Shipping containers spelling out ‘Renee’ rearranged in Tacoma, sources tell TNT
This week red and green shipping containers on a cargo ship moored at the Port of Tacoma were arranged to spell the word “Renee”. Some passersby and people online were quick to assume it was a reference to 37-year-old Renee Good, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, as previously reported by The News Tribune.
Renee Carmona told The News Tribune on Wednesday that her boyfriend arranged the containers in honor of her 63rd birthday when the ship was stationed near Long Beach, California last week.
Despite the fact that the “Renee” wasn’t a reference to Good, Tacoma longshoreman Mitchell Meyer told The News Tribune on Wednesday that the Evergreen Line shipping company made staff in Tacoma work late on Monday night, rearranging the containers so they no longer spelled “Renee” before the ship left for China on Tuesday morning. Carmona said she also heard that the ship’s cargo had been rearranged Monday night.
Meyer said many thought it was memorializing Good and “management was losing their mind as soon as they realized it.”
Representatives with Evergreen and the Tacoma International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 23 did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
Carmona said her boyfriend has spelled out other names with shipping containers, and the “Renee” was a surprise made for her on Jan. 17. She didn’t make the connection to Good until people started messaging her about it as it garnered attention from multiple states away.
“They’re making it so political. People are getting upset about it, but it was just a … name,” Carmona said. “It wasn’t about Renee Good.”
Carmona said some people speculated the photos of the ship were AI, but her boyfriend used empty containers with a crane on the back of the ship.
“I was so excited [when I saw it], like, ‘Oh my God it’s going to go all the way, all over the Ports,’” she said.
