Holiday Songs for Collective Action began in 2023, at a moment when people around the world were rising up to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. As the holiday season approached, many rewritten “justice” holiday songs were circulating, yet too often they failed to speak honestly to the devastation shaping people’s lives. The Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian-led advocacy organization based in the U.S., invited Songs in the Key of Resistance to reimagine holiday music that could meet the urgency of that moment.
Responding to this invitation, we recognized the need for songs grounded in the lived realities of communities in struggle – songs that can hold grief and resistance, that name the violence of the war economy, homelessness, family detention, and state-sanctioned harm, while still calling us toward hope, solidarity, and collective action.
This work is ongoing. Holiday Songs for Collective Action has become a way for communities of faith and moral conscience to amplify collective resistance through action, prayer, ritual, and song. Each year, artists and community leaders from across the country remix classic holiday music to support the struggles our communities are facing and to root the season in values of justice, peace, liberation, and love for all creation.Through these remixes, we transform familiar songs into tools for truth-telling, remembrance, and collective courage—singing our way toward a world where dignity, peace, and justice belong to all.
#WeSingFreedom