Free Palestine + Free Ed Sheeran

I am a single mother looking after my octogenarian mother and my Gen Z teen, so I deeply understand the value of time.

I have very strong views on the genocide occurring in Palestine. I don’t usually talk about it on this platform. Not because I’m apathetic or apolitical, and certainly not because I’m afraid of offending somebody. I just happen to know that a lot of the arguments people are having online are being carried on with bots. And when I think of good uses of my time, arguing with a computer pretending to be Keith from Ohio is not one of them.

I’d rather this space sometimes be an escape from all of that. A shared memory. The love of a song. Something that reminds us of each other.

Before I get into any of this, though, I want to make something very clear: I am completely unfamiliar with Ed Sheeran’s work.

I could not tell you the name of an Ed Sheeran song. If you played one for me right now, I could not point it out and say, “Oh, that’s Ed Sheeran.” The only exception I can think of is “End Game” with Taylor Swift and Future, because I love Taylor <3 and I happen to like that song.

That’s it.

Maybe his music is fantastic. Maybe I’d hate it. There’s a lot of music in the world and I haven’t gotten around to all of it yet.

I should also disclose that Ed Sheeran and I have mutual friends. I have spoken to absolutely none of those people about this situation. Nothing I’m about to say comes from a private conversation, inside information or somebody telling me what Ed thinks.

So I have no stake in convincing anybody to like Ed Sheeran. I’m not an Ed Sheeran fan defending an artist I love. I don’t know the guy.

I’m just somebody who, when something doesn’t quite add up to me, needs facts. I need evidence. I need to know what actually happened and in what order it happened.

So I went looking.

I gathered the facts and evidence I could find, and I’m going to share those with you.

And, yes, I’ll probably have a couple of opinions along the way.

Part I: 

Like some people, I was taken aback when I initially saw headlines saying Ed Sheeran had “kicked Macklemore off his tour.”

Well, the entities that wrote those headlines got their wish. They got the click. They got the bait.

But they didn’t give us the whole story.

So let’s stick to the timeline.

I should probably explain something else here, because it informs how I’m looking at what happened next.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing several major tours from behind the scenes. I was married to a touring musician, and over the years I’ve seen firsthand what goes into putting productions like these together.

A stadium tour is not somebody handing the opening act a microphone and saying, “See you out there.”

• There are production meetings. There are set times, staging, lighting, video, sound, cues, equipment, security and an enormous number of people whose jobs have to fit together for that show to happen.
• An opening act’s set is not some complete mystery to the headlining production before they walk onto the stage.

That doesn’t mean I can tell you that Ed Sheeran personally approved every sentence Macklemore intended to say. I can’t, and I’m not going to pretend I can.

But the idea that Macklemore walked onto that first MetLife stage and everyone involved in the headlining production had absolutely no idea what his set contained is simply not how a major tour works.

And whatever anyone did or didn’t know before that first show, there was certainly no mystery after it.

Macklemore performed on September 4. He said “Free Palestine,” spoke about Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and performed “Hind’s Hall.”

According to ABC Australia: When introducing Hind's Hall he said: "A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine."

And then something happened that I think is incredibly important to this story:

MACKLEMORE CAME BACK THE NEXT NIGHT.

He wasn’t kicked off the tour after the first performance.

On September 5, he opened for Ed Sheeran for a second time and again spoke about Palestine.

Transcript: 

“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to say this all day. One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages and stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine. I said, Free Palestine. I want those words to be loud and clear, so the people from Gaza, all the way to the occupied West Bank.

And this next song was inspired by the bravery of Columbia University students who led an encampment movement that mobilised the entire world; open up hearts, myself included, so thank you to those students that risked their diplomas, that risked their tuition, that risked their scholarships, that stood up and said, no. CUAD students, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voices for Peace. Thank you, guys

To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: 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. So I say Free Palestine, I say Free Lebanon, I say Free Cuba, I say Free Congo, Free Sudan, I say Free all people in America living in fear of this terrorist organisation, ICE. None of us will be free until we are all free.”

This matters. He already on September 4th spoke of Palestine before the September 5 speech.

And this is where the timeline becomes even more important.

Via The Guardian

Part II:

It was after those two MetLife performances, on September 6, that the Israeli American Council launched a petition calling for Macklemore to be removed from the tour.

Then the pressure moved beyond petitions.

Messina Touring Group, the tour promoter, later said that upcoming venues had informed them that they would not allow concerts to take place with Macklemore on the lineup.

Now we’re no longer talking about Ed Sheeran deciding whether he personally agrees or disagrees with something Macklemore said.

We’re talking about venues saying, essentially: if Macklemore plays, the concert doesn’t happen here.

