Something happened at the start of 2026 — the 250th anniversary year of our country at a time when we are disunited and dispirited as rampant authoritarianism threatens our democracy and the world order.
In Minneapolis, ICE’s Operation Metro Surge had been going on since early December, with 3000 ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents at its peak, the arrest of over 3000 people, and increasingly violent tactics against protestors making headlines worldwide.
Then, a line was finally crossed when two U.S. citizens were killed: poet Renee Good on January 7 and nurse nurse Alex Pretti on January 24.
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Almost at once, the grief and the rage started being funneled into a collective activity we haven’t seen since the era of the Civil Rights Movement and the opposition to the Vietnam War: singing together. What Dr. King had called “the soul of the movement”.
Marching down the icy streets in sub- zero temperature and chilly winter winds, the protestors sang, and sang, and sang. They had practiced and learned the words in packed churches and other public gathering places, the strong-voiced song leaders kept the call and response flow moving. The atmosphere was electric.
The songs were full of determination and the “we shall not back down” spirit, but also the spirit of love and the dream of a country where all are welcome and at peace with one another. The federal agents didn’t quite know how to react to this.
Eventually, the Operation Metro Surge was reduced to fewer than 1,000 agents, and few are seen on the streets now. The city is still traumatized by that happened there, and burdened by the heavy long-term economic damage, but the resistance had been successful.
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The story and the video clips went viral. Various versions of the Singing Resistance Songbook have helped spread the songs. And there are as of now over 230 Singing Resistance groups in cities and towns across the United States and Canada.
Read the most recent story about this new momentum through song in a recent piece in The Story Exchange.
Here is another video clip of people singing resistance in the streets:
And, finally, an older video of Melanie DeMore leading a group in the singing of the song “One Foot in Front of the Other/Lead with Love”, which has become one of the anthems of the movement.
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The Singing Resistance movement is decentralized, and the way to find a group near you at this point is to search on Google, FB and Instagram, or through your local contacts.
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, click here to get connected to the Singing Resistance as it mobilizes in this region.
It’s part of a wider movement going on to bring the power of all the arts to growing meaningful citizen engagement in this time of crisis. See Citizen Joy for more on this broader topic.
Citizen Joy! Is a celebration of democracy focused on gratitude, agency and harmony. A national network of artists and arts organizations from all discipline using art to cut through the doom and gloom about politics, explore what we have (and could lose) as citizens, and energize people to do what they can to protect our democratic rights and freedoms.