A lone spotlight shines down on Bruce Springsteen from the rafters of a basketball arena in Portland, Oregon. It’s Good Friday, two days before Easter. Just under 20,000 people have packed the home of the Portland Trailblazers tonight to hear the 76-year-old musician preach. The two women in the nosebleed seats to my right flew here from California to witness history. The two men behind me drove down from Seattle. Down on the floor, a mother and daughter from London have flown in for the show.

All of us are cloaked in darkness while Springsteen slings a Fender Telecaster behind his back and begins to speak. One of the most well-known American musicians of the past half century—Mr. “Born in the USA” himself—has a lot to say.

This tour wasn’t supposed to happen, Springsteen says. But America needs its music right now. America needs to act. His monologue tells the tale:

Our American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before. We have our young men and women’s lives at risk in an unconstitutional and illegal war.

This is happening now.

There are immigrants being held in detention centers around the country being deported without due process to alien countries and foreign gulags.

This is happening in America now.

Our justice department has completely abdicated its independence, and it takes its orders directly from a corrupt White House, prosecuting our president’s perceived enemies, covering up for his misdeeds and protecting his powerful friends.

This is happening now.

The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children to death and disease through the dismantling of USAID.

This is happening now.

We threaten our good neighbors, our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars, with predatory annexation of their lands.

This is happening now.

Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth.

The White House is destroying the American idea, and our reputation and the world. To many, we are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are now America the reckless, the unpredictable. A predatory, rogue nation is this administration’s and this president’s legacy.

And this is happening now. (...)

Honesty. Honor. Humility. Compassion. Thoughtfulness. Morality. Truth. Strength and decency—don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore. They do.

The crowd roars as lights illuminate the entire arena and the 20-something piece E Street Band erupts in sound. Guitars, banjos, keyboards, horns, backup vocalists, and at least one accordion, launch back into a set headlined by “War,” “The Promised Land,” “My City in Ruins,” “Badlands,” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

This is the New Sound, Just Like the Old Sound

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has joined the E Street Band for the two-month “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour that officially began in Minneapolis on March 28 and will conclude in Washington, D.C. on May 27. As Morello and Springsteen exchange dueling guitars solos during “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” (a Springsteen original covered by Rage Against the Machine in 1998), the affect feels like watching a jam session between Aristotle and Socrates.

Demand for the Land of Hope and Dreams Tour has been high, according to Donna Gray, founder of Bruce Funds, a community that donates unused tickets to Springsteen fans. “The ticket requests outweigh ticket donations by about 80%. There has never been that large of a gap.”

Since 2012, Bruce Funds has distributed 2,000 tickets to Springsteen shows. This year, Gray says she has already received nearly 1,400 ticket requests. “On previous tours, I am proud to say I was able to get 99.5% of people in. This year, I’ve experienced some humbling moments.”

For decades, Springsteen and Morello have been among mainstream rock’s leading advocates for human rights. It’s no surprise to see them combine forces for this tour. But while Morello and Springsteen may be the headliners tonight, other prophets have begun to emerge in America’s new era of protest music.

Songwriter Jesse Welles (“Join ICE”), country singer Zach Bryan (“Bad News”) folk artist Mon Rovîa (“Heavy Foot”) are breaking through charts, joined by the resurgent Joan Baez (“We Shall Overcome”) and indie pop artist Maggie Rogers (“Alaska”). And while protest songs famously popped up during the first Trump presidency—notably YG and Nipsey Hussle’s “FDT”—the surge in momentum in 2026 feels reminiscent of the 1960s, when rock, soul and folk converged to protest the Vietnam War.

Other well-established stars have entered the fray as well.

92-year-old Willie Nelson has thrown his stetson hat into the ring with a new single titled “Heart of America.” And Green Day’s 21-year-old punk rock “American Idiot” album earned them a performance at Super Bowl LX. Dave Matthews is touring festivals carrying anti-war signs. Hip-hop icons Public Enemy are touring festivals and sharing a bill with Guns N’ Roses while co-founder Flavor Flav fervently drops f-bombs at the president and makes plans to honor U.S women's olympic and Paralympic athletes in Las Vegas this summer.

Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Zoomers and even the last remnants of the Silent Generation are all represented in the soundscape of America’s resistance. Across the nation, rock, folk, hip-hop and even a country music artists are uniting in a vocal outcry against the White House—and tens of thousands of people are packing venues around the country to hear the era’s new sounds of hope.

