Springsteen Defends the Promised Land Against ICE's "Gestapo Tactics"

"Bruce Springsteen took a side against the Trump administration's authoritarian abuses last May, when he launched his European tour with an impassioned denunciation of the president's assault on basic civil liberties, and decried an ugly moment in which the United States "is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration." Now Springsteen has brought the complaint home, with a clarity that is all the more immediate and necessary."

"Before launching into a fiery rendition of his 1978 classic " The Promised Land" during a Saturday night show in his home state of New Jersey, Springsteen turned the crowd's attention to Minnesota, where, on January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three who loved to sing, wrote poetry, and evidenced a concern for her neighbors that embodied the spirit of Springsteen's epic paean to community and solidarity, " We Take Care of Our Own.""

""I wrote ['The Promised Land'] as an ode to American possibility-both to the beautiful but flawed country that we are, and to the country that we could be," Springsteen told the crowd. "Right now, we are living through incredibly critical times. The United States, the ideals and the values for which it stood for the past 250 years, is being tested as it has never been in modern times. Those values and those ideals have never been as endangered as they are right now. ""

Bruce Springsteen publicly condemned the Trump administration's authoritarian abuses and called the United States "currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration." He invoked the January 7 killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent and linked her community spirit to themes of solidarity. He framed "The Promised Land" as an ode to American possibility and warned that national ideals and values are being tested as never before. He urged people who believe in democracy, liberty, truth, and the rule of law to speak out and fight against heavily armed masked federal forces using "Gestapo tactics."

Read at The Nation