Minneapolis, MN – Braving sub-zero temperatures, more than 500 people protesting police brutality, racism and corporate greed gathered in south Minneapolis at Peavey Park and marched U.S. Bank Stadium, the site of the Super Bowl, Feb. 4. Upon arriving at the stadium, hundreds of participants took a knee to show their opposition to racist police terror.

Richard Aoki. Morris Childs. D.H. (Don) Wright. Darrell Grover. Betty and Larry Goff. The “Ad-Hoc Committee for a Marxist-Leninist Party.” Carl Freyman. Herbert K. Stallings. John McCaffrey.

Jacksonville, FL – Two things stood out to me while assembling my list of the year’s top movies. First, it’s remarkable how many science fiction and horror movies I watched this year. Practically every film I liked presented a dystopian vision of the future (or past) or a horrifying situation rooted in the present. No doubt that’s a sign of the times. Between the Trump presidency and the rise of the far right around the world, reality often seems more dystopian and terrifying than anything you’d see at the theater.

St. Paul, MN – In 2017, the people’s movements took to the streets in huge numbers, facing off against Donald Trump as he assumed the presidency along with his band of billionaires and generals. Like many hated right-wing politicians before him, Trump has provoked not just protests but also a lot of music reflecting on and expressing outrage about his reactionary actions and words.

Jacksonville, FL – This past Sunday and Monday, Sept. 24 and 25, NFL football players numbering in the hundreds took a knee during the national anthem at different NFL games. This comes just days after Donald Trump, at stump speech in Alabama, called for owners to fire any NFL player who took a knee during the national anthem.

Chicago, IL – All progressives, anti-imperialists and socialists should see the film A Taxi Driver. This Jang Hoon movie, starring Song Kang-ho as Kim Man-seob and Thomas Kretschmann as Jürgen Hinzpeter, tells the story of the May, 1980 uprising in Gwangju against the extreme right-wing military coup led by General Chun Doo-hwan.

West Palm Beach, FL- On Sept. 3, legendary punk rock band Green Day rocked out before 20,000 screaming fans at South Florida’s Coral Sky Amphitheater. The concert, which started with front man Bille Joe Armstrong demanding everyone “get off [their] asses,” was in fact a two and a half hour show of contagious and non-stop energy and excitement.

Houston, TX – During the last elections, Hillary Clinton, who used a sort of bourgeois ‘feminism’ to sell reactionary ideas to the public. Since then, there have been a number of films, such as Wonder Woman, that use images of powerful women to promote a pro-war capitalist agenda. Atomic Blonde is the latest of this genre, which stars Charlize Theron as a kind of female James Bond, who fights communist leaders in the German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany to help the British Intelligence and the CIA stage their famous 1989 coup d’état.

Houston, TX – In the last six months, there have been a few really good pro-Black films: Moonlight, Get Out, and Sleight. The most recent addition to the list of Black Lives Matter era films is director Benny Boom's All Eyez on Me, a movie that chronicles the life of rapper Tupac Shakur. Unlike some films about famous rappers such as Get Rich or Die Trying (50-Cent) and 8 Mile(Eminem), All Eyez on Me has a strong focus on the political dimension of Tupac's music. It also gives a beautiful portrait of his life and the incredible passion with which he made great hip hop music.

2016 has been a year marked by many important struggles for justice, and also by the ascent of reactionary right wing politics to the White House. All of our movements will face big battles in 2017 as Donald Trump and his band of billionaires and generals take the reigns of power. Here’s some new music from the past year that can help inspire us to carry forward and strengthen our movements for the struggles to come. These are only a sampling of songs from this year; if you want to add more that have inspired you, comment on the article on facebook.