Collen Kattau, pictured, will be performing at a benefit concert meant to help the Syracuse Immigrant Refugees Defense Network. Kattau will be just one of the performers at the concert. Credit: Courtesy of Colleen Kattau.

When American folk singer Woody Guthrie affixed “this machine kills fascists” to his guitar during World War II, he couldn’t have known how his protest songs would inspire activists 83 years later in Syracuse, New York.

Roused to carry on an international tradition of singing truth to power, local folk artists hope to encourage resistance to federal deportation operations through a benefit concert Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society.

The Syracuse Community Choir is hosting the concert. The proceeds will support the Syracuse Immigration Resource and Defense Network, a volunteer-run organization run out of Workers Center CNY’s offices. Attendees can expect to hear a mix of original protest tracks and covers of contemporary protest songs.

The show will feature performances from Colleen Kattau, Donna Colton, and Sam P., along with special guests Jessie Elizabeth and Rachel Bass. In addition, Victor Maria Chaman, writer in residence at SIRDN, will be reading a selection from theatrical stories he has written depicting the experiences of immigrants.

A seasoned singer-songwriter based in Cortland, Kattau’s folk music has earned recognition in Central New York and beyond. 

Folk legend Pete Seeger once praised Kattau’s prowess in both singing and organizing, which he said would have made legendary labor songwriter Joe Hill proud. Hill’s execution on trumped-up murder charges was immortalized in one of world’s most enduring labor songs: “Says Joe, ‘What they forgot to kill, went on to organize.’”

Kattau said her extensive ties to the peace community of Syracuse had her looking for ways to assist the efforts of SIRDN and Workers Center to support immigrants navigating a federal immigration crackdown. 

“Music is such a galvanizing force. And we need something, because we’re all feeling this grief and frankly, horror, about what’s going on,” Kattau said. “So creating a space that we can bring people together, to share in song and solidarity — I was really itching to do that.”

Kattau enlisted her friend Andy Mager, a longtime activist and the coordinator of the Syracuse Cultural Workers, to help plan an event that featured songs of hope and resistance. Kattau said she was especially interested in organizing the benefit concert in light of recent events in Minnesota, where thousands of Americans have organized to resist President Donald Trump’s deportation operation.

Minneapolis has generated viral scenes of bloodshed and violent repression of citizens’ and noncitizens’ constitutional rights. But, Kattau said, from those dark developments have emerged a slew of contemporary folk songs that have inspired her and her fellow folk performers.

“The songs coming out of Minnesota are very short pieces that audiences can learn really quickly, and repeat and sing all together,” Kattau said. “They’re not complicated. They’re for group singing, and that’s really, really powerful, when you see 1600 people walking out of a church in Minneapolis and going and singing in the streets.”

Traditional protest songs, Kattau said, are just as apropos to contemporary struggle as the new tracks emerging from Minnesota and elsewhere. Folk songs, especially protest songs, collectively preserve the memory of “the people’s story” — something Kattau said history books don’t always tell. 

“Every social movement — you know, civil rights, labor, women’s rights — there’s many, many things that we take from our past, and the ancestors. And song is one of them,” Kattau said. “Everybody knows ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Everybody knows Woody Guthrie songs. All those things come out of movements.”

Kattau explained how her interest in the 1980’s in music from Latin American folk artists, (such as Chilean folk singers Victor Jara and Violeta Parra, and Argentine artist Mercedes Sosa), led her to learn more about the history of those singers’ home countries. 

Fascism ravaged Chile and Argentina for decades in the late-20th century. The United States in 1973 influenced a military coup to oust the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. 

As a prominent folk singer associated with Allende’s government, Jara was targeted by General Augusto Pinochet’s military junta. Dragged with other enemies of the state to an impromptu detention center in Chile Stadium, Jara was interrogated, tortured, and ultimately shot dead — but not before memorializing his plight in verse.

“Oh, you song, you come out so badly when I must sing the terror of what I see,” Jara wrote in his last poem, commonly known as “Estadio Chile”. A year later, Seeger set the poem to music in a poignant tribute.

Chile Stadium, where Jara and nameless others were murdered by agents of Pinochet’s state, in 2003 was renamed Victor Jara Stadium.

“In Latin America, they always say, ‘the past is not behind us, it’s in front of us.’ And you’ll find a lot of that in progressive songwriting, that it’s the ancestors we look to, they’re with us,” Kattau said. “Knowing that you have a collective past that you’re part of … it’s your obligation, almost, to continue.”

Kattau and her co-performers hope to continue preserving the songs and stories of that collective past by bringing it into the present.

Tickets for Wednesday’s concerts are priced on a pay-what-you-can sliding scale, with suggested prices of $10 to $50. Flyers for the show advertise “no one turned away.”

Annegret Schubert, a volunteer with the SIRDN, said the concert will benefit the organization by increasing the money the organization has on hand to support immigrants requesting emergency funds.

“Currently, we fund access to phone service for people in ICE detention, help with living expenses for people who have lost their monetary provider, help with legal expenses, and whatever else the emergency has caused in terms of need,” Schubert said.

In the spirit of collective resistance, Kattau hopes to inspire audience members to participate throughout the concert. Kattau said her performance will include an original track entitled “Song Without Fear,” a new piece she wrote in English based on the Mexican folk song “Canción Sin Miedo”.

“The refrain is ‘abolish ICE,’” Kattau said. “Everybody can sing along with that.”

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...