The Waging Peace Podcast

Singing As Resistance

• Diana K. Oestreich • Season 3 • Episode 23

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We talk with Minneapolis community song leader Liz Digitale Anderson about Singing Resistance and why singing can turn strangers into a brave “we” in the middle of fear and state violence. We trace how simple songs support nonviolent action, deepen trust, and help communities protect neighbors without leaving anyone behind.

• Singing Resistance as a leaderful national movement grounded in love, solidarity, and nonviolence
• Minnesota’s lineage of organizing and why community singing takes root there
• Oral tradition song leading, call-and-response teaching, no sheet music, no gatekeeping
• Using songs to name systemic oppression and build courage for action
• Singing as a container for grief, rage, and joy in public witness
• Eviction defense, mutual aid, and showing up for neighbors in practical ways
• Offering off ramps and human dignity while resisting state violence
• Trust as the limiting factor, potlucks and neighbor relationships as strategy
• Going for depth with community and making repair for the long haul

You can go on Instagram to singing resistance at singing resistance, and in our link tree, there’s a toolkit.

This conversation breaks down how to build a local team, learn simple songs, and show up for eviction defense and safety. Listen, then ask: who’s on your team?

Support Liz's song leadership:

https://www.patreon.com/singingforliberation


Join the Singing Resistance: 

Follow:

https://www.instagram.com/singingresistance

Start a chapter where you are! Toolkit, trainings: 

https://linktr.ee/singingresistance


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Meeting Singing Resistance

SPEAKER_00

We made it, Liz. We made it. It is so good to get to talk to you. We've never spoken before for the folks listening, but I have sang with you before.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00

Would you give people just a little bit of who you are?

SPEAKER_01

Sure.

SPEAKER_00

And where are you?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. My name is Liz Digitale Anderson, and I am a community song leader here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Um, and part of the Twin Cities Singing Resistance movement, which has now launched a national, nationwide uh nonviolent mass movement grounded in love and solidarity.

SPEAKER_00

I just want to give a real, you know, I'm just gonna do it. It's my podcast. Round of applause. Can you say that last line again?

SPEAKER_01

It is a big, leaderful movement, and I'm one part of a giant ecosystem. But there are now 250 chapters nationwide of the singing resistance, which is a mass movement grounded in love, nonviolence, and solidarity, and making sure none of our neighbors gets left behind.

SPEAKER_00

I that just fills up my heart a little bit, getting to hear those words, because I think it's the heartbeat that we know that love and solidarity will always disarm the violence we see tearing at our neighbors. But we don't often get to hear those words said out loud. And I think people have seen what's happening in Minneapolis, they might have heard sound bites on Instagram, they might have caught a little whiff of this. But I wanted to take this time to sit down with you because I believe that this is changing our neighborhoods, this is changing our trajectory. And really like yeast in the flour, like all breads are made out of the three basic things. It's like flour, yeast, water, but the recipe's different. And I feel like singing resistance has actually made a new recipe for our country right now, and it came out of one of the Midwest, humble, not very loud states, and it came out as singing, which oftentimes is seen as a very meek or docile tradition in churches, I would say. Like not the rock concerts, but you know, there can be some like let's be clear in white churches, Diana.

SPEAKER_01

Let's be with yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Lutheran churches, would you say?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, Minnesota for sure has a strong Lutheran tradition, but I think it's it's actually other people who don't know Minnesota are surprised. But Minnesota actually has a deep history of organizing here that goes back, gosh, I mean, honestly, to the point where when we say that settler colonialism took over here in the 1850s, right, the Dakota resistance to the white people coming in and trying to take over their land was deep organization here. And to say that, like through the labor strikes in the 1930s, right, which Minnesota was one of the first places where a general strike succeeded to the civil rights movement, to the queer pride. Minnesota is one of the first places in the country after New York to have pride. Like we've been rolling deep here to the civil rights movement, to the disability justice movement. Like this has been an organizing town in Minneapolis for sure, and in Minnesota. And the singing culture is also like woven through the water here.

