An Open Letter to Bonnie Raitt from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center 9/25/2025

September 25th, 2025

Dear Bonnie, 

Over the decades, we at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC) have been deeply grateful for your long-standing and steadfast commitment to human rights, environmental justice, and anti-nuclear activism. During this time, we have greatly appreciated being invited to have an organizational presence at your Red Rocks concerts, and we have been thankful for your support and collaboration through the Guacamole Fund. Our staff members were honored to meet you when RMPJC was invited as a participant at a Gold Circle reception.

As you know, for over 4 decades, RMPJC has been dedicated to radically progressive personal and social change. We are a multi-issue organization that works to restore and protect Earth and human rights. We educate, organize, act, and build community in order to create a culture of justice and peace. We recognize that all beings are interconnected and interdependent, and that Earth and all its beings are inherently valuable and have the right to exist and be healthy. We seek a world where conflict is handled justly and nonviolently, creating true peace.

We were grateful and honored to receive an invitation from your team to table at your concert at Red Rocks on September 25th. It is truly wonderful that you prioritize including local community nonprofit organizations in your concerts. 

Given our alignment and shared vision on environmental and justice issues over the years, we were shocked and disappointed to receive a message from a member of your team with the Guacamole Fund stating that we are not allowed to share any information or messaging to acknowledge our hope for a Free Palestine at your concert. 

Bonnie, in our shared aspirations for peace and justice, and love for our earth, we want to share our thoughts on this, in hopes that you will support our efforts in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and Palestinian liberation.

Your manager emphasized that we can only focus on local issues that affect our community, and that this does not include Palestine. We want to be very clear that the devastation occurring in Gaza and the West Bank is an issue that involves and affects us locally. Palantir, the company that supplies AI technology that the IDF uses to create “kill lists” of Palestinians in Gaza, is headquartered in Denver. In 2024, a bar code found on a component of a bomb dropped on Gaza was traced to a Woodward facility headquartered in Fort Collins, CO. Google and Lockheed Martin — which both have major facilities in Boulder —  have announced a collaboration to integrate Google’s generative AI  into Lockheed Martin’s AI ecosystem. Both Google and Lockheed Martin have been directly linked to aiding and abetting the genocide in Gaza. Furthermore, many of our cities, including Boulder, invest in companies such as Microsoft and Caterpillar, which have been tied to war crimes against Palestinians.  Each year, over $360 million of our Colorado tax dollars are used to fund Israel’s weapons and military, while far too many people in our own communities are deprived of housing, food, education, and healthcare. We work closely with many beloved Palestinian members of our community who are experiencing unending mental and emotional agony watching their friends and families subjected to genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

Just as environmental and nuclear issues have deep local roots with resounding international threats and impacts, so too does the issue of Palestine. 

As of last week, a United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This comes more than a year after the International Court of Justice issued a provisional order regarding the plausibility of South Africa's claim that Israel's actions violate the Genocide Convention. On November 21st 2024 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two individuals, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Just this week, 157 member states in the United Nations have formally recognized Palestine as a state.

We urge you, along with all of our artists and creators, to use your platform to denounce crimes against humanity, especially the crime of genocide. We recognize that in every moral tragedy in history, such as the Holocaust or slavery, standing on the right side of history against the collective status quo is taking a risk. This is the moral issue of our time. Over 1000 artists have chosen to be on the ethical side of history, and humanity, by placing their name in overt support for ceasefire. We hope you will stand with us in the certainty that it is the right thing to do.  

As part of our shared commitment to the Earth and all her peoples and beings, we hope you can support us in our call for an end to genocide, and for lasting justice for the Palestinian people and all oppressed people in the world. We know that many of your fans would be proud of you for taking this stance. 

In the meantime, we regret to inform you that we cannot, in good conscience, be a part of a concert that silences a call for an end to war crimes and genocide. We do not feel that it would be true to our mission or organizational values to exclude one of the defining moral tragedies of our time. 

Should you and your team have a change of heart, we would love to come, to have a statement read that we can make with integrity, and to continue to stand together in the important work of promoting peace and justice for all. 

Sincerely, 

The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center Staff and Spokes Council