A good example of the possible directness of music. Either you abruptly take the headphones out of your ears because this song has something rock-like about it, boss. Or the song strikes a chord with you. In any case, one way or another, it’s immediately clear what it’s about.
That Bruce Springsteen is against Trump and ICE is not at all surprising. He has spoken out several times on stage and in the media against the autocratic tendencies of MAGA America. But simply protesting is no longer enough, says his song “Streets of Minneapolis.”
There is a moment of “enough is enough” towards right-wing America in him, the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE paramilitary forces were too much of a turn. “We’ll remember the names,” sings Springsteen. And the song also contains, without saying it, that Pete Seeger moment from “Which Side Are You On?” It is a hymn to the anti-ICE activists in Minneapolis: “Whistles and phones / Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.”
They are destroying our home
While politicians and intellectuals in Europe are thinking about how to break away from the USA, write Springsteen into the tradition of the US protest song and reminds us of the other, the good side of the USA. What’s more, he claims with his we the self-evident existence of this good side – “Here in our home they killed and roamed,” he sings. Our home!
Die So they are the outsiders, and it is clear who they mean: the armored ICE men. This isn’t subtle. This is also mainstream, the way it is sung here in a strained voice. But in the current situation you have to be direct, that’s what Bruce Springsteen says in this song.
With all this, one can also think of another song that is now almost half a century old: “Ohio” by Neil Young, performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. After four students at Kent State University in Ohio were shot by the National Guard at an anti-war demonstration in 1970 (“Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming”), Neil Young’s plaintive voice in the song repeatedly asked: “Why?” Bruce Springsteen doesn’t even have to ask that, nor does he have to, the background is very clear. One can only hope that he is right with his fighting attitude.