SPEAKER_00

Which I love that people are getting to not only hear from you on the ground in Minneapolis, but they're also getting to see this constellation ecosystem of solidarity and love through singing resistance, is all over the nation. And one of the other movements, I live on Ojibwe land, right near Lake Superior, which is also called Gichigumi, which is Ojibwe for the big sea, because when they came over there, when they were migrating, they're like, whoa, and someone said big sea, which is gichigumi. The A movement, the American Indian movement, was that in the 70s, also started massive. Minnesota.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. And lots of those same, like those, those organizing, like the ways that people took care of and protected each other. Aim was one of the first people. They were doing street patrols out in the 70s. They were some of the first, and those same lanes of organizations popped right back up when I started invading our cities. Like the folks who like the native folks in Little Earth around here were all out taking care of their neighbors in the same way that they already had the DNA to do in their organizing. So it's a real lineage for sure.

SPEAKER_00

And how did you find yourself in this? Like not many people, you know, when you're in the fifth grade, I don't know if small Liz thought, hey, this is what I want to do later. But how did this happen for you? What's your story?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, the short version of it, I think, is I've always been a singer, whether that was in church or in high school choirs or in college. Like I've had a lot of training. Um, but it was always sort of in this very sort of formal, more classical mode or in a church mode. And so it wasn't until I really came to Minnesota that I understood, oh, this community singing movement. We have a big ecosystem here in Minnesota, not just like formal classical singing, but also of this oral tradition work where we sing not for performance and not because we're seeking perfection, but we singing for joy and connection, and we're singing because it changes us, right? Um, and so there's a big ecosystem here of song leaders who've been working in this oral tradition for years. And I met up with them here. It was we moved here uh right before 2020. We moved here right before COVID, and then George Floyd was murdered by the state. And we were just like, this is an incredible place to just watch in the same way that the whole country now knows that Minnesota can snap into a formation to take care of each other. We saw the roots of that here in 2020. But we couldn't sing then because nobody was vaccinated, and that was like literally dangerous. So once we could all sing again, um, I met up with my friend Um C, who leads a group called Music That Makes Community, and uh we've been songleading together ever since. And the roots of the singing resistance really um have been in all these oral songleaders that I've been getting to know for the past five years here, but it really has coalesced this fall and this December. We were looking at the authoritarianism, we were looking at what was happening in Chicago and LA. Like you could see the writing on the wall. And so we started having conversations about what can our community do to me at this moment. And um, some of my friends who use this uh curriculum from a group called the Freedom Trainers, which is about non-cooperation and about resisting authoritarianism in very concrete ways, started going to groups of singers and saying, Hey, can we do this training with your people? Can we talk together about what nonviolence and what non-cooperation to this regime will look like when it comes here to us? And so those conversations were happening last fall in a really deep and beautiful way.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's really beautiful to hear that you guys came to our fair state in 2020, which not many people were. That was a bit more of a sheltering wild time uh situation for Minnesota. So the fact that you guys came and that you found this group of community that knew that singing could and would be our non-cooperation with what isn't right. I that still is so I think when people hear it it makes sense, but I don't know if people know what it feels like because what it feels like is this otherworldly experience. And I come from a Baptist Christian tradition, and so there's like a lot of hymns, but then I went to college and found the non-denominational church where we could sing rock things and felt like the spirit's here. So there's been my tradition has different ways that we experience these, like who knows exactly what it is, but we know that it's a gift. We know that something beautiful and of love is with us and for us and connecting us, and oftentimes it's in prayer or it's in song. So that you took that into a public space outside of one denomination or one tradition and somehow gave equal access to that.

Songs That Name Real Harm

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I think part of why we work in this like oral tradition. So we teach everything call and echo on the fly. We don't print sheet music, we don't use paper because we want it to be accessible to literally everybody. Uh, but we're also very specific in that we're saying it's that it's important that the singing feels good. It's important because also we need to throw good parties or no one wants to come join our movement. But we also are very specific about using the songs to name some of the systemic oppression that's happening right now. And we're very clear to say, yeah, we're gonna sing about abolishing ICE. We are gonna sing that this is not okay that you're taking our neighbors. We're gonna sing that we're making liberation together. And a piece that was missing for me, at least in my church upbringing, was that we were not naming those systemic things, right? We were able to sing about unity and we were able to sing about peace. And sometimes we were able to sing about justice. But it wasn't until I got into this movement of people who were saying, no, we actually, there is great evil happening in this land right now. There is, there are things that are not okay and will never be okay. And to say the point of singing about these things is that it anchors our work, you know, it anchors our courage as we say the songs help us like to align our bodies and our minds and our hearts with the actions that we're taking and to do it on a community level and to say, we're gonna sing about it and we're gonna sing it while we are patrolling our neighborhoods for ice. We're gonna do it while we're dropping off groceries for mutual aid, we're gonna do it walking the streets in solidarity. You know, we've had these big vigils out in the streets where we have walked past like neighborhoods where lots of folks have been taken, and we've paused to bear witness in places where we know people were kidnapped by ice, by the state, by our government. And we've seen people like come out of their houses and like film and wave us people who've been sheltering in place because they're immigrants who are terrified to leave their houses. And so to say all of these songs have a real specific message, and what we're trying to do with them is literally rewire people's brains towards what is possible for the world we want to build.

