Knowing the agendas of our candidates is required more now than ever in this election.
While the youth are getting messages through the media from the entertainers they idolize in regards to not voting, or that their votes don’t matter, organizers are standing up for our communities and for our youth, giving truth to the POWER of voting and activism.
On September 18 at the Cooley Auditorium in the Main Building of the Downtown Campus, the President’s Diversity Council joined forces with the League of Young Voters, student organizations, Allhiphop.com, RapSessions, and Ustream to launch the Ignite2012 cultural engagement.
The goal of this campaign is to reignite the youth vote and inspire 100,000 new and young voters to participate in the fall election, by using storytelling, training, expert panelists and live musical performances.
Robert “Biko” Baker, Executive Director of the League of Young Voters, was the emcee for the event and moderated during the panel discussion.
Baker started the event by talking to the audience and saying, “We got this saying at the League, it’s either five or five thousand and we are going to give it our best.”
Before beginning, Baker asked, “How many people think politics is corny, how many think it’s boring, and how many of you think a bunch of people are cheating.” The audience was primarily made up of youth from the Running Rebels of Milwaukee. They are being targeted through the media to not have a voice.
Once that was said he introduced the panelists in order to the crowd: Andreas Hale, founder of “The Well Versed”; Janee Bolden, senior editor at Bossip.com; Chuck Creekmur, founder of AllHipHop.com; Bakari Kitawana, journalist, activist and political analyst; David Banner, world renowned rapper and activist.
The panelists began sparring on topics from getting voters to vote, generated from comments made by entertainment figures like Kendrick Lamar, to knowing how to ask more of our politicians to do more for our community-not show us how well they can play an instrument or sing and dance for our votes.
Banner eloquently spoke to the crowd and asked them to ask themselves, “What do you want?”
Banner went on to say, “We have the tendency to be emotional and not look at the facts. And the facts are: the reason we are corporate is because we are complacent. That we follow what’s so-called hot. We have to stop doing that; we have to figure out what we want in our communities and stand tall for it, and once we vote we have to stay in place.”
The panelists enlightened the audience and elevated their level of thinking to go out and make a call to action plan, not just for the president, but for all those who serve their community.
Japhat Banda, Graphic Design student, says, “I feel hearing from someone like David Banner would impact the youth stronger by associating with the culture of hip hop and influence them to know it’s good to have an epiphany.”
Following the discussion, there was a concert of artists who will be on tour with Ignite 2012 and local artists.
If you’d like more on Ignite 2012, you can visit their website and see live streaming of the event captured at MATC at Ignite2012.com. Check out their website for more tour dates and get out and vote.
(Evgeniya Troitskaya/Times )
(Evgeniya Troitskaya/Times )
