Working hard to show the importance of every vote, Russell Simmons and the Hip-hop Action Summit Network registered over 30,000 new voters, with a little help from Kanye West, Ludacris and Twista of course. At this year’s Chicago Hip-Hop Summit over 30,000 voters from Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio and Indiana between the ages of 18 and 35 registered to vote. After running numerous radio and television Public Service Announcements, street teams spreading in the cities and door to door campaigns, HSAN begin their Hip-hop Team Vote Project with excellent numbers.

At a hip-hop panel last week in Chicago Kanye West, Ludacris, Russell Simmons, Twista, Common, Shawnna, Loon, Jim Jones of the Diplomats, Def Poetry Jam’s Malik Yussef and Red Storm, Babs from Da Band, Layzie Bone, Crooked I, Duane “Hump” Hobbs, White Boy, Nuisance and Ruff, G-Zuz from Soldierz At War and Five Star General James. Doug E Fresh and Dr Ben Chavis discussed issues plaguing our generation from voting, police brutality, rap profiling and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“Hip-hop is about truth telling, and the truth is there’s still too much poverty. There’s a wealth of creative talent in our communities that should take more leadership in the struggle to eliminate poverty”, Common said. It’s time for all of us to stand up and show the power of our votes so that the interests of our communities gets represented,” Ludacris added. Along with a performance from Twista and Kanye West, Malik Yusef and Red Storm performed poetry.

“The fact that we were able to register young people from throughout the Midwest in preparation of the Chicago Hip-Hop Summit indicates that there is an acceleration of interest and involvement of youth who are participating for the first time in the political process,” Dr. Benjamin Chavis, President/CEO of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network said. “This is very encouraging and indicative of the rising power of hip-hop”. For more information log on to www.hsan.org.