Bruce criticizes ICE, dedicates ‘Promised Land’ to Renee Good

Well, that didn’t take long.

Only 10 days after the controversial fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother, by an ICE agent, Bruce Springsteen addressed it on stage.

Good was a legal observer to ICE deportation activities in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 when she was shot three times, killing her. The agent claims he felt she was weaponizing her car to hurt him, but many witnesses, journalists, and lawmakers see it otherwise since her wheels were turned away from the agent.

Saturday night, during an unbilled appearance on stage at the Light of Day festival at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Bruce Springsteen spoke up.

This is the transcript of what he said from njarts.net:

“This next song is probably one of my greatest songs. And I don’t want to be out of water tonight, but I wrote this song as an ode to American possibility … both to the beautiful but flawed country that we are, and to the country that we could be. Now, 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. So as we gather tonight in this beautiful display of love and care and thoughtfulness and community … if you believe in democracy, in liberty … if you believe that truth still matters, and that it’s worth speaking out, and it’s worth fighting for … if you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it … if you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading American cities, and using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens … if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest … then send a message to this President.

 

And as the Mayor of that city has said, ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis. So this one is for you, and the memory of the mother of three and American citizen Renee Good.”

He then launched into “The Promised Land," a 1978 song from the “Darkness on the Edge of Town” album.

It’s a song about feeling powerless but still trying to hang on to hope.

Some of the lyrics…

“I've done my best to live the right way

I get up every morning and go to work each day

But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold

Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode”

Things certainly exploded in Minneapolis that day. No matter which way you see the shooting, no matter what you think of Springsteen, we can all agree we’ve come to a dark place. Can we agree on a way out?