Robert Kraft publicly confirmed that Gillette Stadium would not permit Macklemore to perform there. Macklemore has also said that Kraft contacted other stadium owners, although Kraft has not publicly confirmed that part, so I’m going to leave it where it belongs: as Macklemore’s account, not an established fact.

And suddenly the decision becomes considerably bigger than two musicians.

Because a major tour is not Ed Sheeran and a guitar.

There are hundreds of people whose work makes something like this possible. Crew. Production. Sound. Lighting. Video. Security. Drivers. Riggers. Local crews. Vendors. People with mortgages, rent, children and bills who may be counting on that tour income.

These are the people Ed Sheeran works beside every day when he’s on tour. Think of your own coworkers—the people you see, work beside and talk to every day.

I can understand looking at them and thinking: What happens to these people if the shows get cancelled?

Then there are the fans.

Maybe the concert ticket gets refunded. But what about the plane ticket? The hotel? The person who used their only vacation days for the year to travel to see you?

None of this tells us whether Ed made the right decision or the wrong one. But it does tell us that “If Macklemore goes, I go” wasn’t a decision that affected only Ed Sheeran.

That context matters.

Part III:

And then Macklemore spoke.

Macklemore didn’t paint Ed as some villain who had suddenly decided to silence him. He said they had been friends for years, called him a friend and a brother, and said they had spent the previous week having difficult conversations.

And Macklemore himself acknowledged the position Ed had been put in.

In his words, “Ed was in a fucked up position.”

According to Macklemore, Ed told him that Robert Kraft would not allow him to perform at Gillette Stadium. Macklemore also said Ed told him that Kraft had rallied other stadium owners and that collectively they had given him an ultimatum: keep Macklemore on the tour and the shows would not happen in their venues.

We’ve already established what Kraft and Messina Touring Group have independently confirmed, so I’m not going to go over all of that again.

Then, the following day, Ed responded publicly.

And you know what?

It wasn’t a great statement.

Actually, I think parts of it were pretty terrible.

I particularly disliked his choice to call what is happening between Israel and Palestine a “conflict.” To me, that language diminishes what we are witnessing. A conflict sounds like a mere disagreement between people. This is a genocide, and by calling it a conflict, it landed horribly with me.

Then came:

“I am not complicit.”

Oof.

Ed.

Maybe this would have been a good time to run the statement past your own personal consigliere first. A trusted friend. Somebody who knows you and can say, “You might want to rethink that sentence before you put it out into the world.”

Because whatever he intended, those words were defensive, and they landed badly.

But the rest of his statement matters too.

He said Macklemore’s removal was the promoter’s decision, not his. He spoke about the fans who had already made plans and the crew, support acts and musicians who relied on the tour for their livelihoods. He also said he had been involved in talks trying to find a resolution, but ultimately the decision of the venues and promoter was final.

That doesn’t make the statement good.

I still think he fucked up.

But we all misspeak, don’t we?

Most of us have had the luxury of saying something badly and later thinking, Oh. I could have handled that better.

Most of us just don’t have the entire world hanging on every word.

Then other artists began withdrawing from the tour.

And I understand them too.

I don’t think they threw Ed Sheeran under the bus. I think they made decisions that aligned with their conscience and their ethics. I think it’s commendable that they were willing to stand by what they believed.

They had their decision to make. Ed had his.

This is where I think the conversation started losing its nuance. Everything became Macklemore versus Ed. The artists who left versus the artists who stayed. Fans choosing teams. People combing through statements looking for a sentence that proved somebody was either morally pure or completely irredeemable.

I don’t think human beings work that way.

Understanding somebody’s decision isn’t the same thing as agreeing with every part of it. And it certainly doesn’t require condemning everybody who made a different one.

Part IV:

A few days later, Ed spoke about Gaza again from the stage in Philadelphia.

This time, his words were much clearer.

He acknowledged that he had made mistakes and described what was happening in Gaza as catastrophic, unjustifiable and disproportionate.

Almost immediately, I saw people dismissing what he said because he was reading from a teleprompter.

I don’t think that’s fair.

When you’re nervous, emotional or anxious, it’s incredibly easy to forget something you wanted to say or say something badly—especially after you’ve already experienced what happens when millions of people examine every word you use.

We’ve all replayed a conversation in our heads afterward and suddenly said it better, did it better, because we had the benefit of hindsight.

So I wouldn’t read too much into the teleprompter.

A teleprompter tells me he prepared what he wanted to say.

It doesn’t tell me whether he meant it.

None of us can know that.

What we do know is that he came back to the subject, acknowledged that he had made mistakes and tried again.

