Last month I spent two weeks in the Twin Cities, my annual sojourn to my wife Andrea Carney, who lives in Eagan, a suburb of Saint Paul. We didn’t visit memorials to the recently fallen, although we did drive past the Whipple Building where ICE jails abductees (on the way to celebrate our thirty-second wedding anniversary). Local network newscasts continue to cover roundups and reactions. We learned ICE was moving to the ’burbs, but we hadn’t seen that there. Nonetheless, we counseled our Filipina daughter-in-law to carry her passport.
I didn’t take in any live music while I was in Eagan, but I’ve been thinking it’s time to share a few songs sung in resistance to ICE as well as that exhibited in Gaza and the West Bank.
I just missed a January 30 appearance at Minneapolis’s historic club First Avenue by Tom Morello (ex Rage Against the Machine) and others. as a benefit for the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Morello was joined by Rise Against, Al Di Meola (!), Ike Reilly, and a (Very Special Guest), documented below. The “boo”s you’ll hear are an indication of the political persuasion of many in Morello’s audience.
While The Boss’s sentiment is pretty pedestrian, he does pay tribute to the fact that, following the earlier killings of Philando Castile and George Floyd, “a city aflame” in 2016 and 2020 now “fought fire and ice,” pun intended.
Continue reading “Ars Protestationis”
