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Macklemore has announced that he will donate the $1m salary he was paid as an opening act for Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour to organizations working with Palestinian people and relief in Gaza, after being dropped from the tour following backlash to his onstage comments in support of Palestine.
The rapper also challenged Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and prominent donor to Israel who refused to let Macklemore play at his Gillette Stadium outside Boston, to match his donation.
“With everything that has happened over the last 48 hours, I want to bring the conversation back to where it belongs: to the Palestinian people who are still being killed, still living under military occupation, and still fighting for their freedom,” the Grammy-winning artist wrote on Instagram Wednesday. “I will be donating the entire $1 million of my net earnings from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour to six organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people. And I invite Robert Kraft to match my donation. Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting. A Palestinian life is no less valuable than any other life on this earth.”
In a two-minute speech during his set at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 4 September, Macklemore expressed his desire to see a “free Palestine. I want those words to be loud and clear, so that people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them.” His remarks prompted a petition from the Israeli American Council demanding his removal from the tour.
Speaking again onstage the following day, he reiterated his support for Palestine and addressed Jewish members of the audience: “Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love; for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect and equality.”
According to Sheeran, who posted his own explanation on Tuesday morning outlining his desire to remain publicly neutral on political causes, Kraft, along with several other venue owners, informed the English singer that his tour could not play at their stadiums if Macklemore continued as an opener, prompting his removal. A day later, all four of Sheeran’s opening acts for the remainder of the Loop tour – Finneas, Aaron Rowe, Boega and Lukas Graham – withdrew from the tour in solidarity with Macklemore and Palestine.
In his post, Macklemore said he hoped to “center the parents carrying their children into hospitals without the basic resources to treat them, and the physicians, paramedics, journalists and aid workers who keep going back in. I want to center the organizers and activists who have paid real costs for standing with Palestine. Their risk is of a far different order than mine.
“Palestinians have lived for decades without basic rights and should not have to wait another day to be free,” he added. “That is where my focus will remain. I will continue to stand with the Palestinian people and their fight for liberation. When the news cycle moves on, which it will, don’t move with it. Free Palestine.”
Earlier Wednesday, Colin Kaepernick, whose NFL career was effectively ended by the NFL’s resistance to his protests against US police violence, joined the chorus of prominent figures criticizing Macklemore’s removal at the behest of NFL stadium owners. “The part that I hope people appreciate and take away in this moment is what [New England Patriots owner] Robert Kraft and what they’re saying by denying Macklemore the opportunity to go out and perform with Ed Sheeran is they are willing to collude,” the former quarterback said on the MeidasTouch podcast. “The [NFL owners] are openly colluding.”
Kaepernick added that he thought NFL owners tried to hound out Macklemore in a similar way to him. “When we filed the grievance, it was like, well, the owners wouldn’t do that,” Kaepernick said. “Everybody just wants to win within the NFL. And the realization is, no. They want to protect their interests. They want to protect their power. They want to protect their money.”
In his own statement Monday, Kraft has said his decision to ban Macklemore from the Patriots’ stadium was due to his “recent actions” and “a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community”.
