By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
In Minneapolis, January 2026 was bone-cold and heavy with grief. Four days after Renée Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent, a few hundred people gathered in the Phillips neighborhood and did something both ancient and radical: they sang.
About 100 people had been expected. Around 300 showed up. Within a week, 600 were coming out to sing. Then 2,000, bundled against the cold, standing outside a hotel believed to be housing ICE agents, their voices cracking open the freezing air with a message that was equal parts invitation and refusal:
It’s okay to change your mind
Show us your courage
Leave this behind
And you can join us
Join us here anytime.
The song, “It’s Okay to Change Your Mind,” was written by Singing Resistance TC song leader Annie Schlaefer. It has since gone viral, and the group’s Instagram account gained nearly 70,000 followers in under a month. Singing Resistance has since spread to Nashville, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Portland and beyond. Brandi Carlile invited them onstage at a sold-out Target Center concert. Anderson Cooper interviewed them on CNN.
What Singing Together Does That Signs Don’t
What Singing Resistance TC understood, intuitively, is something that social movements have always known: singing together does something speeches and signs cannot. It synchronizes bodies. It regulates breath and nervous systems.
It transforms a crowd of frightened individuals into something that feels, for a moment, like a community that cannot be scattered. One organizer told CNN: “Song is a vehicle for us to grieve. It’s a vehicle for us to feel rage. It’s a vehicle for us to strengthen ourselves… It’s a way to gather our courage.”
This movement takes inspiration from Otpor!, the Serbian student movement that brought down Slobodan Milošević through relentless nonviolent resistance. Joy as strategy. Love as refusal. Not naïve love, but the fierce, clear-eyed kind that looks directly at what is happening and refuses to become small or numb in response.
Protest Anthems Are Songs of Survival
One of the Singing Resistance songs from their songbook that we selected for our Song of the Month is We Were Made For These Times.
This song reflects a specific thought that I’ve been repeating to myself for many months: we are the ones who are here now, facing authoritarianism, and so we are the ones who will fight it. What other choice do we have?
These lyrics do not discount fear, anxiety or hopelessness as reactions – they remind us that we can be fearful and still join in resisting in many ways, including singing about our golden, shining souls.
Protest songs are designed to be easy to learn, accessible to anyone willing to show up and raise their voice. Just the willingness, as one co-founder put it, to let the astonishing act of singing draw more people in. Love is the attraction. It always has been.
“Under federal occupation, Minneapolis has been going through immense pain, rage, and grief,” organizers wrote. “But when they come at us with violence, we fight back with love.”
We Were Made for These Times, by Angela Gabriel
Don’t lose hope (do not lose hope)
We were made for these times (we were made for this) (x3)
Show your soul, it shines likes golden in these dark times
Don’t give up (do not give up)