Sing Out, Louise!

In October 2016, a few members of Gays Against Guns began writing Christmas carols about gun violence for an action called GAG Nog. The group had written about a dozen songs when the unthinkable happened— Trump was elected as President of the United States. To survive the especially bleak winter that followed, the group turned to music. They banded together and wrote and sang new carols (such as their “Donny the Con Man”) at Christmas markets around New York City.

After the holidays, GAG Nog morphed into GAG Reflex, a full-fledged Resistance “Queertet.” When GAG joined the Women’s March the day after the inauguration in 2017, GAG Reflex lead hundreds of protestors in “Battle Him for the Republic,” “He’s a Nasty Neonazi,” and other patriotic songs, chants, and carols. Friends from Rise and Resist joined GAG for a series of marches and actions throughout the following spring and summer, and soon the group had amassed what they dub their hymnal: an always-evolving collection of irreverent, in-your-face songs “in the key of F you.”

​Mark Thompson encountered the group at one summer march, and soon GAG’s original songs were playing Sirius XM’s Make It Plain. By the fall of 2017, the group of carolers from GAG Reflex had splintered off into an independent group called Sing Out, Louise! Their name is a reference to the Broadway show Gypsy, chosen for its emphasis on resistance and freedom from oppression. Today, Sing Out, Louise! is an artistic activist protest group based in NYC that uses the power of songs (especially caroling) and live theater to protest against right-wing political views and policy in the USA. The group’s protests target issues of gun violence, LGBTQ+ / gender-based systemic oppression, and other pressing matters in Trump Era America.