* Bonnie Raitt’s father was the famed singer John Raitt, who starred in such Broadway musicals as Carousel and The Pajama Game during the 1940s and ’50s.
* Over the years, Bonnie Raitt has donated money to the political campaigns of Medea Benjamin, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Keith Ellison, Dianne Feinstein, Al Franken, Alan Grayson, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich, Mary Landrieu, Frank Lautenberg, Barbara Lee, Claire McCaskell, Jim McGovern, Bob Menendez, Walter Mondale, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Tom Udall, Lynne Woolsey, and numerous others.
* Raitt has also contributed money to such groups as America Coming Together, the Democratic Party of Arkansas, the Democratic Party of South Carolina, the Democratic State Central Committee of California, the Green Party of the United States, the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, the Maine Democratic State Committee, the Missouri Democratic State Committee, MoveOn.org, Pax Americas, the People’s Campaign to Draft Ralph Nader, the Progressive Politics Network, the Texas Democratic Party, and Voters for Choice.
* Raitt has worked with and supported dozens of nonprofit groups over the years. Among these are the American Friends Service Committee, Defenders of Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, Public Citizen, and the Rainforest Action Network. For a more comprehensive list of organizations that Raitt has worked with and/or supported, click here.
* Raitt was a signatory to a July 28, 2000 political advertisement in the New York Times calling for an immediate end to America’s economic economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein‘s Iraq—sanctions that, by the ad’s telling, were responsible for “killing … over one million Iraqis, mostly children under five.” Fellow signers included Ed Asner, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Mike Farrell, Thomas Gumbleton, James Lawson, Rosie O’Donnell, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Pete Seeger, Martin Sheen, and Howard Zinn.
* In 2013, Raitt participated in a campaign to promote legislation that would have banned single-use plastic grocery bags from California stores. Ultimately, the bill did not become law.