On a recent night, musician Carsie Blanton brought her repertoire of protest songs to Harvard Square as part of her summer tour in support of her two most recent albums: “After the Revolution” and “The Red Album”.
Attendees milled around tables in the lobby of The Sinclair, looking at merchandise not just of Blanton and her opening act, but also literature from Boston chapters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and If Not Now – all co-sponsors of the show, which was billed as a fundraiser for the Middle East Children’s Alliance.
Hannah Didehbani, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, was among those tabling at The Sinclair that night.
“Carsie Blanton has just some amazing protest music that really captures the spirit of protest,” the 23-year-old said. “We’re fighting for a better world, we are optimistic.”
Blanton, who has been making music as an independent working-class artist for more than 20 years, says she’s hoping to inspire solidarity among the disillusioned looking for a place to come together.
“We’re trying to open a window for all these young people doing these incredible encampments and hunger strikes to say ‘You can dedicate your whole life to this work, and it’s a good life,’” said Blanton, whose activism is rooted in her identity as an anti-Zionist Jew and a socialist with ties to Appalachia.
Her set at The Sinclair included a mix of original songs with titles like: “After The Revolution,” “Labour of Love,” and “Empire” as well as “Fishin’ With You,” an ode to folk musician John Prine, and covers like “You Ain’t Done Nothin’ (If You Ain’t Been Called A Red).”
Singalongs and witty lyricism kept the mood elevated, even as Blanton spoke of attacks on free speech and the working class — now, and throughout history.
Since President Donald Trump’s election, parts of the federal government have been accused of following a playbook from initiatives like Project Esther and working to conflate support for the Palestinian people with support for Hamas, the terrorist group responsible for the deadly 2023 attack on Israel. And a number of recent high-profile antisemitic attacks in the U.S. is renewing scrutiny of the pro-Palestinian movement.
Some of the efforts have worked to quell the protests. The encampments are largely gone from college campuses, and some of the activism has taken a different form. Across the country, there have been a number of hunger strikes this year, as Israel’s siege on Gaza continues. And at commencement ceremonies, some students used their speeches to highlight international condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza as constituting genocide, often facing discipline from their universities for doing so.
Youth support for Palestinians
Younger Americans generally hold significantly higher support for the Palestinian cause than Israel, including among Jewish Americans. Young Jews are more critical than older Jews of Israel’s approach to the war, and have a less favorable view of Israel’s government, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
But Palestinian supporters in the U.S. represent a range of perspectives: some are motivated by general antiwar sentiment while others endorse a more militant resistance on behalf of all oppressed people, in which they include Palestinians.
Daven McQueen, a 28-year old community organizer who uses the pronoun they, recently graduated with their master’s degree from Emerson College, and is now teaching at a local community college.
They said today’s young people faced significant isolation from their peers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while simultaneously connected to struggles all over the world via social media, where the war in Gaza has played out in real time.
“Young people are coming of age being told that they have agency in this world, and then materially that’s just not what it feels like,” they said. “Increasingly, young people are feeling like the options that we have are limited if not shrinking.”
Nearly half of young Americans say they’re barely getting by financially, according to the most recent Harvard Youth Poll.
“That proximity to struggle I think is what makes young people so energized,” continued McQueen.
As a student at MIT, Didehbani, faced sanctions from the administration for organizing pro-Palestinian protests on campus. She was listed on the Canary Mission website that names people and groups they claim promote hatred of the U.S., Israel and Jews on college campuses.
Despite this, Didehbani maintains her support for the Palestinian people, and said she sees the Trump administration’s targeting of international students who have voiced pro-Palestinian support — like the detentions of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk — as catalysts.
“Our right to talk about Palestine is related to the liberation of Palestine. So we do have to fight for both,” she said.
She, and other young activists, see continued U.S. financial and military support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a driving force in their protest. And, they see Trump’s policies targeting undocumented immigrants and foreign students as an attack on the working class.
“People are looking at a brazen, very clear billionaire agenda and they’re like, 'wait a second, something is really wrong,'” Didehbani said.
At The Sinclair, Blanton described herself as a working-class artist, making music not just for protesters, but for social workers, teachers and community organizers. Between songs, she also spoke about the suppression of labor movements, Black liberation, and antiwar activism in the U.S.
In doing so, Blanton drew a throughline between the Red Scare of the mid-century — where people suspected of being sympathetic to communism were blacklisted — and the policies of today’s Trump administration.
“The Red Scare of the 50s, 60s, 70s and probably onward, really came down hard on political artists, and I think it took more from us than I’d realized,” Blanton told GBH News before taking the stage. “Now, I feel like I’m rediscovering our real inheritance, which is [that] radical art is just art. That’s what it is to be an artist.”
