This story aired in the February 11, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Music can be a tool for cultural expression and social change. For this story, we’re going out in the streets to meet a band that provides a soundtrack for Bay Area protests. They’re called The Brass Liberation Orchestra.
Brass Liberation Orchestra Clip: We want ice in our drinks, not in our streets. We want Ice Cube, not in our streets. We want ice cubes in the freezer…
For nearly 25 years The Brass Liberation Orchestra – or BLO – has played a range of protests. But they’ve been especially busy since President Trump’s second term began.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: It’s the fall of 2025 at a "No Kings" protest. At least 10,000 people take the streets of Oakland – there are families, neighbors, young people and elders.
Sound of tuba starting a song with BLO
Among the crowd are 30 musicians with the Brass Liberation Orchestra. They kick off the march with a chant to the song, “you move ya lose.”
BAND (Music): No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA
The sun glimmers off tubas, drums and even a piccolo. The BLO is in black-and-pink outfits. -- Polka-dots, pink fedoras and glittery bandanas.
JOSH SPERRY: The second Trump administration, we have seen people coming out of the woodwork
REPORTER: That's longtime band member, Josh Sperry.
JOSH: I really love these moments that we create where people are chanting and then we're like drumming with them and then like the music kind of swells and it's building up. And like you could just see everyone's like, holy, this is really cool.
REPORTER: The BLO was founded by sisters Ali and Jamie Spector. Ali was inspired by the long tradition of political street bands in Italy, where she lived for years. A brass band from Milan sent the BLO their very first music: it was a collection of European anti-fascist songs.
Sound of "Bella Ciao" being played by the BLO
During Italy's liberation from fascism in the 1940s, bands played this song, Bella Ciao, or Goodbye Beautiful. Now, BLO plays it at almost every gig.
Cofounder Jamie knows it on the trombone, an instrument she only learned after she started the band.
JAMIE SPECTOR: I picked up the trombone at age 30.
REPORTER: While Jamie hadn’t ever played, she thought that a political band would be a way to keep activists engaged.
JAMIE: You can be at a different meeting and a different protest every night of the week and be running yourself ragged.
REPORTER: So she wanted to find something INSPIRING.
JAMIE: That could actually be life giving and fill our buckets. And playing music does that for us.
REPORTER: One event Jamie remembers clearly? It was during the Iraq war, and longshoremen at the port of Oakland completely stopped working.
JAMIE: And there were huge, huge actions down at the Oakland docks.
REPORTER: Unpermitted marches, crowds stopping traffic in the streets, and police in riot gear ready to break things up…
JAMIE: Insert brass band just really lifts everyone's spirits.
MICHAEL MARK COHEN: I think that music is an essential component of protest sound.
REPORTER: That's Michael Mark Cohen. He's an associate professor of American Studies at UC Berkeley
MICHAEL: Because you're not just trying to sort of take up space in terms of streets or public parks but also take up audio space. Sound is one of the ways in which protests get their purpose, their agenda across.
REPORTER: Michael studies how social movements begin and what makes them effective.
MICHAEL: Singing and dancing and clapping and moving with musical accompaniment is part of the joy that should come with believing in similar things and having a life that is animated by a vision of a better world, which is after all what protests are for.
REPORTER: Michael goes on to say that music can support a range of actions in a movement. From marches and rallies to more confrontational approaches.
MICHAEL: Directly confronting the repressive state apparatus.
REPORTER: In a direct action, activists draw attention to injustice by disrupting norms or laws. Think: Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat and the following Montgomery Bus Boycott. Or...Black Lives Matter shutting down the Bay Bridge.
MICHAEL: Direct action gets the goods
REPORTER: And having a band like the Brass Liberation Orchestra, at a direct action plays its own role – adding a bit of joy, humor or energy to a tense situation.
Sound of soprano saxophone solo begins
Before joining the BLO, one member stacked up nearly 30 arrests as part of his direct actions. That's him on the soprano saxophone. His name is Dress Wedding, yes that's his legal name. Today he’s wearing a black dress and lacy sunhat with flowers along the brim and Marijuana leaf socks.
DRESS WEDDING: The first place I got arrested was at University Hall.
REPORTER: In January 1983, Dress blockaded a building at UC Berkeley to protest its work developing nuclear weapons.
DRESS: And once I did one, I kind of caught a bug.
REPORTER: One time, he was arrested in a $20 wedding dress and jailed for several days with hundreds of other protesters. Now, he wears dresses all the time.
Dress spent years going to direct actions with the intent of getting arrested… But there came a point when he wanted to stop -- for his children.
DRESS: It was my afternoon to pick them up and we got transferred to the San Francisco jail just in time for me to call at three o'clock to call the school and say, hi, I'm in jail. I'm not gonna be able to pick 'em up.
REPORTER: He found the BLO at an action in 2002.
DRESS: I decided I would be better off doing a lot more actions with music and not so much arresting.
REPORTER: Band members like Dress help decide what causes to support. Last year, they played at marches like “No Kings” and also at more disruptive events: at a Teachers’ strike in Richmond, inside a Home Depot, and at an immigration courthouse in San Francisco.
ERNESTO: Hey Everybody...
REPORTER: This organizer is one of about 40 people who came to the courthouse a few times a week to protest ICE In the summer of 2025, some of them blockaded courthouse doors to physically stop federal agents from bringing detainees to ICE vehicles.
ERNESTO: “I am so thrilled to welcome the Brass Liberation Orchestra.”
REPORTER: and on this day, they invited the BLO to help celebrate their successes, keep protesters energized and disrupt the hearings in the courtroom with music.
BAND (music): We want ICE in the Freezer, not in our streets.
REPORTER: Here's longtime bandmember Josh Sperry again
JOSH: The more we can make it, fun for people then the more people will actually engage in that.
REPORTER: Just in the beginning of 2026, BLO has shown up for striking Kaiser nurses and people marching in solidarity with Minneapolis protesters.