Spring in Minneapolis

In Minneapolis, the snows of winter have finally receded into a vibrant spring. Lavender, pearl and vermillion wildflowers are beginning to awaken along the shores of the Mississippi River. But Minnesotans are still living in a city under occupation. Despite the ouster of maligned Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem and former U.S. Border Patrol “Commander at Large” Greg Bovino, Minneapolis-St Paul residents are still mounting a resistance against the White House.

“They (ICE) are still very much here,” says area marketing professional Blake Kelcie. “They are still very active, but we don’t get as much media coverage anymore.”

At the height of the city’s winter occupation—when more than 3,000 federal agents were in the area for Operation Metro Surge—Kelcie became an active participant in a group of Minneapolis-St. Paul community members observing immigration operations within the twin cities. Like many Minnesotans, they took time away from a day job to help coordinate community efforts to protect neighbors from abductions instituted by the Department of Homeland Security.

Kelcie says visceral scenes of witnessing families and neighborhood torn apart by raids galvanized everyday people within the Minneapolis-St. Paul community to band together to protect their communities. “The people I know personally don’t hate America. We believe diversity makes us a better country.

“We grew up being taught that America was great because we are a melting pot, because we bring different people together who didn’t have a chance somewhere else so they can live the American dream. There is nobody that I have spoken to, that I have met, that has said anything about hating America.”

Kelcie remembers seeing agents in their neighborhood in the early days of that occupation and noting that they seemed untrained, unprofessional and didn’t appear to be holding their weapons the way most law enforcement or military members seem to.

A few days after that observation, writer Renée Good was killed by an ICE agent.

The news came to Kelcie via group message. “It just said legal observers were needed immediately, that someone had been shot. It was terrifying to think that she just ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time and it could have been any of us.”

17 days later, ICU nurse Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents. Shortly afterwards, Bruce Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis,” a tribute to both Good and Pretti that is now being performed on tour.

The Occupation of Memphis

The birthplace of rock n’ roll has been quietly under occupation since September of 2025.

Federal and local agents from 30 agencies—including ICE—now congregate in groups around Beale Street as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force. Endorsed by the White House and Nashville lawmakers, they cast body-armored silhouettes over the very sidewalks that fostered the careers of musicians like W.C. Handy, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King., Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Tina Turner and Isaac Hayes.

The Beale Street Historic District draws an average of 3.5 to 4.1 million visitors per year from 50 different nations, according to Memphis Tourism. Travelers come to soak in music history and explore dozens of restaurants and juke joints, along with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, Smithsonian-affiliated Memphis Rock N’ Soul Museum and nearby Orpheum Theatre.

But lately, the neon lights of Beale Street feel dimmed. Visitors are still coming, but for many, the abundance of tactical gear on the city’s front door feels intimidating.

Bullet proof vests emblazoned with names like ERO, HSI, and IRS-CI mingling with Memphis Police and the Tennessee National Guard form a dystopian backdrop for live music on Beale. While most task force members stationed near the entertainment district appear to be occupied with crowd control, the task force has been busier elsewhere in the 325-square-mile city.

In nearly eight months, the Memphis Safe Task Force says they have arrested more than 7,300 people in Memphis. At a roundtable on March 23, former U.S. attorney general Pam Bondi said those figures include 770 gang members. ICE director Todd Lyons said 619 illegal aliens were also in that figure. Since the launch of the task force, the Memphis Police Department says crime is down 41%. And President Trump personally visited the city on a victory lap (including a tour of Presley’s Graceland home) in March.

Opponents of the task force say crime was already at a 25-year low before the task force arrived and call the operations discriminatory.

An MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism report states that 94% of the 3,000 people arrested by the Memphis Safe Task Force in the first two months of 2026 were minorities. That same organization reported that just 7% of 600 people detained for “unlawful presence” in the United States” in January and February had an accompanying criminal charge. In some areas of the city, like the immigrant-heavy Berclair area, business owners have pinned a 30-50% drop in foot traffic on heavy task force activity, prompting Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris to liken the economic impact to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Memphis—a cornerstone of much of America’s sound, a city that is still named in more songs than any other on Earth—is tense under the weight of these opposing forces.

The Memphis Safe Task Force is not universally unpopular, but it does seem to be universally divisive.

In March, high school students at the Memphis Business Academy protested the detainment of classmate Yasser Jose Lopez Soza, a junior with no criminal record, who was taken by ICE after being pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol en route to a soccer game.