SPEAKER_00

Boom, what we need. Like you have kids, I have kids. Part of the whole magic of kids is you can't only tell them what we don't want them to do. We have to be continually telling them who they who we want them to be and what's possible. Like when my kids were really little, I was just losing my ever-loving mind because you can only ask someone to like put your shoes away 26 million times before you just want to hit your head on the wall. And so I made up these characters that were their old man selves, they were their 80-year-old selves. And so they had names. It was uh Richard and Jerry because my kids' names were Bridger, and people oftentimes think his name is Richard, and he's like, Mom, why would anyone name a kid Richard? And I was like, I don't want to break it. Yeah. And then my other son's name was Jericho, and so his old man's name was Jerry. And so whenever they do these things that I was like, I am going to scream, I would be like, you know, Jerry and Richard would put their shoes away. Jerry and Richard would close the door or flush the toilet, you know. And it was just always this thing that helped me remember who they're gonna be. They're gonna be people who do these things. And it was always reminding them that they're always gonna be these people too. And it's okay if they're not right now, but we're looking towards this jovial future. It was putting something light in a moment that had tension. Like, do I despair or do I lash out? But I truly didn't want to do either one. I wanted this other thing that was gonna be true. We just weren't there yet. I was in Minneapolis with your husband, and when we were marching, being with 50,000 people echoing the reverb in your chest, singing these songs in the open air in our street, it felt like the future was getting dragged into today and the joy was unstoppable.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And it matters that, like, literally the physical experience of your body, right? Because we want people to come back, right? We want people to have, especially in a time where the violence is so great, like where our friends are getting tear gassed for trying to stand up for our neighbors, where like literally our neighbors have been shot in the streets, right? For trying to protect people. It matters what our bodies do in response and reaction to that. And I think the singing can also be a channel for our grief. The singing can be a channel for our rage together, the singing can be a channel for our joy together. When we are not always great at having containers to say, like, no, it matters how our community processes these things together, how we feel, how we like that we don't just bury and dissociate our feelings and try and package it away. And so the singing can provide a place for all of those feelings. And it's also the fastest way to shift the energy of a crowd that I know.

SPEAKER_00

So it's powerful. I feel like we've lost some of these communal traditions. And I'm and I don't even think we've lost it since COVID. I think that it's just been getting suffocated. It's gotten so particular to each group that we share almost nothing in common. Like the only song that I think routinely people sing in public together is the national anthem. As a veteran, that is a different experience for me. And I don't sing it. And for other people, there's just all these different things where we have to have something that is a ritual for all of us, yeah, all the time, and has not been weaponized against some of us.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And so that's partly why, you know, we teach a lot of new songs, songs that have been written to me at this moment. We teach a lot of very short, they're easy to remember. We try and make them as catchy and groovy as possible. Because we are, I think you're you're right in saying we're in a time of inventing new rituals to hold this together. And this is funny because my kids' hockey team just went to see the Minnesota Frost play. And professional women's hockey is both very cool that it's finally happening, and also like, wow, I was just like, this is the biggest communal experience of like that most people ever get, especially if you're not part of any kind of religious congregation, like to be en masse and to feel that your body is like moving towards the same thing, and to like even these songs and chants with these callbacks. And I'm like, yeah, if you're not part of any other experience like that, and to say how we come together and celebrate or mourn or grieve. And I was like, wow, all this money and all this time and all this energy, all this effort is because people are chasing this little three-inch disc around an ice rink. What if we could put all that time and energy and money and effort into being like, we could protect our neighbors, we could feed everybody, we could house everybody, right? These crises were exacerbated by ice, but they were here, right? Long time before ice showed up and like, you know, the number I volunteer with Sanctuary Supply Depot and the number of our unhoused neighbors just getting shuffled from bridge to bridge because the city won't provide services, right? To say, what if all of that time and energy and attention? So, like our that's partly why the singing resistance has gotten involved in eviction defense lately to say we're asking the city and the state to be like, we protected our neighbors. We don't want you to evict them. That like negates the entire point of trying to keep people safe and keep them in their houses. There has to be another way that we can work on this to keep people safe. So while we're also raising money for rent relief, we're also calling on our government to be able to say, keep people housed, keep people safe. That's what a government is supposed to do. And we're doing that in song.

