In the wake of the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the people of Minnesota have come together to protest Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
One of the many ways residents have voiced their opposition to the presence of federal agents on their streets is through song. A group called Singing Resistance formed just four days after Good’s death.
Earlier this month, Singing Resistance helped gather a crowd of 2,000 people outside a Marriott, using songs to call on the hotel chain to stop housing federal agents.
Organizers have said they were inspired by nonviolent means of protest from past resistance movements across the globe.
On Monday’s “The Weeknight,” Symone Sanders Townsend praised the group and said its tactics have helped people feel “not alone” and provided a “sense of camaraderie” during a difficult time.
She also spoke about how music has played a vital role in some of America’s biggest resistance campaigns, including the fight for civil rights and the abolitionist movement.
“Freedom songs were central to the Civil Rights Movement and their strategy,” Sanders Townsend explained. “It wasn’t incidental.”
She mentioned songs such as “We Shall Overcome” and “This Little Light of Mine,” which became synonymous with the movement.
“The history of singing as resistance goes all the way back to, frankly, chattel slavery in this country,” she continued, noting that enslaved people used songs not only to “uplift themselves,” but also as “coded communication,” pointing to the song “Wade in the Water,” an African American spiritual connected to the Underground Railroad.
Sanders Townsend said the federal government’s actions in Minnesota — and Trump’s crackdown more broadly — have been designed to “crush the spirit and the will of the people in this country.”
“They are trying to push us into subjugation and telling us to bend the knee,” she said. “And the singing resistance, the people in the streets all over this country, they’re saying: ‘We are not going to go quietly.’”
You can watch the full conversation from “The Weeknight” in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”