Nine major US arenas turned down Macklemore's Free Palestine fundraising tour, rapper says

Rapper Macklemore says nine major US arenas have refused to host his Free Palestine fundraising tour, calling out 'intimidation, manipulation and suppression' in a social media post.

In an Instagram post, Macklemore said he hoped to bring the tour to the US, but nine major arenas refused to host the event, including New York City's Madison Square Garden, Los Angeles's Crypto.com Arena and Brooklyn's Barclays Center.

He said other venues also turned him down: UBS Arena and Prudential Center in the New York tri-state area, Los Angeles's Intuit Dome and Kia Forum, San Francisco's Chase Center and Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena.

Macklemore said that by mid-September, available dates at these arenas had been offered through the end of the year, but once the venues learned these were his benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table. He said, 'The doors were closed. The conversations were all different, but the result was the same. The shows were not going to be allowed to happen in these venues.'

Last month Macklemore brought the Free Palestine tour to Dublin, London and Paris. In a post spanning seven Instagram slides, he said the three European arenas were sold out, tens of thousands of people from different backgrounds, religions and walks of life stood together, and more than forty artists and speakers put their names and platforms behind Palestinian liberation.

The shows came after Ed Sheeran dropped Macklemore from his US tour in early September, after the rapper made a brief speech in support of the occupied West Bank while opening for Sheeran. Sheeran claimed US venues told him they would refuse to host the show if Macklemore continued as the supporting act.

Sheeran said, 'I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn't mean I don't have them, and it doesn't mean that I don't care. Nor does it mean that I don't support causes in my own, personal way.' Shortly after, all four opening acts as well as Sheeran's live band quit the tour in solidarity with Macklemore.

Macklemore said the intimidation, manipulation and suppression he experienced are part of how those in power keep entertainers quiet and in line. He wrote that he would rather lose every opportunity in the industry than spend another day protecting people who value their business relationships with Israel more than Palestinian human life, and that he dreams of a world where saying Free Palestine is not controversial but expected.

The rapper said the political mood of the US was changing in the wake of the Democrats sweeping the midterm elections this week. He wrote that Abdul El-Sayed won his Senate race on a platform that included ending the genocide in Gaza and stopping US arms sales to Israel, and that AIPAC spent $42m trying to defeat him and still could not win.

Macklemore closed with a promise that more shows in support of Palestine will follow, saying they will keep working with other artists and organisers and may take the shows outside, and that the commitment to raising funds and standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people remains the same. He ended: 'They may own the arenas. But they do not own the people who fill them. And they never will. FREE PALESTINE.'