Saturday’s Power to the People Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion was billed as a day of peace, love, justice and music. Organized by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, the all-day concert was headlined by Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and Foo Fighters and put a target on President Trump and the division he has sown in America for the last decade.

“Welcome to the last event before they throw us all in jail,” Morello said from the stage.

Held exactly one month out from the midterm elections, Power to the People doubled as a political rally and moment for organization. A portion of proceeds benefited voting rights organization VoteRiders, and the festival turned a section of Merriweather’s grounds into Freedom Village: a causeway of causes with booths by the likes of the ACLU and the DC Abortion Fund.

Amid a day of raucous sets, pleas for peace and other political platitudes, Morello served as MC and struck a tone similar to that of post-presidency Obama: serious but sarcastic. Mostly, he dropped red meat to a crowd of liberals and progressives looking to gather with like-minded folks, vent about the administration and fuel up for the fight against fascism.

“Theres no one coming to save us but us,” Morello reminded the crowd.

Halfway through the day, Morello returned to the stage to deliver a chapter in the rap-rock gospel. Armed with his array of slogan-decorated guitars, Morello played a handful of tunes from his just-released solo album, “Everyone Gets Everything They Want,” before unveiling riffs on parade: a medley of his most recognizable music from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. His guitar playing, which evokes the sounds of rayguns, pained androids, mutant morse code and alien dispatches, was as inventive as ever, but the strange alchemy of his Rage days was missing, apart from when the audience sang along to “Killing in the Name” and its updated lyrics: “Some of those that hold office / are the same that burn crosses.”

The rest of Morello’s set — and the closing portion of the festival — largely played out like the kind of attention-grabbing performance that headlines the Grammys or a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, with mixed results.

Having DMC perform Run-D.M.C.’s “It’s Tricky” and Public Enemy pair Chuck D and Flavor Flav for “Fight the Power” revived iconic musical moments; Jack Black and Scott Ian playing “Walk This Way” and Dave Grohl joining to cover Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” approached self-parody — especially for a crowd that used to rock-and-roll all night and party every day, but is now lucky to find half an hour a week in which to get funky.

Later on, Dave Matthews’ hop-scotch blues and tongue-speaking tics were particularly effective. When he introduced “Don’t Drink the Water” as “a song about genocide,” the audience cheered. When he interpolated Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” more cheers followed, and when he added a lyric about the Gulf of Mexico, he got the most cheers.

Matthews was without his eponymous backing band, but was not alone: he eventually brought out big-voiced singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff and “national treasure and American hero” Joan Baez. The group played Woody Guthrie’s unfortunately timely “Deportee” and the freedom song “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.” 

“I have a little theory, which is that all of us should remain in denial about 80% of the time, and then with the 20%, you go and do something for somebody, you stand up and be counted and be seen,” Baez said. “I feel as though we are trying to turn the tide, and we’re facing a tsunami. So while we’re trying to turn this tide… we can also save some of the little fishes who are stuck in that…. tidal wave.”

In many ways, Americans still face the same obstacles on the road to freedom that Guthrie sang about in the 1940s and Baez sang about in the 1960s. The frustration that the moral arc of the universe seems to be bending backward was palpable at the festival. But performers and attendees could take solace in the fact that they are part of an ongoing struggle. 

After some folk, the Dropkick Murphys were a much-needed pick-me-up as the day wore on, serving their Celtic punk anthems like molotov cocktails fashioned from Jameson bottles. Many listeners know the band’s “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” as the song from “The Departed;” fewer know that its lyrics were written by Guthrie.

The band’s own lyrics continue that tradition in full-throated fashion: “Citizen I.C.E.” describes immigration officers as “Power-hungry scumbags… Too scared to join the military, too dumb to be a cop,” and the group dedicated “First Class Loser” to President Trump. But it isn’t just bluster: the band also brought out Jimmy Williams, general president of International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, to make his case for organized labor.

If Dropkick Murphys are an inherently political band, Grohl’s Foo Fighters are an inherently apolitical one. But on a festival where rock still rolls, the sound’s unofficial spokesperson seemingly had to be included. Grohl did his best to fit in, shouting out his mother’s 30-year tenure as a Fairfax County teacher, dedicating “My Hero” to new friend and Trump prosecutor Jack Smith, who was in the crowd, and explaining the surprising origins of “Best of You,” which was inspired by his time on the road in support of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. 

As the clock struck 10 p.m. and the venue’s 11 p.m. curfew loomed, Morello returned to the stage to make his final pitch for people power and introduced Bruce Springsteen, nodding to the Boss’ epic set lengths: “Are you ready to get this party started?”

Springsteen, who announced the festival during his May concert at Nationals Stadium, kicked off his set with “Streets of Minneapolis,” a song dedicated to the memory of I.C.E. murder victims Alex Pretti and Renée Good. Then, the protest songs continued, including an overwhelming take on Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” as the stage got more crowded with stars. 

Springsteen was joined by Baez, Morello, Matthews, Grohl and eventually the festival’s entire line-up for a performance “This Land is Your Land” — Guthrie’s uncensored, radical original, not the one taught in schools (musical royalty DMC adding a rapped verse was fine; Grandson doing it was cringe). Before the final refrain, Morello connected Guthrie’s words to the current moment and the festival itself.

“Every act of art is an act of resistance. Every truth spoken is a beacon of light in the gathering darkness, and every song sung is a trumpet of hope to the heroes with heart and with courage in this audience tonight, who will undo this madness,” Morello said. “What we’ve done is create a little bit of the world that we’d like to one day see, and we’re gonna take it beyond today into tomorrow, and the day after that, and Election Day, and beyond that.”

Guthrie once painted his guitars with the phrase, “This machine kills fascists.” a message that still resonates today, especially at Power to the People. As Killer Mike summed up politics earlier in the day, “The ballot or the bullet… make a plan and vote.”

Feature photo by Matt Ruppert for Power To The People Festival, courtesy of Merriweather Post Pavilion

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