That matters to me.

Because accountability isn’t absolution.

Acknowledging that you got something wrong doesn’t erase what you did before. It doesn’t mean everybody has to forgive you, and it doesn’t mean nobody gets to criticize you.

But accountability has to be allowed to lead somewhere.

Otherwise, what exactly are we asking people to do when they get something wrong?

Part V:

I worked with children for nearly a decade, and I’m also raising a Gen Z kid of my own.

One of the things you learn very quickly with children is that simply telling them they did something wrong doesn’t teach them very much.

If there was a conflict on the playground, I would often ask, “How do you think you could have handled that better?”

And usually, if you gave them a little time to think about it, they could tell you.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

Maybe I should have walked away.

Maybe I should have listened first.

Maybe I should have asked for help.

The important part came next.

You had to give them the opportunity to try again.

Because what would be the point of teaching a child how to recognize a mistake, take responsibility for it and think about how they could do better next time, if the moment they tried to do better you said, “Nope. Too late. You already messed up. That’s who you are now.”

We would never teach children that way.

And yet sometimes that seems to be exactly how we treat adults.

When somebody takes accountability for their mistakes, I think that is commendable, because not a lot of people do.

Most of us can probably think of somebody in our lives right now who can be spectacularly wrong and still will not take accountability for their actions.

So when somebody does say, “I got this wrong. I could have handled this better,” I think there has to be room for what comes next.

That doesn’t erase the mistake.

It doesn’t mean you suddenly agree with everything they’ve done.

It means you give people the opportunity to learn from it and try to do better.

Because if we don’t allow that, then what exactly have we been asking them to take accountability for?

I’ve always believed that even the bad things we go through can teach us something.

They can make us smarter. Tougher. Braver. Stronger. Sometimes more grateful.

I think of it a little like leveling up in a game.

You keep trying. You screw it up. You try again. You learn something. Eventually you develop the skills to get through that level, and then you move on to the next one.

Or think about learning to skateboard.

Somebody tries an ollie five times and lands it. Fantastic. You cheer them on.

Somebody else tries for five months. Falls over and over again. Gets frustrated. Gets back on the board. Keeps trying until one day they finally land it.

I might actually have more respect for the second kid.

Because they kept trying.

And I think Ed Sheeran is trying.

I think he fucked up.

I think his first statement was bad. I think some of his words made an already painful situation worse. I think there are things he could have handled differently.

But then he came back.

He acknowledged that he made mistakes.

He tried to say it better.

Maybe he’ll get things wrong again. We all will.

But if somebody takes accountability, learns something and tries to do better, at some point we have to allow them to move forward.

Otherwise we aren’t asking for accountability.

We’re asking for permanent punishment.

And I don’t think that helps anybody level up.

I also think we need to be much more careful about where we’re directing all of this anger and energy.

I knew absolutely nothing about Pink before this. I’m not a fan. I’m not a hater. I couldn’t name you one of her songs. I had no opinion of her whatsoever.

So I have to ask: why did she decide to jump into the middle of this?

Pink chose to amplify a post attacking Macklemore that called his accusation of genocide “false.” She later wrote at length about why Macklemore’s performance scared her and, as a Jewish mother, why she believed it had scared other Jewish people she loves.

I can respect somebody saying they were scared.

What I cannot understand is why she chose to insert herself into an already incredibly divisive situation in a way that, in my opinion, created even more divisiveness, while amplifying a message denying that a genocide is occurring in Gaza.

And this is where I have a serious problem.

Pink is a UNICEF ambassador.

There is now a petition online calling for her removal from that position. At the time I’m writing this, it has gathered more than 135,000 verified signatures.

If people are looking for somewhere productive to direct their energy, that petition exists. I think the question of whether somebody I consider a genocide denier should continue representing an organization dedicated to protecting children is one worth asking.

And then there’s an even bigger conversation that seems to be getting lost entirely.

Power.

While everybody is fighting over Ed Sheeran, look at who actually had the ability to stop Macklemore from getting onto a stage.

A billionaire stadium owner said he would not perform at his venue. Other venues told the promoter that shows could not go ahead with Macklemore on the bill.

So maybe instead of spending all of our time tearing apart musicians, we should be asking how much power extraordinarily wealthy people have over what the rest of us get to hear and see.

Who gets a stage?

Who doesn’t?

Who gets to decide?

And how much control do a very small number of billionaires have over the way the rest of us experience our lives?

Are we cool with that?

Because I’m not.

I think Ed Sheeran fucked up.

I think he knows he fucked up.

And I think he’s trying to do better.

It’s time to let Ed Sheeran out of the penalty box.