New York's SummerStage Cancels Kehlani Concert Amid ‘Concerns' From Mayor Adams' Office
'We write to advise you that we have security concerns about this event, given the controversy surrounding Kehlani's scheduled performance at Cornell University (causing University officials to cancel the appearance), the security precautions needed for an event like this in Central Park, and the security demands throughout the City for other Pride events during this same period of time,' First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro wrote in a letter obtained by Rolling Stone, which was addressed to the City Parks Foundation, organizers of SummerStage, on Monday. The letter added that the mayor's office intended to refer the issue to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and if it found 'serious safety concerns,' the office would have to determine the 'status of the Foundation's license.'
More from Rolling Stone
Sean Combs Sex Trafficking Trial Begins With Jury Selection
Lil Durk's Lyrics Dropped From Murder-for-Hire Case
Def Jam's Ex-President Says Rape Accuser Can't Sue After 2005 Settlement with UMG
Mastro added that they expected to hear back by 'close of business tomorrow' in order to decide whether the NYPD needed to investigate the foundation.
In response to the letter, Heather Lubov, Executive Director of the City Parks Foundation, wrote to Mastro on the same day: 'The safety and security of our guests and artists is of the utmost importance and in light of these concerns, the concert has been cancelled.'
On Monday afternoon, both SummerStage and City Parks Foundation released a statement, acknowledging they were 'notified by the mayor's office that they have concerns for security and safety issues regarding the June 26 Kehlani concert, produced and presented by Live Nation.' The statement continued, 'Those concerns are due to the controversy surrounding Cornell University's decision to cancel Kehlani's concert at the university, as well as security demands in Central Park and throughout the city for other pride events during that same time period.'
The organizations said that 'in light of these concerns, the concert has been canceled,' adding that they 'strongly and emphatically believe in artistic expression of all kinds… While artists may choose to express their own opinions, their views may not necessarily be representative of the festival.'
Reps for Kehlani did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone's requests for comment.
According to Central Park's website at press time, the singer was scheduled to appear on June 26 for a 'Pride with Kehlani' benefit concert.
Kayla Mamelak Altus, Press Secretary for the Office of Mayor Adams, said in a statement following the pulled show: 'We are grateful to the City Parks Foundation for responding to our concerns and canceling the Kehlani concert in Central Park.'
The decision from SummerStage arrives just over a week after Cornell's president, Michael I. Kotlikoff, accused Kehlani of having 'espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos, and on social media.' Weeks prior, the White House froze $1 billion in funding for the university, per The New York Times, as the Trump administration investigates alleged on-campus antisemitism.
Last year, the R&B singer featured Palestinian flags and dancers wearing keffiyehs in her 'Next 2 U' music video. The YouTube post of the song included a link to an Al Jazeera article listing names of some 16,800 children it reported Israel has killed since October 2023. The music video also included the phrase, 'Long Live the Intifada.' The Times previously reported that some people view the word intifada, which means rebellion, as calling for violence against Israelis and Jews, while pro-Palestinian activists see it as a call for liberation.
Kehlani responded to Cornell's decision and allegations of antisemitism in a video posted on Instagram, and stated 'I am not antisemitic nor am I anti-Jew.' The singer continued: 'I am anti-genocide, I am anti the actions of the Israeli government, I am anti an extermination of an entire people, I'm anti the bombing of innocent children, men women… that's what I'm anti.'
The description of Israel's reprisals in Gaza after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, as genocide has been highly contentious. Humanitarian groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have used that term, as have many others; former president Joseph R. Biden and the American Jewish Committee, among other groups that support Israel, have strongly objected to this framing.
This article was updated on May 5 at 8:07 p.m. ET to include a statement from Kayla Mamelak Altus, Press Secretary for the New York City Office of Mayor Eric Adams.
Best of Rolling Stone
The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs
All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Vox
2 hours ago
- Vox
Is anyone going to stop a looming death spiral in Gaza?