Reclaiming Singing From Violence

SPEAKER_00

There's something really powerful about singing when it's not like a performance, you know, when you have a page to watch somebody sing at you. I have felt an incredible amount of reclaiming with song in the last in the last couple years, because my first introduction to song was, you know, in a little tiny Baptist church where you sing the hymns that nobody knows what the words are, but there's three carrots and you hope it's three verses and not seven. And then I joined the military when I was 17. It's the first place that I had to sing and was forced to sing. And they do not teach anyone the words, but they found out they couldn't get 500 people to, in a quick, efficient, timely fashion, get from A to B. No matter what they did or how hard they yelled or screamed, they just couldn't move people because people couldn't move together until they started singing. So cadences was the one way that 500 different people would get in step with each other and would stay in step with each other. And that experience at 17 of basic training of every minute of every day, you were probably mostly marching somewhere. And if you were marching, you were singing. And there is something pretty powerful about that. Being with so many different people of every stripe. Like I was from Minnesota. This is the first time I was meeting people from California, from New York City, from Oklahoma. First time meeting your own countrymen, not just the town that you live in. And we were singing together every day. Yeah. The things we're singing were not good and pretty harmful and violent and brainwashy and hard on a 17-year-old soul. So I go from this military thing, the church thing, which was like, uh, why are we doing these and thys? You know, will it ever end? And then I go to the military, which I end up being deployed to the Iraq war. So that was an incredible harm where I would never want to sing again. And then I march with the Mennonites for Gaza two years ago, where they are marching hundreds of miles to the capital every day to say that Palestinians deserve to live and stop bombing Gaza. And there aren't a lot of Mennonites in my history or my era, there actually isn't a single one in my city. But marching with them and singing, they're quiet, disarming, but completely fierce.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And we will stand in front of the Capitol, and we will sing and we will not stop, even when they arrest us. And I feel like that reclaimed the power of singing in my faith. That reclaimed my power of not using song for violence. And it also felt powerful. It felt powerful in a way that I had not experienced song that could be belligerent while disarming, while holding a conviction that said I will not back down until my neighbors are safe. And that was that was a moment for me that reclaimed it. And I've been like, We need to do this every single time we meet together. We need to get more people to do this. And then when you guys did it in Minneapolis, I was like rainbow-colored, beautiful, like powerful. Like I have seen war, and yet the non-cooperation and the non-violence took out violence with your song. It was the vision.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

A possibility.

SPEAKER_01

They've done studies, right? Where I think somewhere in Europe, they hooked up heart monitors to like a whole choir as they were singing. And 30 minutes of singing, literally, everybody's breathing at a heart rate goes. They all so quite literally, our bodies are getting on the same page somatically. And there is a real power in that. One of our song leading teachers says it's the fastest way to turn from a me into a we that is a really empowerful thing. And then when you pair that with a message that is an important one, that we're trying to be like, no, literally, we want everybody to sing this. So, like when we went and sang outside the hotels where ICE is sleeping, my friend Annie wrote this song. It's like, it's okay to change your mind. Show us your courage. Leave this behind. It's okay to change your mind. And you can join us. Join us here anytime. Because we quite specifically wanted to put the idea into the water that, like, you could quit your jobs, ICE. Like, you signed up for this for whatever bonus. You there's Moral injury happening there, right? Like talking in the lineage of folks who've done conscientious objector work to say that it matters that it's a possibility for these folks doing government violence from the state to be have an off ramp to say you could change your mind and we're not going to throw you away. We would welcome you here, actually. We will hold you accountable for the harm, but we still believe that you have human dignity as well. And to say that if we put it into a song and we make it sticky, right, we make it catchy. One of our teachers here in Minneapolis, Ricardo Levins Morales, he's a big abolitionist teacher and trickster, but he says, nobody goes back to the factory humming your speech, right? Like people go back and they're thinking, oh, this is something that we're making possible here, and we're gonna hold it out in a spirit of love and nonviolence.

