BONNIE RAITT: Kennedy Center Honoree, Lifelong Activist

Bonnie Raitt (pictured) received a moving Kennedy Center Honor, broadcast on CBS December 22, 2024.

Fellow musicians honoring her included Jackson Browne, Brandi Carlisle, Sheryl Crow, Keb’ Mo’, Susan Tedeschi, James Taylor, and others. Comedian and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus introduced Bonnie Raitt.

As the Kennedy Center wrote:

“…As known for her lifelong commitment to social activism as she is for her music, Raitt has long been involved with the environmental movement, performing concerts around oil, nuclear power, mining, water, and forest protection since the mid-‘70s. She was a founding member of MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy), which produced the historic concerts, album and film NO NUKES (1979)…She continues to work on safe energy issues in addition to environmental protection, social justice, Native American and human rights, as well as artist’s rights and music education…”.

Watch the ceremony here (it was recorded earlier in December, but was broadcast on CBS on December 22nd.)

Note that during the montage of images from Bonnie Raitt’s life and career, a couple were from her tireless anti-nuke efforts. One showed the NO NUKES concert series in New York City in autumn, 1979, MUSE’s response to the Three Mile Island Unit 2 meltdown the previous spring. Another showed Bonnie Raitt and colleague John Trudell speaking out at a press conference, with the U.S. Capitol Building visible in the background, during an Honor the Earth concert in Washington, D.C. in autumn, 1997. Without Honor the Earth and its musician-supporters like Bonnie Raitt and John Trudell, the high-level radioactive waste dumps targeting Western Shoshone land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah, might well have not been stopped. This put the brakes on “Mobile Chornobyl” — in the montage image, Raitt, Trudell, et al. presented before a mock nuke waste cask on wheels!