When The Country Grieves, Springsteen’s There For Us Again
In the aftermath of 9/11, Bruce Springsteen was walking in his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey when a fan yelled out, “Bruce, we need you.” The comment kick-started Springsteen into writing songs for The Rising which summed up the country’s collective grief and provided hope when we needed it most. The title track which stridently led off the album was almost anthemic and touched something deeply spiritual.
Two decades later, Springsteen has responded to what many of us have seen over the last few days and weeks unfolding in Minneapolis. The new song, “Streets of Minneapolis,” taps the mood of a country which has seen two of its citizens murdered in cold blood at close range and captured in video that belies the official narrative purported by the government as it targets its own citizens and makes America at risk for armed sanctioned government militias parading our streets.
With a narrative that sometimes channels the phrasing of Bob Dylan as if by osmosis, “Streets of Minneapolis” is a cross between “Chimes of Freedom” and Springsteen’s own melody templates in “Wrecking Ball.” While not quite rising to the detailed narrative of Dylan’s “Hurricane,” it makes both an empathetic statement for its victims and a stinging indictment of the Administration’s leadership. Whereas the president refuses to say the names of the victims, Springsteen’s songs gives them life and memorializes them in perpetuity when our leaders want to erase them from history and brandish them as domestic terrorists.
But summoning the powerful voices of the E Street Choir taps into something that makes an otherwise ordinary song transcendent. When Patty Scialfa joins in with Lisa Lowell, Michelle Moore and Curtis King, it’s like the heavens open in a joyous spiritual way that is the best of the human spirit and an anthem for collective grieving as we try and make sense of the senseless violence that has targeted one of the most generous cities in America.
That Springsteen made comments about ICE and wrote a politically charged song is hardly surprising. When New York City police fired 41 shots in 1999 against an unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo and were acquitted, Springsteen wrote the song “41 Shots.” In the darkest days of the Bush administration, when political prisoners were detained and shipped to Guantánamo without habeas corpus, he penned the song “Long Walk Home.” As the narrator looked at the courthouse and recalled the lessons handed down by his father, he wrote: “Your fag flyin’ over the courthouse/Means certain things are set in stone/Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”
Fast forward to the sub-zero temperatures of Minneapolis, American justice and values are on trial. In the wake of the comments at the Light of Day benefit where Springsteen decried the president and said “ICE needs to get the fuck out of Minneapolis,” “Streets of Minneapolis” has stirred condemnation from many Springsteen for speaking out–and the underlying belief that songwriters are entertainers and should stay in their lane.
“Has Bruce lost his mind?” said one fan who admitted he had seen him seven times and couldn’t understand why Springsteen had become political.
“Have you read any of his lyrics?” someone replied.
The longstanding tradition of political dissent is a core American value. “This machine kills fascists,” Woody Guthrie emblazoned his guitar inspiring successive generations of protest singers that continue to this day.
The spirit of Guthrie passed on to Springsteen who recognizes that the template of Operation Metro is a test case for other cities.
“Americans don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people—many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” podcaster Joe Rogan said after the killing of Renee Good. “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers’, is that what we’ve come to?”
“Everybody has a neighbor everybody has a friend” Springsteen wrote almost 20 years ago.
“Streets of Minneapolis” may not catalyze a movement because the grass roots movement is already underway by the organized citizens of the Twin Cities. They have provided a template for other cities when the masked ICE militias come to town.
If there’s any doubt how this all ties together, all you have to do is look at a recent fundraising email sent on behalf of a president that reads, “Are you a proud American or does ICE need to come and track you?”
That Americans are revolting against what their own eyes see gives hope that maybe this is a tipping point to return to American values. These days a whistle and a cell phone are tools that can be used by everyone to push back against masked armed militias who parade the streets under the guise of law enforcement and have been permissioned to kill with impunity while their government lies about their victims.
If you’ve woken up and wondered where your country has gone this past year, “Streets of Minneapolis” is a shot in the arm for an America that is just starting to wake up and open its eyes to what they see.
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: Bruce Springsteen, Healer In Chief