SPEAKER_00

That song makes me weep every time, but it also makes me mischievous. Sparks that, guess what? We can do this. And being a conscientious objector, in my tradition, I didn't even know what one was. Someone in war asked me if I was one because I was a medic, and I did not know what he was talking about. But being offered the option to reclaim my sacred dignity to refuse to kill that was a life. That was like a baptism of getting your life back. And in my tradition, I didn't know I had a choice. And so when I look at a lot of people, I don't know that it's a choice if people don't know they have options. And that song is so disarmingly like offering back the humanity that says, guess what? You have a choice, you have your full humanity, and whatever choice you made yesterday, you have all the choices to make today, and we love you. That song has a it has an invitation to it, it has a lightness that says, I like you, not I'm mad at you. And when people feel liked, our imagination happens, our defenses go down. We all deeply want to be loved and liked. That song, join us anytime. Who in your life looks at you and says, Hey, we're having a picnic, join us anytime. We don't get as many invitations as we desperately, as human beings, I think want to be invited.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think that's the other thing that's really powerful about this kind of movement is that we're trying to make the on-ramps really easy, right? We don't need you to read music. We don't need you to be a we don't need you to be Beyonce. We do not need you, right? We are saying this is for everybody, right? Everybody can take part. And that we're trying to have a really big tent right now. We understand that in this moment of trying to defeat authoritarianism, we are working in really broad coalition across the movement. And we want to say, yeah, everybody is welcome here. There's a place for you, you can get involved, however suits you, but there's no like barrier to entry. We're not gatekeeping anybody. And so the singing, like one way that we can extend that invitation, is to say, yeah, of course, your voice is needed and welcomed here.

SPEAKER_00

And there's not a whole lot of opportunities for that intergenerational invitation. And so when I got to walk on that street, and when I get to watch your videos on Instagram where you don't have to be an activist, you don't have to be anything but five-year-olds to 95-year-olds. If you have a heartbeat, then you're invited. And I think those things are contagious. That feels courageous to say that we'll stand together and everyone's invited. And everybody has worth in this, whether you are a singer or not. We are all in our community, and you standing here has value and worth. I don't think kids get to see communities of adults. Like you said, other than sports, that people are really pumped up and they are sending out this sure, I'll sit in a stadium and sing Queen, like we did for the Green Day concert. Who can get a whole bunch of adults to joyfully do something together? And I think when kids get to see that, they are gonna get knit into our communities that says, you have value, we're your village, please come with us. You know, you have a home with us. Yeah. They see us being a community together.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I actually just recently have started a little super tiny children's choir here because I think the songs are also teaching tools. And whenever I come across a quote or something, I'm like, oh, bake that into my bones, bake it into my brain. I'm like, it needs to be a song. And like it is true what you were saying earlier, right? That songs are all propaganda and it's just a question of what kind of propaganda we like to be intentional about it because I can still sing you every word of my third grade Sunday school songs. And I'm looking at my kids going, okay, what do I want them to know? What do I want them to sing about? If we start now, see, no one is getting left behind this time, right? No one is getting left behind to say we get there together or never get there at all. If that's the watch word, right? If that's the song that flows in their blood to say we're not gonna us and them people, that's a song that we use a lot here in Minneapolis. That's like changed how my friends and I organize. We're like, oh, if we set this event up this way, does that mean so-and-so is gonna be left behind and not be able to participate, right? If we do it this way, how can we make sure that we're gonna get there together? And we will use that as a metric in organizing.