covers politics Vox. She first joined Vox in 2019, and her work has also appeared in Politico, Washington Monthly, and the New Republic. Palestinians carrying pans gather to receive hot meals, distributed by a charity organization in Gaza City, where residents are struggling to access food due to the ongoing Israeli blockade and attacks on July 23, 2025. Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images Gaza is on the brink of a mass starvation crisis, and once it starts, it will be difficult if not impossible to stop. The Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip has faced various levels of food insecurity throughout the war that Israel has waged on the territory since Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack, fluctuating with the amount of aid Israel has allowed to enter the enclave via checkpoints it controls. In March 2024, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — the primary organization tracking food insecurity worldwide — issued a warning that every resident of Gaza was at risk of crisis levels of food insecurity, and half were at risk of famine. (Crisis levels are reached when a population has 'food consumption gaps alongside acute malnutrition' or is 'only just able to meet their food needs, resorting to crisis coping strategies like selling off essential livelihood assets.' Famine is the most serious form of hunger, involving a complete lack of access to food and resulting starvation and death.) A famine was never officially declared, and food access peaked during the negotiated ceasefire reached in January. In March, Israel cut off all shipments into the Gaza Strip, including food aid, when the ceasefire expired. Israel justified it as a tactical strategy to get Hamas to release more Israeli hostages as part of continuing negotiations. The flow of humanitarian aid has since slowed to a trickle under the purview of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private group backed by the US and Israeli governments. It began operating in May, and is the sole entity that has been allowed to deliver food. Almost one-third of the 2.1 million people remaining in Gaza are not eating for multiple days in a row, according to the United Nations World Food Programme. Israel has also made it treacherous for hungry Gazans to even access food from the GHF. The UN estimates that the Israeli military has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get aid in Gaza since May. There are four GHF distribution centers throughout Gaza, three of which are in areas where the Israeli military has issued evacuation orders, and they are often only open for short periods of time, sometimes spurring crowds to rush to get provisions. After enduring more than 21 months in a war zone with inadequate nutrition, the population of Gaza is worn down, and humanitarian groups say that imminent famine will likely cause many to die — not just from hunger, but also from preventable disease that their bodies can no longer fight off. To understand how Gaza got to this point and what happens next, I spoke with Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, an organization that advocates for humanitarian assistance and protection for displaced people. Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity. How has access to food in Gaza changed throughout the course of the war? What happened from really almost the start of the war through all of last year was a population that was hovering right at the edge of a starvation emergency, but never quite dipping fully into it. The Israeli government had been hugely restricting aid through January and February of 2024. The warning of potential famine came out in early March [2024], and then they subsequently allowed a great deal more aid in in April, and the situation improved. Some of the concessions that the Israelis then made in late March into April, and somewhat beyond that, really did make a meaningful difference. And then the Rafah offensive started in May, and things worsened again after that. The period of the ceasefire [beginning in January 2025] was the best period for aid access since the war began. For six weeks, hundreds of aid trucks were coming in every day. There was relative freedom of movement and freedom of operation for aid organizations who previously had been heavily, heavily constricted by [Israel Defense Forces] operations and permission structures. There was always just enough that would be allowed in to prevent the kind of full-blown famine outcomes that I think we're now beginning to see. Why is the population of Gaza now on the brink of starvation? If you fully cut someone off [from food] when they are otherwise in good health, it's going to take longer for them to deteriorate. If they have spent a year-plus being one step removed from starvation, then they're much more vulnerable. Another shock to their system has the risk to be much, much more damaging. I think that's what we're now seeing, when Israel withdrew from the ceasefire in March and imposed a total, complete, hermetic blockade on Gaza. There was, for a while, enough residual aid that had been brought in during the population could stretch that out and and make do for a while before the deprivation really started to bite again. I would argue what we're seeing is still effectively an extension of that blockade, because the primary aid that Israel has been allowing in is through this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is not a meaningful factor in terms of the hunger situation in Gaza. The amounts they've been letting in are vanishingly small. This Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is distributing modest amounts of very poor quality aid to, as far as we can tell, a pretty limited number of people: the ones who happen to be able to get to their sites, which is not most of the population. The cost of a bag of flour has gone up from 50 shekels during the ceasefire earlier this year to over 1,700 now. What happens if famine sets in now? When you have a population that is that stressed, whose health has deteriorated that much, or is [already] in such an advanced state of population-level food deprivation and malnutrition, then things can turn bad very rapidly, because there is nothing to stand in the way of starvation. We have seen this kind of a trajectory in other settings before. Once people's coping mechanisms are exhausted, once their food and financial reserves are exhausted, once their bodies are in a very weakened state due to sustained malnutrition over a long period of time, then it doesn't take much to kill someone. It is very hard for your body to fight off disease or survive an injury, or even just survive. In most famines, we see mortality coming from a mix of both outright starvation and opportunistic infections. So people's bodies are greatly weakened, and they can't fight off diseases that would otherwise be very survivable. There is nothing coming on the horizon to improve that situation unless the Israeli government allows the mainstream professional