Macklemore has announced plans to donate $1 million “to six organizations working directly to support the Palestinian people” following his removal from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour.
On Wednesday (September 16), the Grammy winner revealed that the donation represents all of his net earnings from the tour.
“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. 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,” the rapper wrote in a statement shared on Instagram. “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.”
He added in a second slide, “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.”
Macklemore’s full post can be viewed below.
The announcement follows the The Heist artist’s empathetic “Free Palestine” speech during the September 7 stop of Sheeran’s tour at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.
