Bruce Springsteen Performs Anti-ICE Song Live at Minneapolis Protest Concert as Crowd Yells ‘ICE Out Now!’

Bruce Springsteen brought his protest song “Streets of Minneapolis” to the actual streets of Minneapolis Friday afternoon, making an unadvertised appearance at a daytime benefit concert organized by Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello.

At the noontime concert, billed as “A Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota!” and taking place place at Minneapolis’ famous First Avenue club, Springsteen appeared solo to offer the first live rendition of “Streets of Minneapolis.” He was then joined by Morello and band for an eight-minute version of his “Grapes of Wrath”-themed “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

The crowd loudly shouted along with “ICE out now!” in the final verse of the new Springsteen song, as it ends with the lines, “In our chants of ‘ICE out now’ / Our city’s heart and soul persists / Through broken glass and bloody tears / On the streets of Minneapolis.” The audience also spontaneously broke out into just such a chant between songs.

Introducing the new song, Springsteen said, ““I wrote this song and I recorded it the next day, and I sent it to Tom Morello. Now I know Tom is an excitable man…” He said he told Morello, “‘I think it’s kinda soapboxy.’ He says, ‘Bruce, nuance is wonderful, but sometimes you have to kick them in the teeth.’ So this is for the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the people of our good country, the United States of America.”

(Watch the full performance here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DUJd_KiCRsk)

Promotion for the concert noted that 100% of proceeds would go to “the families of those murdered by ICE,” naming slain activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Amy Klobuchar, the U.S. senator from Minnesota who is running for governor, posted a clip from the concert, writing, “Bruce Springsteen singing his new song ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ at our very own First Avenue. A place where amazing artists like Prince got their start – this venue means so much to our state and it’s incredible to see Bruce bring our community together.”

The official headliners were Morello and Rise Against, with additional performances by Al Di Meola, Ike Reilly and the promised “very special guest” that turned out to be Springsteen.

The performance came days after Springsteen released his “Streets of Minneapolis” song, in which he sang about how “a city aflame fought fire and ice ‘neath an occupier’s boots,” with descriptions of “King Trump’s private army from the DHS,” “Trump’s federal thugs” and “bloody footprints where mercy should have stood… two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets.”

In a social post touting the First Avenue benefit, Morello wrote: “If it looks like fascism, sounds like fascism, acts like fascism, dresses like fascism, talks like fascism, kills like fascism and lies like fascism, boys & girls it’s f*cking fascism. It’s here, it’s now, it’s in my city, it’s in your city and it must be resisted, protested, defended against, stood up to, exposed, ousted, overthrown and driven out. By you and by me. We are coming to Minneapolis where the people have heroically stood up against ICE, stood up against Trump, stood up against this terrible rising tide of state terror. Where the people have stood up for their neighbors and themselves, for democracy and justice. Ain’t nobody coming to save us except us and it’s now or never.”

The Minneapolis show coincided with a general strike being called by activists across the country that caused many workers and students to walk out in protest of the ICE abductions continuing to happen nationally.

In response to Springsteen’s initial release of “Streets of Philadelphia,” the White House called Springsteen’s headline-making song “irrelevant” and “inaccurate.” The president himself has not responded to the song, although he engaged in a war of words with Springsteen last year, reacting to the rock superstar’s comments during live performance overseas and calling him “dumb as a rock” and “a dried out prune.”