humanitarian community to actually do their fucking jobs, and that is the one thing they will not allow. Famines have a momentum, and the longer that they are allowed to deepen, the harder they are to reverse. You need your standard food aid package distributed at scale. But you also need specialized, fortified food products, because people are in such an advanced state of malnutrition. You need advanced therapeutic malnutrition treatment, because a lot more people are now going to be coming into an advanced state of malnutrition that requires inpatient malnutrition treatment. You need clean water because the food that's being distributed has to be prepared with water. You need fuel so that people can cook the foods. You need medical treatment because many people who die in a famine die of disease, rather than outright starvation. And you need to improve sanitation, because if people do not have good sanitation, that's what allows the spread of waterborne diseases. None of that's possible right now. Why in your view has the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation been so ineffective? A core principle of humanitarian aid delivery is you want to get the aid as close to where the population is as possible. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation inverts that: They make the people come to the aid, rather than bringing the aid to the people. And they make people come to the aid through a deeply insecure territory, past IDF forces, who have been consistently trigger-happy anytime they see a crowd of Palestinians nearby. I and others warned very early on that this was likely to produce massacres, that this model was a recipe for disaster. Another core principle of humanitarian aid is that you must not provide aid in a way that increases the risk to the population. There's a very strongly ingrained ethos of 'do no harm.' This is a 'do harm' ethos, if anything. You're creating a situation where, in order to access aid, you compel people to cross a military perimeter where they are routinely shot at. That is not humanitarianism. Some advocates have suggested that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. Do you agree with that? That's indisputable. It's explicit. They want Hamas to relent, and they see the starvation of the population as a pressure point there. Do you think the US is complicit in that? I think the US is certainly complicit in that. I think even the Biden administration bears a degree of complicity in that, because they put somewhat more pressure on the Israeli government than the Trump administration has. But fundamentally, they tolerated the situation that brought Gaza to this point. They tolerated a year-plus of starvation tactics being used, deprivation and illegal blockade tactics being used, and obstruction of aid, including aid provided by the US government. Rather than taking that on with the Netanyahu government, they did gimmick after gimmick. They did air drops. They did that ridiculous pier operation. It wasn't until nearly the very end of the administration that they sent the formal letter to the Israeli government demanding concrete progress. And then, of course, there was no meaningful progress.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
How many more Gazan children need to die of hunger before the U.S. takes a stand?
Imagine an army captured the city of Philadelphia, fenced it in, closed its waterfront and opened just a few gates for supply trucks. Now imagine the army bombed Philadelphia's hospitals, razed land used to grow food, barred fishing and closed those gates to all but an intermittent trickle of aid. If you saw news footage of children dying of malnutrition and read U.N. warnings of mass starvation, would you doubt those reports? If the military blocking the food trucks was using U.S. public money to buy weapons, would you question the need to stop the flow of arms and demand that the military let aid in? Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israeli civilians, which constituted crimes against humanity, Israeli authorities have used starvation as a weapon of war in varying degrees, intermittently blocking all aid to the Gaza Strip, which resembles Philadelphia in size and population. Since Israel ended the aid shutdown in May, the government has permitted supplies to enter the territory in quantities catastrophically insufficient for its approximately 2 million residents. The Israeli military also razed cropland, banned fishing, destroyed hospitals and water infrastructure and cut electricity, rendering people almost entirely dependent on the obstructed external supplies. An estimated thousands or tens of thousands of people have died from complications related to the supply blockage, including malnutrition, dehydration and disease. Aid agencies are begging to be allowed to deliver food sitting in nearby warehouses or waiting just outside Gaza. Israel has controlled the movement of goods into Gaza since 1967 and, in the 1990s, built fences and walls around it, making residents dependent on the Israeli military opening crossings, in order to eat. What we are seeing play out now in recent months is weaponization of this control, with increasingly deadly results. The Israeli government denies famine or aid obstruction and blames the United Nations and Hamas for any shortages. Israeli officials accuse aid agencies of 'distributing lies,' say restrictions are needed to prevent diversion by Hamas, and argue that because tons of U.N. aid is still on the Gaza side of crossings, waiting to be distributed, there's no need to allow more in. On Friday, Reuters revealed the existence of a U.S. Agency for International Development report finding no evidence of systematic Hamas diversion of U.S.-funded aid. Official Israeli misinformation is not particularly sophisticated, but it's repetitive, relentless and reliant on Western dehumanization of Palestinians to help render the information Palestinians convey — with words and with images and videos they share of their emaciated bodies — suspect. Only racism — the belief that some people's lives are worth less than others, and that some people's statements are inherently unreliable — can explain American susceptibility to Israel's denial of starvation in Gaza. If you block food to a besieged population, nearly half of whom are children, what do you think will happen? Thursday's statement by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff that, in the absence of a ceasefire deal, he'll explore alternative options to 'try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza' would be laughable given the billions of dollars of U.S. support for the army that's blocking the food — if it didn't involve 57 children documented by the Gaza Ministry of Health to have died of malnutrition in just over two months. There are two things the United States government should urgently do to end U.S. complicity in the mass starvation. First, the U.S. must tell the Israeli military to open all crossings into Gaza, end onerous bureaucratic restrictions