The Blues in Winter
Bruce Springsteen has written a song for the ages. Unfortunately, we're living in it.
“I heard your big guitar
And heard your song
And know a little bit more
Of right and wrong”.
--Woody Guthrie
As I write this, events are going on in Minnesota – in our country – that are difficult to stomach. We are witnessing an assault on liberty, on basic rights and even on the very lives of American citizens, invaded by a masked army that is irresponsible, uncontrollable and seemingly answerable only to a policy of terror and aggression. In the midst of this outrage, many brave souls have risked arrest, brutality and freezing cold to stand up against the marauders. Some have even lost their lives. And Bruce Springsteen, the Boss, the Spirit in the Night, the Dancer in the Dark, the conscience of American Rock and Roll, has done something worth noting as well: He’s written a song.
That is not being said ironically or dismissively. With the release of “Streets of Minneapolis”, written on January 24th – the day Alex Pretti was murdered – and released just five days later, is a powerful statement filled with pain and outrage, but also with a kind of courage. In roughly four and a half minutes, he tells what’s been happening over the last few weeks, memorializes the victims and names those who are to blame for this nightmare. Yes, it’s just a song, but songs are powerful.
This is a protest song in the finest tradition of Woody Guthrie, who also wrote of common causes and the power of protest. He also wrote about immigrants being treated unfairly and unsafely, about rights being trampled by the powerful. And like Springsteen, he offered hope, believed that justice and democracy would prevail, even if it takes a fight.
Listening to “Streets of Minneapolis” for the first time (and not with dry eyes), I was reminded of one of Guthrie’s finest and most searing songs, “1913 Massacre”. It tells the story of another tragedy, another cold Midwestern state. There are protest songs that make their point not through slogans or accusations but by simply and calmly relating a story. Many great protest songs use historical events in that way, whether they’re taking an event that happened decades ago or – think of Dylan’s “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” or “Hurricane” - something we might recall having read about a few years ago. It’s a kind of emotional sleight-of-hand, with the narrator starting out almost soothingly. Let me tell you about something that happened once, Woody tells the listener, leaving it up to us to make the moral judgments and experience the horror.
Decades from now “Streets of Minneapolis” may well have become a song like “1913 Massacre”, a way of looking back and remembering something that happened in this country (if we can get through this present moment). It’s got history in it, as well as reflection and insight. But that’s also what makes it so disturbing. Springsteen is speaking in the past tense. He’s telling a story, just like Guthrie did. You can feel the weight, the heavy sense of time in the line “In the winter of ‘26”, and then it may hit you, as it did me: the song’s history is …right now, today.
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
By the 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 chants 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