Last month, Macklemore launched his Free Palestine tour in response to his removal from Ed Sheeran’s tour at the behest of stadium owners who opposed his vocal support of Palestinians in Gaza. It proved to be a success, with three sold-out shows in Paris, Dublin, and London. Confident fans would show up in support and solidarity, he made plans to bring the tour stateside — but he claims nine different U.S. venues turned him down.
The outreach process began weeks ago, he claims, and “by mid-September, we received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year. But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table. The conversations were all different, but the result was the same.
The shows were not going to be allowed to happen in these venues.” The named locations include Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, and UBS Arena in New York; Prudential Center in New Jersey; Intuit Dome, Kia Forum, and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles; Chase Center in San Francisco; and Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, the rapper’s hometown. (Representatives for each venue did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.) “The trouble with buying power is believing you’ve bought the people too. The billionaires depend on our silence and complicity. They forget that we buy their tickets.
And we have the power to bring them down,” the rapper added. We want an end to the genocide and we want a Free Palestine. The arenas have made their decision.
If they think the threat of never playing another arena in America will make me retreat into silence, they got me fucked up.” In September, the promoter of the U.S. leg of Sheeran’s Loop Tour said venues booked for the tour notified them “that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup.” Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium just outside of Boston, confirmed as much, saying the location is committed to “providing a welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that all events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech.” “I’d rather lose every opportunity in this industry than spend another day protecting people who value their business relationships with Israel more than they value Palestinian human life,” Macklemore said. Yet we’ve reached a point where a handful of billionaires can decide which causes are acceptable, which voices are welcome and which human lives are worth defending. What will it be tomorrow?
To these owners, the words Free Palestine represent a threat. Not because they endanger anyone, but because those words challenge the systems of power they have built their fortunes on.” Sheeran argued that the decision to remove Macklemore as an opener, backed by the venues and promoters, came down to not wanting to disappoint fans or impact the other people working on the tour by cancelling. The explanation weakened as the rest of his opening acts withdrew in solidarity, as well as his backing band, Beoga, who joined Macklemore during the Dublin concert on the Free Palestine tour.
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