and allow aid groups to flood the strip with food. On average since March 2, just 28 international aid trucks have entered Gaza daily, compared with 500 total trucks per day before the war. Limited additional quantities have entered via the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), but reaching their distribution sites is dangerous or impossible for most people in Gaza. That severity of the food shortage makes safe and orderly delivery to civilians nearly impossible. Out of 1,090 truckloads of aid collected from the crossings last month by veteran international organizations, all but 43 were looted or 'self-distributed' by hungry crowds. According to the U.N., the Israeli military has failed to approve safe delivery routes, mechanisms and timing for truck delivery. This, combined with the desperation that starvation creates, is the main reason it's been so hard to distribute the little aid that has entered Gaza — that's why there is some aid in Gaza still waiting to be distributed. If Israeli authorities allow unrestricted aid into Gaza, subject only to physical inspection and credible U.N. assurances against diversion, and cooperate with the U.N. on delivery, supplies will reach the level at which safe, dignified distribution will become possible. Second, the U.S. must end support for dangerous, militarized distribution schemes like the GHF and instruct the Israeli military to resume cooperation with the United Nations and the other principled, impartial aid groups. Hundreds of people have been fatally shot by Israeli forces or crushed in a stampede after walking for miles to reach the four highly militarized GHF distribution points that have replaced the hundreds of community distribution sites aid groups ran until Israeli authorities banned them from bringing in food for household distribution. Workarounds to parachute small quantities of food into Gaza were ineffective in the past and would be even less effective now, given the scope of the need and the desperation. The Israeli government is responsible for starving Palestinians in Gaza, but U.S. backing makes it complicit, too. How many more children need to die of hunger before the U.S. government admits that without food, human beings will die — and that U.S. economic, military and diplomatic support should not be used as a tool in mass starvation? This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
More than 200 MPs call for Britain to recognise Palestine as a state amid starvation in Gaza
Some 221 MPs from across different political parties have joined forces to call on the Government to recognise a Palestinian state. The MPs urge the Government to take the step ahead of a United Nations conference in New York next week. This follows France's announcement on Thursday evening it will formally recognise Palestine at a UN summit in September. The MPs' letter, co-ordinated by Sarah Champion – Labour chairwoman of the International Development Select Committee, said: 'We are expectant that the outcome of the conference will be the UK Government outlining when and how it will act on its long-standing commitment on a two-state solution; as well as how it will work with international partners to make this a reality.' Parliamentarians from Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru, SDLP and independents are among those who signed the letter. Senior signatories include Labour select committee chairs Liam Byrne, Dame Emily Thornberry and Ruth Cadbury, the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, as well as Tory former minister Kit Malthouse, and Sir Edward Leigh, Parliament's longest-serving MP. The majority of those who have signed, 131, are Labour MPs. Rotherham MP Ms Champion acknowledged 'recognition alone will not end the suffering in Gaza or the rapid expansion of settlements and settler violence in the West Bank'. But she said it would be an important step on the path towards a two-state solution to end the war. The Labour MP added: 'Recognition would send a powerful symbolic message that we support the rights of the Palestinian people, that they are not alone and they need to maintain hope that there is a route that leads to lasting peace and security for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.' Ministers have faced growing calls to recognise a Palestinian state immediately amid mounting global anger over the starving population in Gaza. Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday evening that such a move needed to be part of the 'pathway' to peace in the Middle East, which he and allies are working towards. 'That pathway will set out the concrete steps needed to turn the ceasefire so desperately needed, into a lasting peace,' the Prime Minister said. He added: 'Recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that. But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis. The PM also said: 'The appalling scenes in Gaza are unrelenting. 'The continued captivity of hostages, the starvation and denial of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people, the increasing violence from extremist settler groups, and Israel's disproportionate military escalation in Gaza are all indefensible. In a statement released on Friday alongside the leaders of France and Germany, the Prime Minister urged 'all parties to bring an end to the conflict by reaching an immediate ceasefire'. Sir Keir, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also called for Israel to stop restricting the flow of aid into Gaza. Charities operating in Gaza have said Israel's blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing people there towards starvation, warning that they are seeing their own workers and Palestinians 'waste away'. Israel says it allows enough aid into the territory and faults delivery efforts by UN agencies, which say they are hindered by Israeli restrictions and the breakdown of security. As he left for Scotland on Friday, US President Donald Trump suggested that Mr Macron's announcement that France would recognise Palestinian statehood was unimportant. 'What he says doesn't matter', Mr Trump told reporters at the White House. Sir Keir will meet the US president during his five-day private trip to Scotland, due to kick off on Friday. US-led peace talks in Qatar were cut short on Thursday, with Washington's special envoy Steve Witkoff accusing Hamas of a 'lack of desire to reach a ceasefire'. The deal under discussion is expected to include a 60-day ceasefire in which Hamas would release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 others in phases in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Aid supplies would be ramped up and the two sides would hold negotiations on a lasting truce. Hamas-led militants based in Gaza abducted 251 people in the October 7 attack in 2023 that triggered the war and killed about 1,200 people. Fewer than half of the 50 hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive. Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 59,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
