Springsteen’s ode to Minneapolis may long resound
With “Streets of Minneapolis,” Bruce Springsteen brings his potent artistic and emotional firepower into the fray over the murderous actions of immigration enforcers in the city. And with this haunting and angry elegy, he adds his voice to a long list of protest singers, several of whom long ago put Donald J. Trump and his likes into their musical crosshairs.
“Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice/Singing through the bloody mist/We’ll take our stand for this land/And the stranger in our midst/Here in our home, they killed and roamed/In the winter of ‘26/We’ll remember the names of those who died/On the streets of Minneapolis,” the rocker sings.
Pulling no punches, Springsteen blasts Trump and his minions by name, accompanying his elegiac lyrics with a video about the savagery in Minneapolis. While slamming “King Trump’s private army from the DHS”, the Boss excoriates the “dirty lies” of Trump’s aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as he memorializes their murdered victims.
“And there were bloody footprints/Where mercy should have stood/And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets/Alex Pretti and Renee Good,” Springsteen mournfully tells us. He assails “Trump’s federal thugs.”
With his soul-stirring and impassioned tune, Springsteen joins a long list of singers who have protested injustices in a tradition that dates back decades. Surprisingly, several are focused on Trump and his administration’s actions.
For instance, folksinger Jesse Welles garnered attention from Stephen Colbert just last November for his sarcastic “Join ICE” tune. The song goes: “Well, if you’re lookin’ for purpose in the current circus/If you’re seekin’ respect and attention/If you’re in need of a gig that’ll make you feel big/Come with me and put some folks in detention.”
Now, in the wake of the incompetence by ICE and the Border Patrol officers that led to the Minneapolis murders, Welles’s tune seems prescient. “See I failed the academy, the cops weren’t havin’ me/The Army didn’t sound that fun/So I found me a paramilitary operation/That was keen to hand me a gun.”
Both men are hitting hard on the heels of Neil Young, who last August released “Big Crime.” The song slams Trump’s National Guard efforts in Washington and his assaults on universities, saying “Don’t need no fascist rules/Don’t want no fascist schools/Don’t want soldiers walking on our streets/Got big crime in DC at the White House/There’s big crime in DC at the White House/Got to get the fascists out/Got to clean the White House out/Don ’t want no soldiers on our streets/Got big crime in DC at the White House/Got big crime in DC at the White House.”
Canadian-born Young has long been a critic of Trump. In 2020, he updated an older song of his with “Lookin’ for a Leader.” Aimed at Trump, the song pleaded for a replacement – successfully, it turned out that year. Young’s lyrics: “We don’t need a leader/building walls around our house/who don’t know black lives matter/and it’s time to vote him out!/We’re lookin’ for a leader/with The Great Spirit on his side;/lookin’ for a leader/in this country far and wide./Lookin’ for a leader/with The Great Spirit on his side.”
Though sharper and more targeted, Springsteen’s tune, of course, echoes his eloquent “Streets of Philadelphia.” That 1993 song, which he created for the movie about AIDS, “Philadelphia,” includes the lyrics “I was bruised and battered/I couldn’t tell what I felt/I was unrecognizable to myself/Saw my reflection in a window/And didn’t know my own face/Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin’ away/On the streets of Philadelphia?”
The “Philadelphia” anthem, seeming more like a plea than an indictment, nonetheless has resonated in popular culture for years. It’s a cri de coeur for compassion, while “Minneapolis” seems more like a demand for justice.
Some critics have compared “Minneapolis” more to the famous Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio.” The 1970 ode to four killed students at Kent State University resounded with a generation fed up with Vietnam, and it also didn’t hold back in attacking a U.S. president.
It’s lyrics: “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/We’re finally on our own/This summer I hear the drumming/Four dead in Ohio/Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down/Should have been gone long ago/What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground/How can you run when you know?”
But all these songs owe much to those by an iconic 1950s protest singer, Woody Guthrie. As it happens, Guthrie took Trump’s father Fred to task for excluding Blacks from Beach Haven, a sprawling apartment complex in Brooklyn, near Coney Island, where he lived for a couple years.
“Old Man Trump.” included the lines: “I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate/ He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts/When he drawed that color line/Here at his Beach Haven family project/… Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower/Where no black folks come to roam/ No, no, Old Man Trump!/Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!”
It took a couple decades, but the Department of Justice in 1973 sued both Trumps for racial discrimination at the complex (Donald was then helping run the family business). The pair settled the case in 1975 with a consent decree that required them to make sure apartments were rented without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Trump sold the complex in the early 2000s.
Guthrie’s song, which he never recorded himself, got a modest boost in 2016, after an academic found the lyrics in the folksinger’s papers. Ani DiFranco collaborated with Ryan Harvey and Tom Morello to record a version of the tune.
As it happens, Morello and Springsteen appeared jointly at a Jan. 30 benefit in Minneapolis, where Springsteen performed his new song. Titled “A Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota,” it raised funds for the Good and Pretti families.
Just how long it will take for justice to be done in Minneapolis is far from clear. Federal authorities have promised investigations, but – in light of the rushed prejudgments by Noem and other Trump lickspittles – can anyone really expect a full and fair probe?
As David Lillehaug, a former U.S. Attorney in Minnesota and former state Supreme Court judge there, told NPR, the outcome of any such probes seems dubious. “Well, I hate to say it, but it sounds to me like the outcome is cooked,” Lillehaug said “I mean, if you can’t have an investigation, and you’ve got the secretary of Homeland Security and the personnel on the line of authority down saying nothing to see here, then it looks like we’re not going to see anything.”
Truth and justice are not high on the agenda for the Trump Administration, of course. Recall that it has arrested a journalist, former CNN anchor Don Lemon, on charges of federal civil rights crimes in connection with a church demonstration. And this is even after a federal magistrate judge rejected an earlier government attempt to bring criminal charges against the now-independent reporter.
Perhaps efforts by the state will fare well in bringing the killers of Good and Pretti to heel. As some have noted, there is no statute of limitations on murder, so eventually — with a new administration, probably — prosecutions are possible.
In the meantime, Springsteen and other artists are memorably raging against injustices such as those in Minneapolis. For them, in the end it’s all about the need for major change. As Young put it in 2020 in lines that could echo anew in November 2026 and 2028: “We got our election,/but corruption has a chance/We got to have a big win to regain confidence./America is beautiful/but she has an ugly side./We’re lookin’ for a leader/in this country far and wide.”