#carols-resistance

#carols-resistance

Loyda Alvarado sang to the immigrants inside the detention center, expressing love and support through her serenade, emphasizing that even when locked up, they are not forgotten.

It makes me feel proud, simply because of the specific time we're in right now. It definitely takes a lot of courage for kids my age to represent their culture. Anthony Benitez, an 18-year-old violin student born in the United States to Mexican immigrants, expressed how the academy provides a meaningful outlet for cultural expression amid punitive immigration enforcement affecting Latino and immigrant families across the country.

ICE killed another American citizen on Saturday, so here's a list of five anti-ICE songs you can listen to right now. As music journalists we often struggle with how to respond to tragedies like this one. I don't have unreleased facts to share, or some vast network of activists to call upon. What I do have is my anger, alongside decades of practice working through difficult emotions with music.

On Jan. 28, 2026, Bruce Springsteen released "Streets of Minneapolis," a hard-hitting protest against the immigration enforcement surge in the city, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The song is all over social media, and the official video has already been streamed more than 5 million times. It's hard to remember a time when a major artist has released a song in the midst of a specific political crisis.

In three January weekends you all showed up for a one-composer concert presented by A Notion, A Scream; a preview of In Medio's ACDA performance ahead in March; Resonance Ensemble on stage with Sweet Honey in the Rock®; Oregon Chorale's journey to The Planets with the Beaverton Symphony; and Evenstar Ensemble taking us all back to the days of Duchies.

My dad would be up at dawn, not to prepare some elaborate feast, but to set up the treasure hunt he'd created using clues written on the backs of old envelopes. Each riddle led us kids to another spot in the house, building anticipation for modest gifts hidden in creative places. The whole thing probably cost him nothing but time and imagination, yet thirty years later, I remember those hunts more vividly than any expensive present I've ever received.

In early January, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a concert benefit for Palestine and Sudan conjured all the fury of an acoustic night at the local coffee shop. Musicians played stripped-down songs on a stage decorated with rugs, floor lamps, and couches. Members of the audience, mostly 20-somethings and teens, leaned in and filmed intimate performances by their favorite cult artists.

As if demolishing the East Wing, gutting arts agencies, and slapping his name and face on several federal buildings weren't enough, the US president now wants to do away with a DC building known as the "Sistine Chapel of New Deal art." This week, we reported on a burgeoning campaign to save the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, which houses murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, Seymour Fogel, and other major American artists. We will continue to follow this story.

The U.S.'s political landscape - and our daily lives - are increasingly shaped by repression and violence, amplified by a media cycle designed to keep us fearful in the present, uncertain about the future, and depleted. Exhaustion is not a side effect of this system. It is one of its core tools. Last year, I wrote that Donald Trump's attacks were designed to exhaust us. Over the past year, I've watched communities build movements and adapt their organizing under this reality.