SPEAKER_00

Which is so powerful because there is this thing about music that doesn't ask our permission to affect us. We are affected by music without us intellectually saying yes or no for the good and the bad. And there's a lot of songs that I sing growing up that I'm like, whoa, I do not want my kids to sing that. Why were we singing about this in church? There's one other memory of song that I wanted to go back memory lane with you since you are a singer. Christmas Carols. I was a cancer hospice nurse when I first started out. So on one half of the hallway were patients who were fighting cancer, and then on the other half of the hallway were our hospice families. So these were families who were no longer fighting, they were part of the releasing and the leaving. And on Christmas, I had this patient. She couldn't have anybody come visit her. She had no immune system, but I was like, man, I just can't accept that Mary is going to be stuck in this hospital room all by herself on Christmas Eve with the big sign on her doorway that says nobody can come visit. So I uh dressed up in a Santa costume. And since I was a nurse, I could get in there. I serenaded her with a Christmas carol just to make sure she knew that she was not alone. Though everybody else was out in their churches or with their families or celebrating that she would not be alone on this night. And after I did that, I just couldn't not go back every single year on Christmas Eve. This special night. And so I brought my would-be husband, I brought my little kids. But what we started to notice is we would gather around a lot of hospice patients, they are not conscious, but we would sing these Christmas carols, and we would start to see their lips move, and their family members would see their lips move, and it seemed like there was just these deep, small places of memory that whether when they were young, there was a song or a Christmas that somehow was still bringing a connection and a beauty at the very end of their life. And whatever people say about Christmas carols, I'm like, I will cry every single time I hear one because I can see that these people had these maybe good, maybe bad moments as little kids, and they're also sharing them with their families, even past the time of being able to be conscious, this song is reverberating for them. And so I have a respect for Christmas carols that I never knew. People have made connections with these songs, and if they can bring a sense of wonder or memory or relationships past at the very end of our life, that's one of the most powerful things I can imagine.

SPEAKER_01

That's so beautiful, Diana. And I really think it's partly like those are the songs that there's a tradition and lineage, right? That they have those songs have traveled, some of them for centuries, right? But that people might have heard them over the span of their lives. And we don't really have a lot of secular equivalents. Like I'm thinking right now, like partly just because of our traditions and the way that our culture is. We said we've lost a lot of the singing recipes, so to speak. But like, um, we're about to show this film uh about the singing revolution in Estonia and about how singing their the songs of their homeland and the songs of their country, as well as new songs they were writing to meet the moment, like that fueled their nonviolent resistance against the Soviet Union until they could gain their independence because they had all these songs that were part of their tradition and culture that everybody knew. And for them to sing those, like literally, the Soviet Union was like, that's a band song, you need to stop doing that. And they were like, no, if a hundred thousand of us gather to sing this song of our homeland about how we are committed to each other and to this land, we're gonna drown out your band. You can't stop a hundred thousand of us singing this song that we all know that is so close to our hearts until we and say that song helped them find the lane of we want independence, we want to do it nonviolently. We're not gonna sit here and take the Soviet Union's, you know, domination forever. And that that song of language and heart and homeland was a real key piece of winning their independence. And so I think partly what we're trying to do now is seed another layer of song and language about what is the world that we want together, and to spread that across the country and to do it in a way where these are songs hopefully we can sing for generations. That as we're saying, what kind of world do we want for our babies and for our grandbabies and for the next seven generations? A world where people take care of each other, where we take care of the earth, where no one is getting left behind, right? If we can sing those things and those become the heartbeat of who we are to each other, then we are literally like sparking transformation that we hope will have really deep ripple effects for years to come.

How To Start A Chapter

SPEAKER_00

Which is planting that seed, because seeds have to be watered. And every time we sing these songs, we're watering this. I mean, it's a reality. We can have streets where people are safe, we can have guaranteed access to healthcare, we can have safety for women and kids. Like these are realities that we just have to find a way to fight for. And I think this singing resistance has brought a new way of people to connect to fight for these things that they want. So if somebody is sitting here and they're like, Liz, you obviously are a singer, you know what you're doing, but look at me. I really, really want to start a singing resistance because I want to be part of making this future for my neighbors, for my kids, for me. And I'm not really a singer. What would you say to that person? Because, you know, there's professionals, and then we're often told we're all bench sitters. So how if someone says, you know what, I love this vision, I want to do this.

