Just hours after Bruce Springsteen dropped his lacerating anti-ICE anthem “Streets of Minneapolis” on Wednesday (Jan. 28) veteran British protest singer Billy Bragg weighed in with his own ripped-from-the-headlines song reacting to the killing of two American citizens by Trump administration immigration agents in Minnesota.
In a note accompanying the bare-bones “City of Heroes,” which Bragg said he wrote on Tuesday (Jan. 27) and released less than 24 hours later, the singer explained, “The murder of Alex Pretti was horrifically shocking, all the more so as we are still reeling from the images of the murder of Renee Good. That these crimes can be committed in broad daylight, on camera and yet no one is held accountable only adds to the injustice.”
He said he wrote the song in tribute to the bravery of the people of Minneapolis, “knowing that these trigger happy ICE thugs operate with seeming impunity in their midst, are still willing to put themselves in harms way to defend their community. Their resistance is an inspiration to us all.”
The acoustic “City of Heroes” opens with a reference to Friedrich Gustav Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran German pastor who initially sympathized with some Nazi ideas, but was later sent to a concentration camp after speaking out against the Nazi regime. After the war ended, he penned a poem entitled “First They Came,” which in the decades since has become a rallying cry for speaking up in the face of oppression thanks to such iconic lines as “Then they came for the Jews/ And I did not speak out/ Because I was not a Jew.”
“The ghost of Martin Niemöller/ Haunts the halls of history/ When they came for the communists/ He said ‘It’s nothing to do with me,'” Bragg sings over furiously strummed acoustic guitar. “What excuses would you tell yourself/ If this ever happened to you?/ Well I live in a city of heroes/ I know what I would do.”
Bragg then unfolds a litany of examples of how Minnesota residents are standing up, speaking out and exercising their constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights amid the often draconian actions of the thousands of masked, armed immigration agents that have flooded Minneapolis. “When they came for the immigrants/ I got in their face/ When they came for the refugees/ I got in their face,” Bragg sings. “When they came for the five-year-olds/ I got in their face/ When they came to my neighborhood/ I just got in their face.”
Like Springsteen’s quick turn-around track, Bragg’s pointed protest song touches on the horrifying scenes on the ground in Minneapolis, which have included ICE agents taking a five-year-old child into custody and quickly sending him and his father to a mass detention center in Texas, as well as the highly publicized killings of two American citizens: 37-year-old mother of three Renée Good and 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti.
Bragg describes how the immigration agents have deployed pepper spray and tear gas against unarmed protesters who fought back by filming their actions and warning others with whistles, as well as the scenes of agents dragging people from their cars and removing families from their homes, including an elderly U.S. citizen who was dragged from his home by masked, armed agents without a warrant in his underwear in frigid temperatures only to be released hours later amid claims that the senior citizen refused to be fingerprinted or facially ID’d during the botched raid.
“I will bear witness to terror/ I will bear witness to tyranny,” Bragg sings. “I will bear witness to murder/ I will bear witness to fascism.”
Following nationwide pushback after the killing of ICU nurse Pretti during the so-called Operation Metro Surge, including from some Republican legislators, President Trump got on the phone with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey earlier this week in a reported attempt to tamp down the blowback. But a day later, after pulling controversial, pugnacious Border Patrol official Greg Bovino from Minneapolis and replacing him with border czar Tom Homan, Trump amped up the rhetoric again, accusing Frey on Wednesday of “playing with fire” for insisting that local police should refrain from enforcing federal immigration laws.
Bragg joins a growing list of artists who are speaking out against ICE and Trump’s aggressive immigration tactics, a roster that includes Billie Eilish and Finneas, Dave Matthews, Moby, Olivia Rodrigo, the Chicks and, during a show in Tokyo on Thursday (Jan. 29) Lady Gaga, who paused her Mayhem Ball show to send a message of support.
“In a couple of days, I’m gonna be heading home, and my heart is aching thinking about the people, the children, the families, all over America, who are being mercilessly targeted by ICE,” Gaga told the crowd. “I’m thinking about all of their pain and how their lives are being destroyed right in front of us… We need to get back to a place of safety and peace and accountability. Good people shouldn’t have to fight so hard and risk their lives for well-being and respect, and I hope our leaders are listening. I hope you’re listening to us asking you to change your course of action swiftly and have mercy on everyone in our country.”
Listen to Bragg’s “City of Heroes” below.
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