Paul Drees
Role at the time: Speaking personally as a Christian pastor on his Instagram account, @pastorpauldrees.
Statement summary
Drees defends Macklemore’s advocacy for Palestinians and describes his removal from Ed Sheeran’s tour as suppression of dissent by powerful people.
“Macklemore is just part of this long history of those with power quashing dissidents.”
Existing-case update candidate for case 8, Macklemore’s “Free Palestine” speech and removal from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour. Verified original video on @pastorpauldrees, with Paul Drees visibly speaking in clerical dress. The quoted passage was read directly from the video’s embedded captions across consecutive frames at approximately 01:23–01:27. Caption fragments are joined with sentence punctuation; this is a short excerpt, not a complete transcript or an audio-verified transcription. The surrounding passage reviewed at approximately 00:42–01:28 criticizes Ed Sheeran and Robert Kraft, argues that powerful people suppress dissent, and compares Macklemore’s treatment to earlier suppression of dissenters. Those assessments and Drees’s account of Kraft’s intervention are attributed to Drees. His written post description separately frames Palestinian liberation as a moral position and invokes Christian witness on behalf of marginalized people.
Why we used this label
Relative to Macklemore’s Palestine advocacy under scrutiny in this case, Drees expresses substantive approval and portrays the backlash as suppression of dissent. His written description calls advocacy for Palestinian liberation a moral stance.