Alex Pretti’s final recorded words were “Are you ok?”
He shared them while running to the aid of a woman who had been pepper-sprayed and tackled to the ground by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Pretti’s question came just prior to being wrestled to the ground himself by ICE, kicked, hit and stomped by multiple masked men, and then shot at him up to 10 times, including in the back, on the streets of Minneapolis.
Pretti was an intensive care nurse at a veterans health hospital, where colleagues have since shared they were not surprised to learn he had attempted help a woman knocked down.
Pretti was also a mentor and a teacher, and clearly concerned with social justice and supporting his neighbours. He applied kindness and patience in caring for the sickest patients, with a video circulating on social media this week showing him calmly and beautifully performing last rites to a dying Air Force veteran in a hospital room.
Pretti showed a form of masculinity in those final moments – and, indeed, in his life and work as we’ve since learned about him – that was all about care, patience, and protecting and supporting others.
Now juxtapose Pretti’s care and dignity with other displays of so-called masculinity we’ve seen in recent days.
The cowardly masked ICE agents beating and knocking women to the ground.
The gaslighting from those in positions of power, making deceitful lies about the final actions of a man in his last minutes, that completely defy evidence.
The CEOs and leaders of large, powerful tech companies lack any spine to speak out, preferring to bend the knee to the president and attend a special White House screening of a film about the first lady, Melania Trump.
And in Australia, on January 26, the insecurities of men making neo-Nazi chants at anti-immigration protests across the country. Men holding “free Joel Davis” signs in support of the prominent National Socialist Network figure, who was last year charged with inciting people to assault a female MP.
While events like those mentioned above continue, men like Alex Pretti continue to offer their care and patience to those who’ve fallen: during times of disaster, crisis, fear, sickness, and in opportunities to teach and mentor and to simply show kindness, dignity and support to another person.
The last student nurse Pretti taught, Jessica Hauser, penned a moving eulogy to her mentor, saying she stood “shoulder to shoulder” on their shifts at Minneapolis VA Hospital. She was unsurprised to learn his final words were, “Are you ok?”
“Caring for people was at the core of who he was. He was incapable of causing harm. He lived a life of healing, and he lived it well.”
Hauser wrote about what she learned from Alex in terms of the intricacies of managing multiple IVs filled with lifesaving solutions, and “how to watch over every heartbeat, every breath, and every flicker of life, ready to act the moment they wavered.”
She said that Pretti carried “patience, compassion and calm as a steady light within him.”
“I want his family to know his legacy lives on,” she wrote. “I am a better nurse because of the wisdom and skills he instilled in me. I carry his light with me into every room, letting it guide and steady my hands as I heal and care for those in need.
Alex Pretti’s sister, Micayla, released a statement on Wednesday morning describing her brother’s kind and generous nature, his intelligence and passion and his ability to make people feel safe.
She said he cared for the sickest patients in his work and had a passion to advance cancer research.
“All Alex ever wanted was to help someone – anyone. Even in his very last moments on this earth, he was simply trying to do just that.”
“But most importantly, he was my brother. I had the privilege of being his little sister for 32 years. I will never be able to hug him, laugh with him, or cry to him again because of those thugs – and that is a pain no words can fully capture.”
Pretti had been filming the ICE agents as an observer, in support of protecting his neighbours, just as thousands of his fellow residents have been doing in recent weeks. He does not appear to attack the ICE officers in the multiple videos shared on social media. He had been carrying a firearm at his waist, as he was legally able and personally licensed to do, but never reached for the weapon.
But following the shooting, Pretti was described as a “domestic terrorist” by Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
The evidence we’ve seen shows that Pretti was something very different. A light worth remembering, one that reminds us what masculinity really is.