Labor and Hip Hop Come Together for ‘Respect My Vote’ Campaign

from the AFL-CIO Blog

Labor and Hip Hop Come Together for ‘Respect My Vote’ Campaign
by James Parks, Oct 8, 2010

It’s fresh, it’s hot and it’s got a serious message: In 2010, young people have a big stake in the outcome of this election and the only way the powers that be will respect them is if they vote and make the politicians listen to their concerns. The Hip Hop Caucus and American Rights at Work have come together to launch a video and photo campaign to promote “Respect My Vote.”

“Respect My Vote” is the only major non-partisan Hip Hop voter mobilization campaign for the 2010 election. It focuses on voter registration, education and Get Out the Vote (GOTV) program. It is aimed at young people between ages 18 and 39, young people of color, people with felony records who are unaware of their voting rights, low-income communities and young people not in college.

In the video and photos, women of color who are labor leaders talk straight to young people. In comments over a hard bass line beat, they describe what young people and the union movement can do together and why we need each other to make sure that whoever takes office after the elections will work for the average American, not the rich fat cats on Wall Street.

Think the youth vote is not important? Consider that in the 2008 elections, 64 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 43 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds were first-time voters. Among African American young people 45 percent were first-time voters, and 61 percent of Latino young people voted for the first time in 2008.

Check out what Tiffany Lofton from the U.S. Student Association says in the video:

We’re in a huge crisis. A huge financial crisis, a huge jobs crisis, a huge education crisis and we need to think seriously about [the candidates’] agenda and how they will affect our community and our education.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, who also appears on the video, says an alliance between young people and the labor movement is natural.

Young people believe in collective action. That’s what the labor movement is about—the ability of people to come together and work collectively.

Check out the “Respect My Vote” campaign here.

Bigger Than One: Some Reflections on "The Franchise"

from Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

Bigger Than One: Some Reflections on "The Franchise"
by Mark Anthony Neal

Yesterday was the Democratic Primary for President in North Carolina; It was also the 73rd anniversary of my father's birth. The alignment of the two events seemed logical to me as it was my remembrance of the first time that my father voted--for fellow Georgia native Jimmy Carter in 1976--that forced me off the political fence. As a young boy growing up in the Jim Crow south, my father had little expectation that he would ever be able to vote, let alone vote for someone who looked vaguely like him. I can remember the look of pride on his face when he cast his first ballot and it was that look that I specifically recalled when I decided to support Obama back in January. And it wasn't so much about Obama--there wasn't anything inherently progressive about his politics--but that his candidacy inspired a level of investment in the political process--or "the franchise" as the old-timers liked to call it, hence the term disenfranchisement--that I had not witnessed in my life.

I celebrated the anniversary my father's birth by walking into my local polling spot, holding the hands of my two daughters, so that they could get a first hand view of participating in "the franchise". Indeed I was a little older than my 9-year-old is now when I was introduced to the political process working phone banks in the Bronx for Jimmy Carter's campaign. It was something that my 5-year-old said to me a few days ago though, that really forced me to think about what participating in the process really meant.

Watching yet another round of political ads on TV, my youngest daughter asked "daddy, are we voting for [Ba]Rock Obama?" and I immediately recalled historian Elsa Barkley Brown's classic essay "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African-American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom." In the essay, Barkley Brown examines the voting practices of black communities in Richmond, VA after the Civil War.

Read the Full Essay

Yes We Can; Yes We Did

from NewsOne

Yes We Can--Yes We Did
by Mark Anthony Neal

***

Though not usually given to emotional outbursts, I was confused as I found myself tearing-up while watching “Yes, We Can.” I was caught even more off-guard as my daughter asked me why I was crying.

Although I make my living by “having an answer for everything” I was quite frankly at a loss for words. But then I imagined the world that my 72-year-old father lived in when he was 9-years-old, knowing at the time that there was little chance that he could ever vote, let alone vote for somebody who looked like him.

I was only a little older than my daughter is now when my father did cast his first ballot in 1976 for Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

I could also remember the first time I pulled the lever — voting for Reverend Jesse Jackson in the New York Democratic convention in 1984 and how good so many of us felt — giving each other sly winks—as we walked in and out of the voting site, knowing full well that our vote in that primary was little more than a symbolic gesture of pride.

As I struggled for language to give my daughter, I realized also that for her and many of her peers, Barack Obama’s campaign is nothing extraordinary (she has made more of the fact that a “girl” has never been president).

And while there will be many difficult conversations in the future between us about the disenfranchisement of convicted felons, Diebold machines and voting irregularities, it is this sense of normalcy that I guess ultimately triggered my emotions in response to the “Yes We Can” video. It’s a normalcy that my father could never imagine — a normalcy that as a teenager I had long learned not to ever expect.

Obama’s 13 victories on Super Tuesday gets him no closer to his party’s nomination and thus no closer to the presidency, but as I again watch “Yes, We Can” and again tears well-up in the eyes, I can swear that what I am really hearing are generations of folk who came before us whispering “Yes, you did.”

Read the Full Essay