Twenty Jewish organizations in San Antonio have joined the city’s mayor in asking that Kanye West’s July 4 concert at the Alamodome be called off. West now performs as Ye.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones made her case in a social media post on Saturday. “Military City USA should not host someone with a record of hate speech and antisemitic comments in a city-funded facility like our Alamodome, not ever, and certainly not on July 4th, our Nation’s 250th birthday,” she wrote.
The coalition, which includes the Jewish Federation of San Antonio, the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio, issued a joint statement on Monday. It urged the city and Alamodome management to “decline the use of the publicly owned venue” and to review the policies that led to the booking.
“Not a call for censorship”
The groups addressed the free speech objection head on. “This request is not a call for censorship,” they said. “Ye has the same constitutional rights as every other American. He is free to speak, and private venues are free to host him.” The question for the city, they argued, is whether a publicly owned facility should be used to host someone whose public conduct has been marked by repeated hate speech.
They added: “Accountability and growth are possible for anyone, but they must be demonstrated through conduct, not merely proclaimed.”
Tickets went on sale Thursday and are still available through Ticketmaster and Ye’s website. The show is part of a tour promoting his album Bully. He is due to play two nights in Tampa, Florida, later this month, and those dates have also drawn calls for cancellation.
A tour already losing dates
Several of his shows abroad have fallen through. A Marseille, France, date was postponed “until further notice” after local officials, including the mayor, said they would not let him perform. A July 25 concert in Prague was canceled when the venue pulled out. In May, a venue in Poland canceled his show there for “formal and legal reasons”; Culture and Heritage Minister Marta Cienkowska backed the decision. “In a country scarred by the history of the Holocaust, we cannot pretend this is just entertainment,” she said.
The United Kingdom barred him in April from entering to headline the Wireless Festival in London, and the festival was canceled. Australia denied him a visa last year.
In January, Ye ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for last year’s antisemitic outbursts, which included selling shirts with swastikas, releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler,” and posting on social media that he was “a Nazi.”
