Macklemore is donating his entire $1 million salary from Ed Sheeran's tour to organizations supporting Palestine and is inviting Robert Kraft, who blocked him from performing at Gillette Stadium, to match the 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.
That is what this has always been about. Not me. Not a tour. Not the headlines or the controversy. It is about Palestinians right to freedom, dignity and safety in their own homeland. I want 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. 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.
https://t.co/Q3qj8wk2gc
Macklemore is speaking out after being dropped from Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour, seemingly placing blame on New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, saying that the billionaire rallied other stadium owners to ban him from performing at their venues:
“Ed is my friend. I've known him for 13 years.... I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can't change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened [in Gaza]... Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues....
Ed was in a fucked up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. He told me that the words 'Free Palestine' and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood. But he couldn't get past his public facing, 'I don't take sides'....
I hope this isn't the end of my relationship with Ed. Thirteen years of friendship doesn't disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door will always be open to continuing that conversation....
I didn't need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say. Free Palestine. But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I've ever been on.”
https://t.co/ff6jdXCfa1