Several weeks later, members of the task force drew national headlines after tackling and pepper spraying marshals at the conclusion of a march during a No Kings event near Beale Street—not far from the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final march through the same streets in 1968.

Most recently, popular TikTok dance star Chrishaun Akins, known as South Memphis HypeMan, was filmed being tackled by the Tennessee National Guard beneath an entryway to Beale Street.

In a city with a high crime rate (nearly six times the national average, according), the optics and actions of the task force leave room for debate.

Music As An Antidote

On Earth Day, April 22, while the Springsteen tour is nearing South Florida, rising pop folk star Mon Rovîa commands a stage alongside the Mississippi River in uptown Memphis. About two miles away, task force agents are still congregating around Beale Street. The Liberian-born artist raised in Chattanooga is playing the first ever show at the all-new Grind City Amp. He’s sporting an Aretha Franklin t-shirt, an homage to the Queen of Soul born across town in 1942. And a crowd of about 3,000 are on hand for an opening show headlined by the Alabama Shakes.

The new amphitheater represents a glimmer of hope in Memphis—a new music venue and a new destination in a neighborhood that could bolster its core. In the distance, a pair of brand new towers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital create new reflections on an aging skyline.

“It’s easy to live in hate and anger,” the singer tells me before the show. “But that only takes you so far. Usually, it comes to a head and both bridges burn in violence. Hate doesn’t get you where you are trying to go when you’re talking about freedom.”

The artist knows something about the subject. Around age seven, Mon Rovîa (born Janjay Lowe) lost both parents to the Liberian Civil War, a brutal conflict hallmarked by child soldiers and seven-year battle against a totalitarian regime.

“You know, hateful people love to see you in despair,” he says. “That’s something that fuels their fire. But something about joy—seeing someone in a tough environment smile and hug and laugh, making them realize what they are doing is not working, it weakens the side of hate.”

Riding the wave of the spritely anti-establishment song “Heavy Foot,” the band has toured across Europe and the United States this year, alternating headline gigs and openers for artists like the Alabama Shakes, CAAMP and Noah Kahan.

A scuba diving instructor moonlighting as a bluegrass musician tells me he came to the new amphitheater tonight specifically to hear “Heavy Foot.” Alongside a few thousand others, the scuba instructor watches the sun sink below the Memphis skyline to the joyful sounds of resistance echoing out of a ukulele.

“We want people to be assured that everyone is in these moments together,” says Mon Rovîa. “Together we can get through all of it.”

People Have the Power

On March 28, 2026, an estimated 8 million people took to the streets of more than 3,200 towns and cities around the world for the third No Kings protest.

The event marked one of the largest protests in American history.

While Springsteen played “Streets of Minneapolis” to an estimated 100,000 people in St. Paul, the streets of Oakland, California pulsed to the funkadelic vibes of the Phat Luv Band, the city’s self-dubbed house band.

On this No Kings Day, Oakland’s self-dubbed house band is busy belting out funk-infused covers of patriotic tunes and protest songs on a sidewalk in front of a tattoo parlor. As a cover of 90s hip-hop hit “Power” by SNAP! transforms into an ad-hoc rendition of “War,” the parade bounces to the beat. Dispersed across groups representing a kaleidoscope of backgrounds, belief systems and ethnicities, the throng of some 20,000 protestors is converting anger into hope.

In Oakland, pastors are protesting alongside monks. Skateboarders are marching alongside lawyers. And nurses are walking hand-in-hand with school teachers.

This is America the melting pot. And in the city that birthed the Black Panther Party, this melting pot is organized. Like caucuses at a political convention, each group of revelers carries a banner. Environmentalists march beneath handcrafted orca whales. Healthcare workers march beneath a “labor” sign. ICE protestors march beside an inflatable polar bear.

In addition to the Phat Luv Band, this protest has its own marching band: The Brass Liberation Orchestra, whose trumpets, clarinets and quad drums reverberate off of nearby high rise buildings and into an 11th street tunnel leading past the Alameda County courthouse.

A sign hanging over the tunnel’s entrance reads, “People Have the Power.”

At the end of the parade route, crowds are funneled towards activism organizations ringing the shoreline of Lake Merritt, a sprawling public park with a rich protest history tied to the Vietnam era. Participants are encouraged to network, find a purpose and find a lane to start helping in.

Not everybody has to do something big to resist, they say, but everyone can do something small.

In the sea of people buzzing around the lake, a blue flag with a white, eight-pointed star catches the wind—the flag of Minnesota, flying in resistance beneath the clear, California sky.