Lyrics And Vocals: American singer, songwriter and guitarist Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen rightly named the “Boss”.
I personally welcome and strongly supports Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis”, released as an urgent act of witness and solidarity with Minneapolis, a city now in distress, and with immigrant neighbours who have been left feeling exposed and afraid.
In his accompanying statement, Mr Springsteen dedicated the song to the people of Minneapolis and to “our innocent immigrant neighbors,” and to the memory of Mr Alex Jeffrey Pretti and Mrs Renée Nicole Macklin Good.
This song release matters not only for what it condemns, but also for what it protects; the idea that a community is more than its sirens and headlines, it is families, friendships, small kindnesses, and the ordinary love that holds a place together when the temperature drops and the pressure rises.
In that sense, “Streets of Minneapolis” lands like a fierce kind of love letter: not romantic in the shallow sense, but a vow that people are worth defending, and that grief should never be met with total indifference.
Mr Springsteen’s words and the song in its framing are explicit about the moral claim he is making and we stand with that claim, and with the principle behind it.
Artists should/must be free to respond to public events, to challenge authority, and to stand visibly with those they believe are being harmed.
There are moments when politics becomes personal; when a city’s name is spoken like a prayer; when strangers hold the line for one another; when a song becomes that “comforting hand on a shoulder”.
Streets of Minneapolis.
Streets Of Minneapolis.
Through the winter’s ice and cold,
Down Nicollet Avenue,
A city aflame fought fire and ice,
‘Neath an occupier’s boots.
King Trump’s private army from the DHS,
Guns belted to their coats,
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law,
Or so their story goes.
Against smoke and rubber bullets,
In dawn’s early light,
Citizens stood for justice,
Their voices ringing through the night.
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.
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.
Trump’s federal thugs beat up on,
His face and his chest,
Then we heard the gunshots,
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead.
Their claim was self defense, sir,
Just don’t believe your eyes,
It’s our blood and bones,
And these whistles and phones,
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies.
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice,
Crying through the bloody mist,
We’ll remember the names of those who died,
On the streets of Minneapolis.
Now they say they’re here to uphold the law,
But they trample on our rights,
If your skin is black or brown my friend,
You can be questioned or deported on sight.
In a chant of ICE out now,
Our city’s heart and soul persists,
Through broken glass and bloody tears,
On the streets of Minneapolis.
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice,
Singing through the bloody mist.
Here in our home they killed and roamed,
In the winter of ’26.
We’ll take our stand for this land,
And the stranger in our midst.
We’ll remember the names of those who died,
On the streets of Minneapolis.
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis.
END.
Let compassion be stubborn, to let dignity be non-negotiable, and to let love for neighbour outrun fear.
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