Bragg, Bryan, and Springsteen light the way for artists of conscience in 2026

What are the songs inspiring you to stand up against today’s attacks on the American people and the neighbors we are called to love?

As you have heard, no doubt, by now: The great Bruce Springsteen is stepping up and singing with courage, conscience, and truth, while American citizens are being murdered in broad daylight by masked and cowardly ICE agents under the direction of Kristi Noem, who is controlled by our Hitler imitator-in-chief Stephen Miller, who is enabled and affirmed by our Pedophile-Protector-in-Chief, a man who seems to have studied descriptions of the Antichrist in order to become one.

This state-sponsored cruelty, an attack on the neighbors that Jesus commands us to welcome and love just the way we would welcome and love him, is a direct contradiction of what our Statue of Liberty represents, of the invitation she explicitly offers to the poor, the needy, and the vulnerable of the world. There are now two Americas: the one that practices what it preaches about “liberty and justice for all,” and the occupying force modeled on the world’s worst authoritarian regimes.

You’ve probably heard all about Springsteen’s song by now. And you’ve probably also heard — as predictable as it is pathetic — that the PP-in-Chief has condemned him for it.

But did you know that another famous disciple of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg, is stepping up?

I remember seeing Billy Bragg and Joe Henry rock The Neptune in Seattle just a few days before our America’s Grand Master Misogynist was elected the first time, and Bragg took a solitary moment in the spotlight to protest the Border Wall, singing one of my all-time favorite songs: the anthem of Hades from Hadestown, “Why We Build the Wall.”

Today, with his mind on literature and history, Bragg sees a direct line from the Nazis of the Holocaust to MAGA’s “America First” agenda, and pointed back to a protest poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller: “First They Came.”

Here’s “City of Heroes.”

I’m glad to hear Zach Bryan’s echoing Guthrie himself in his song “Bad News” from his new record With Heaven on Top:

Along the same lines: I was happy to see Stephen Colbert, whose resilience in standing up for truth and justice on late-night television got his show canceled by the cowards of the new American tyranny, feature Jesse Wells live on his show, giving him a spotlight for this song that went live several months ago.

Here’s “Join ICE”:

And then there’s the punk band NOFX who don’t hold back:

Now, I’m well aware that all of the artists I’ve highlighted here are white guys. And that’s because they’re the only human beings Trump and Company seem inclined to give any attention, so maybe they can reach listeners that others can’t. There’s never a shortage of women singing courageously against misogyny and cruelty. There’s never a shortage of my brown and black neighbors testifying in their art to the racism and violence inherent in the American system. They’ve been lighting the way far beyond the short span of my lifetime.

I’m grateful for anyone who steps up and takes a stand for truth, for justice, for human kindness. I’m doing what I can here at my desk, out in my car, shining a light in my classrooms and my online forums. And I’m looking for ways to do more. I’m bound to do so for the fundamental Gospel of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus made it clear: We’re to love and serve, as we would love and serve Jesus himself, every stranger, every immigrant, every refugee, every vulnerable human on this fragile planet.

And the song that’s been ringing in my ears and resonating in my heart goes back almost four decades, from Dylan’s great album Oh Mercy: