Tom Morello spoke out against Donald Trump and ICE at a protest event in New York City this week.
The Rage Against the Machine member attended the Hands Off NYC event at 26 Federal Plaza in the city, where he addressed New Yorkers in a powerful speech.
Morello slammed the Trump government’s ICE abuses, calling out unlawful immigration detention tactics currently being utilised in the US.
“My mother and I lived at 142nd and Riverside a long time ago,” Morello said (as per Rolling Stone), recalling his early years in the city. “Brothers and sisters, if I’ve learned one thing in all my years since then, it’s that if it looks like fascism, sounds like fascism, dresses like fascism, talks like fascism, kills like fascism, and lies like fascism — brothers and sisters, it’s fucking fascism.”
Morello continued. “A close family friend was recently kidnapped by ICE. A grandmother, a law-abiding, hard-working grandma. Coming home one night from the grocery store, was jumped by mass government thugs, thrown into an unmarked van, and deported without a hint of due process.
“Trump claims that immigrants are criminals and rapists. Well this immigrant grandma never murdered 180 schoolgirls in Iran by bombing them to pieces. And this immigrant grandma never sexually assaulted underage kids with Trump’s ruling-class buddies on Epstein Island. That’s right. You want to arrest murderers and rapists? You need to look no further than the damn White House.”
Morello also encouraged people to stand up against Trump’s administration.
“We are living in a time where ideas are a crime, where gender is a crime, where skin color is a crime, where the truth is a crime, while the real criminals dine and toast with dictatorship on their minds and golf clubs in their tiny hands,” he said. “What is called for right now is a mass movement of peaceful anti-fascist crime fighters. That is you, so let’s go, let’s take the power back and adjourn this motherfucking authoritarian clown show once and for all.”
Morello has been as vocal as always in his protesting this year.
He held an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis earlier this year, which was attended by Morello’s touring mate Bruce Springsteen.
Springsteen played his protest song “Streets of Minneapolis” at the concert following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the city.
Morello and his band also took to the stage at Minneapolis venue First Avenue. He and Springsteen performed “The Ghost of Tom Joad” together, while all the musicians from the event gathered for a closing performance of John Lennon’s “Power to the People”.