SPEAKER_01

Beautiful. Yeah. Well, first of all, I would say if you're talking to me, then you can sing because singing is just extended talking. And I'm gonna remind you, we're not asking anybody to be Beyonce. We are literally trying to make a movement where if I sing a no, then you sing it back, and we are trading back and forth. So I would say, don't worry if you have no training. That's not what's important. What's important is your willingness and that you are willing to build a team. And in a team, everybody's gonna find their lane. You can go on Instagram to singing resistance at singing resistance, and in our link tree, there's a toolkit. So if you find our toolkit and our songbook, there's videos to help you learn the songs. There's a complete roadmap for saying, okay, if you want to start a chapter in your area, you need to find a couple other co-conspirators, a couple other collaborators who are willing to sort of drive the planning with you. And then there's an action planning guide, a toolkit. We held a week of action earlier at the beginning of March, where we said one simple thing you could do is to go and hold a singing action and bear witness at a place where ICE has done violence in your community. That might be a place where somebody was physically kidnapped, that might be at a corporation that you know is enabling the work of ice, it might be at a government building. But so many communities have been affected now. So find a place where you want to go and bear witness and find some people who feel comfortable. They're all very short songs. And the more you do it, right, as a song leader, it's just muscle memory, like many other things. You could practice in your living room with a group of a dozen before you go out in the streets just to make sure you feel really comfortable doing it. But yeah, so if you go on our Instagram at Singing Resistance, download the toolkit and find some co-collaborators to start planning with your neighborhood. Wow, I'm sure there are people who would want to come and join you.

SPEAKER_00

I always say that waging peace is when everybody has a seat at the table and they have what they need to thrive, not just survive. I've waged war. I don't want to just wage a peace that people just not die. That's not enough for me. There has to be joy in it. And we always say that waging peace is activating justice and instigating joy because everybody deserves their kids to have joy. Yes. And I know that waging war is this very normal thing that we're told makes sense. But I believe that waging peace is actually how we get what we most want. And this is a time when people are getting invited to get off the bench. Like there's not the pros, and the rest of us are the fans. It's like this is our country. This is our democracy. This is the time when we show up. And I think singing has a lot of connections. So my community here, we did a singing action. I live in the Twin Ports, Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin. And right over in Superior, Wisconsin, they are holding our neighbors and detaining them in the jailhouse. We decided we're going over the bridge and spent a Sunday afternoon singing to our neighbors who are being detained there. It was beautiful. And the person who led it is a singer. She's a professional singer. And so the one, it was very awesome because she's amazing, you know, but I could also see other people were like, oh, so this is what she does for a living, and we're not. So I was really excited to have you come on and share with people. There's not one singing resistance group. This is you and your co-conspirators, five to twelve people who, when something isn't right, you're gonna show up outside that elementary school, you're gonna show up outside that courthouse, you're gonna show up in public because when we bear witness, that's when we get to create safety for our neighbors. When we do this Christmas Carol situation, it's hilarious. But we did find out last year that we dressed up in Santa costumes. And for some reason, when people dress up in costumes, it seems like it really unlocked our voices. Like we were more willing to sing loud, to sing proud. We barely know the first verse of most of the songs, but people love that we were willing to show up and offer them this presence. I keep thinking, like, if we can get more people to feel like they can have five friends who can sing out some songs, they are seeding the future of liberation and a love that doesn't look away, a love that doesn't just read the headlines and think that's too bad.

Trust Building With Neighbors

SPEAKER_01

I think to be able to find a way for people to get involved. Oh gosh, who was it? There's an author who was writing an article, and they're like, honestly, the most anti-fascist thing you could do right now is to throw a potluck, is to get to know your neighbors. And it sounds on one level kind of trite, but on another level, like I can teach you about song leading. Or in Minnesota here, we can give you the tools you need to print 3D whistles, to write a salute report, to patrol. Like, those are tangible things. But the thing that slows you down is vetting your neighbors and knowing who to trust. The thing that slows you down when the it hits the fan is to say, oh, I know this neighbor is not gonna call the cops on my immigrant neighbor, right? To say, I trust that we're on the same page. And that happened because we went to a potluck and I know now, oh, that's Joe across the street. His black Tahoe doesn't belong to ICE. That's just his car, and he's gonna be out driving kids to high school who need a ride, right? And so to say the most relationships move at the speed of trust, which is something Adrian Marie Brown says in Emergent Strategy, and I love that. And to say actually the trust building right now is really important because I do think it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better, and to have a layer of trust in our neighborhoods in a really concrete and tangible way. So that enables us to show up when the going gets rough. That enables us to show up when things get real, real dark and we need a way to be present for each other.

