaughtered for caring for a stranger.

Evil labels a murdered woman a domestic terrorist because it has so been consumed by a craven lust for power that it is allergic to truth and immune to empathy.

Evil floods its social media profiles with slander and falsehoods. It expresses no sorrow, no compassion, no grief at a young mother’s execution for nothing but the whims of a masked monster who should never have been in her neighborhood to begin with.

And make no mistake, evil remains silent right now.

I don’t know what kind of person you imagine you are, but I’m willing to bet you’d say that you were a good one. Most of us believe that.

But good is not expressed in our heads, but in the sum of our choices, about the people we decide to be in the tangible and concrete.

Good is about the discomfort we carry, the turbulence we step into, and the courage we display.

Good does not cower in the presence of evil.

Good does not wait for someone else to do something.

Good does not avert its eyes or cover its ears or scroll away from the nightmares of others, simply because the horrors have not yet reached them.

Good doesn’t allow itself to be so numbed by the legion of horrors around it that it is no longer able to respond.

Good does not abide evil in the places it calls home.

Renee Nicole Good died at the hands of evil, but we can make sure that she has the last word, that she did not die in vain, that Good will live on.

We cannot allow evil to prevail.

We cannot calm down or shut up.

We cannot let fear render us invisible or quiet.

We must be the people who take a side, who meet this moment, who declare that we have had it with hatred having the run of the house.

The choice could not be clearer, America.

Will we stand with Good or with Evil?