Last week, a video of 2,000 bundled-up Minnesotans singing in the streets of Minneapolis went viral.
They stood outside of a hotel where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were reportedly staying, holding heart-shaped protest signs and playing tambourines.
“It’s okay to change your mind / Show us your courage / Leave this behind,” they sang.
“It’s okay to change your mind / And you can join us / Join us here anytime.”
Their goal was to unite in song and extend a forgiving hand to agents who have been carrying out violent and often illegal raids against both undocumented immigrants and United States citizens.
“Under federal occupation, Minneapolis has been going through immense pain, rage, and grief. But when they come at us with violence, we fight back with love,” organizers shared on social media.
“We still have space in our hearts for ICE agents who are willing to walk away from the path of violence and take accountability for harm they’ve caused. We paid ICE agents a visit today to call them home.”
Singing Resistance organizers lead a singing circle in the brutal cold of Minneapolis. Photo courtesy of Art Shanty Projects
The song, directed by activist group Singing Resistance, has since become an earworm for those who have seen the viral clip. It has also inspired other anti-ICE protesters to join in, with virtual and in-person singing circles sweeping the nation, a digital songbook shared by organizers, and a nationwide day of song in the works.
But the song has humble beginnings.
“It’s Okay to Change Your Mind” is one of about a dozen songs the group has been singing in the streets of Minneapolis, and it was written by a local, Annie Schlaefer.
According to a Patreon bio, Schlaefer has been leading community singing circles for 13 years in northern Minnesota, Maine, and Wisconsin. For the past four years, she has hosted similar gatherings with a friend in Minneapolis.
On her Patreon, she has a handful of brief recordings of these protest songs, so people can access them for free, listen, and learn the words themselves.
“I am planning to post songs that I catch/make for the community singing movement,” she wrote in her bio. “Songs will be fairly simple and fairly easy to teach and learn.”
“It’s Okay to Change Your Mind” is one of those simple tunes. The full lyrics are as follows:
“Ooh, it’s okay to change your mind / Show us your courage / Leave this behind
“Ooh, it’s okay to change your mind / And you can join us / Join us here any time”
According to Interfaith Alliance, a nonprofit that has been teaching these protest songs to groups of all faith backgrounds, Schlaefer wrote the song “in response to escalating ICE raids and authoritarian violence in the Twin Cities.”
The song, and many others like it, are also inspired by similar protest messages from history.
“It is inspired by Otpor!, the Serbian civil resistance movement who overthrew dictator Slobodan Milošević in 2000. Otpor! members were regularly arrested and beaten by police. Afterward, they would show up to police stations and officers’ houses chanting ‘You may not join us today, but you can join us tomorrow,’” Interfaith Alliance explained.
“In the final hours of their revolution, hundreds of thousands of people from across Serbia marched on Belgrade. Milosevic ordered the police and military to fire on massive crowds of protestors, and they refused. They were done being on the wrong side of history.”
Other songs in the Singing Resistance catalogue share similar sentiments.
Another written by Schlaefer is “We Walk the Same Ground,” and its lyrics contain a short but powerful refrain:
“We walk the same ground / But we’ve been torn apart / Put down your weapons / Come sing your part.”
Some other songs in the public songbook are credited to The Peace Poets, other local musicians like Sarina Partridge, and longtime musical organizers like Joshua Blaine. Songs are divided into various categories, like “walking vigils in response to ICE activity,” “grief vigils,” or — in the case of “It’s Okay to Change Your Mind” — “songs to encourage defections.”
Thousands have turned out to sing these songs in the streets of Minneapolis, and training continues in preparation for an upcoming “nationwide day of action” on a to-be announced date.
“We are grounded in love, nonviolence, and solidarity. In the context of intense and escalating violence towards our communities and federal invasions of our cities and towns, we sing because song is an antidote to fear, song helps us connect to each other, and through song we can name and protect what we hold sacred,” a toolkit by Singing Resistance stated.
“Through song, we can refuse to obey what authoritarianism wants us to do — get small, numb out, and forget. Instead, we will mobilize our communities in public, we will feel, and we will tell the truth of the violence and of the resistance.”
You may also like: How historic protest music has inspired anti-ICE resistance in Minnesota
Header images courtesy of @dougpagitt/Instagram