SPEAKER_00

That rings so true because in my work as a community peacemaker, I oftentimes get the calls from people. And what slows me down in being able to show up and meet the need is that I don't have people to ask, or I'm asking the same people. So if I have people who are raising their hands, then I'm like, oh gosh, I've got five people to ask, and then we can go together. We do only move as much as we have relationship. And this is a time when I've been so encouraged when people are raising their hand, where I can text not five people, but ten people, and that is what keeps making my neighbors safer because everybody doesn't need to know everybody's names, but we do have to have people who are saying yes, yes, I will show up. And I think this is the time when we're getting to build that, even if it's slower than we'd like, and I wish we could do more faster, I think it's happening.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So as we wrap up, I was wondering two things. One, I was gonna ask if you would give your favorite memory, favorite singing resistance moment.

SPEAKER_01

What a great question. Yeah. I think honestly, it's been beautiful to be in the streets and to be at the mass meetings with everybody. But as I was saying earlier, to find your co-conspirators, find your collaborators, this movement has some of the deepest seasoned, most grounded leadership I have ever had the privilege to be part of. And so we had a debrief after it's been like three months. We're like, okay, we're a hundred days in. We need to pause, reflect, take stock. Like, what are we, how's it going for us? What have we done well? And just the way that that was held. There were 30 of us in the room. Like, this is, and every single person in there, just a found of wisdom and experience and trust. And we sang together, and that was so sweet because I was like, yeah, these are people I want to continue to roll with and organize with, not just sing with, but to say, I can see the ways that this movement is shifting because this leadership, this is not their first radio. And you can really sense the work that they've done, both like internally and personally, right? That they are people who understand how to deal with conflict well. They're people who understand how to strategize, how to set a vision, how to invite people in. And it's just so beautiful to be part of a team where I'm like, absolutely, I feel so much trust and comfort with this beautiful team of people. And that's what I wish for everybody who is organizing right now to be able to build that ecosystem where you're at and that you have a team that you trust that deeply.

Rapid Fire And Final Charge

SPEAKER_00

From your lips to God's ears, Liz, because there's so many of us who that's the dream. And to not quit before it's there, before we get there, and to continue to believe that's possible to have those co-conspirators that you feel so comfortable with and so trustworthy, and you can count on, and you're so looking up to them. So thank you for sharing that. And I always like to end my time with guests on this podcast with a bit of a game. It's rapid fire. I'm going to ask you three quick questions, and then you just get to do one word answers. You do not have to be attached. This is not an overthinker. This is purely for fun. So, are you ready?

SPEAKER_01

Go for it.

SPEAKER_00

First question How do you play? What is your superpower?

SPEAKER_01

Singing, probably.

SPEAKER_00

Last one. How are you finding hope? Right.

SPEAKER_01

Community.

SPEAKER_00

You're done it. You didn't it, Les. I always love hearing what people say because they're so right on. Like when people say their superpower, I'm like, Yeah, don't overthink it, people. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I want to give you an opportunity too. If there is one thing that you would like to leave people with right now, either personally or from Singing Resistance or as a neighbor in Minneapolis.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, thank you, Diana. Yeah, I would say go for depth with community. Like it is messy and beautiful, but the thing that we're seeking now is the sustainability for community for the long haul, like for the next decade. Who are your comrades that you feel like, yeah, I will trust these people to show up for me when it gets hard and terrible? That's what we're building right now, is we're laying the groundwork for the next 10 years. So roll for depth with community and people, and that's vulnerable and that's messy. And it's also really powerful when you've built that trust. So whether that's singing or mutual aid or patrol or whatever your lane is in this movement to take care of your people, like that means repair. When it gets all terrible, that means we're gonna screw it up and we're gonna make repair. And that's what we're building.

SPEAKER_00

So I love that, Liz. Thank you for giving us some practical ways and inspiration on how you are activating justice in Minneapolis and you are instigating joy. A legacy of building for joy is worth fighting for. It's worth giving a life for. You just really given me a bunch of hope today and encouragement and inspiration that the future is ours to love.

SPEAKER_01

That's beautiful. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me, Diana. It's been a real pleasure.

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Diana K Oestreich

Host