During Broadway show, Springsteen addresses “disgracefully inhumane” family separations: “May God save our souls”

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Credit: Danny ClinchPrior to President Donald Trump signing an executive order Wednesday to keep families together at the U.S.-Mexico border, Bruce Springsteen addressed the situation Tuesday night during his Springsteen on Broadway performance at New York’s Walter Kerr Theatre.

The Boss, whose show has featured basically the same set since it debuted last October, went off script to deliver an impassioned speech about the border separations before playing “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” a song he hadn’t performed in the production before.

According to a transcript of his remarks posted on BruceSpringsteen.net, Bruce began by pointing out that he never believed people came to his shows “to be told anything,” but also noted that the shows are “a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit, to be amongst the crowd. And to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively.”

After talking about how encouraging it was to see young people taking part in the March for Our Lives gun-violence protest event in Washington, D.C., Springsteen then addressed the border situation.

“[W]e are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging,” Bruce declared.

“And we have heard people in high position in the American government blaspheme in the name of God and country that it is a moral thing to assault the children amongst us. May God save our souls.”

Springsteen then referenced a famous quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

He added that while he finds truth in the statement, “It needs all of us leaning on it, nudging it in the right direction day after day.”

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