Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the SEM 2026 Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 29th Aug 2026, 08:48:40pm EDT
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Daily Overview |
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02C: Protest Songs and Musical Resistance Location: Georgian Room | |
| Presentation 2 | |
Resistance Music in Occupied Minneapolis Minneapolis, MN On January 7, 2026, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey appeared on national news demanding that ICE agents “get the fuck out of our city.” In the following weeks, Minneapolis musicians released new songs with titles like “Minneapolis (Fuck ICE)” and “Fuck This.” Others wrote and released songs of political awareness, action, and hope. This paper chronicles and reflects on local Minneapolis protest music written and released in January and February 2026 in response to the federal occupation. Operation Metro Surge began on December 1, 2025, initiating over four thousand ICE and CBP federal agents in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Thousands of black, brown, and indigenous Minnesotans went into hiding and white allies armed themselves with whistles and car horns to alert their neighbors of ICE vehicles appearing in front of homes and businesses. On January 7th, after five weeks of illegal ICE activities, a federal agent murdered Renee Good; less than two weeks later, they killed Alex Pretti. Traumatized, local musicians responded by writing songs that registered community outrage and demanded ICE’s immediate exit from Minnesota. Like the role of print media in Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities, I argue that these protest songs, released online and shared on social media, served as important touchstones in the development of political affinity groups of occupation resisters who share a common understanding of what it means to be a radical ally and good neighbor. As recorded artifacts, these protest songs are an index of the brutal occupation and human rights atrocities in Trump’s America. | |
