Hip Hop Convention: left politics and art
By Anita Grey
Newark, N.J.
The first Hip Hop Political Convention took
place in Newark, N.J., June 16-19 at Essex County College.
Close to 3,000 young people attended the conference, traveling
from 25 cities.
Participants, all part of the Hip Hop generation,
collectively wrote a people's agenda using urban Hip Hop art,
music and dance culture as a political tool, and electoral
politics as a vehicle, to advance the Hip Hop political
goals.
People who registered 50 people to vote were chosen as
delegates, who then wrote and voted on the five-point
agenda.
The agenda included issues of education with equal funding
for all schools; economic justice; an end of taxation without
representation; an end to gentrification and for more public,
low-cost housing; full employment and reparations; an
eradication of mandatory minimum sentencing and for a civilian
review board with independent prosecutor; free universal health
care, funding of mental health treatment, and an increase in
HIV/AIDS funding; a human rights call for a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission and a people of color anti-terrorism
bill that will abolish terrorism by the government against all
nationally oppressed peoples.
Workshops on criminal justice, urban policy, women's issues,
education, health and using the media were held. There was also
a conversation between the hip hop and civil rights
generations. And the convention featured films on police
brutality and abuse of day labourers.
Discussion groups were filled to capacity as young people
planned out a strategy of how to move their agenda forward. The
workshop on political organizing extended half an hour past its
time because the discussion became intense with audience
participation.
Poets, DJs and rappers as well as Hip Hop politicians like
New York City Councilperson Charles Barron attended. Barron, a
former Black Panther and now a 2005 New York mayoral candidate,
bought the convention to its feet on June 19 when he spoke of
adding a third column of "none of the above" alongside the
Democratic and Republican tickets on the November ballot.
Barron said that if the "none of the above" column has more
votes that the Republican or Democratic candidate, then the
elections should be redone.
Hip Hop activist and organizer of poor Black and Latin@
voters, Newark Deputy Mayor Ras Baraka, also attended the
conference. Chuck D from the Public Enemy rap group also spoke
and was one of the main conference organizers.
During the conference, Military Park was filled with music
as cultural artists Rah Digga, Dead Prez, Tench and Movement in
Motion took over the park. The organizers will continue the Hip
Hop Convention website and build toward local organizing for
the next convention in Chicago in 2006.
Reprinted from the July 8, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page