What Happened to the National Hip Hop Political Convention?

I know I’m at the DNC and should be writing about the Democratic Convention. But I've got a lot of time offline early this afternoon due to the DNC Youth Council press conference, and this is as good a time as any to bring this up. So before I dig in to covering the DNC, I want to talk about another convention: the National Hip Hop Political Convention.

This post is late in coming – almost a month late, in fact. The reason is that I didn’t want to be the one to write it. In fact, I tried pretty hard not to be that person and there are two very good reasons why I shouldn’t be writing this post:

1. I didn’t attend the National Hip Hop Political Convention in Las Vegas.
2. I’m not terribly involved with any of the Hip Hop voting groups and don’t have a good handle on what is happening within those communities outside of the information I can glean that is publicly available on their websites, and through the commentary of people like Jeff Change and DaveyD.

I asked at least 5 separate people who were at the Hip Hop Convention and got two answers: a reluctance to slam the convention or no answer at all. Nevertheless, I don’t see the point in hiding what happened – that’s not going to make anyone who was disappointed by the convention feel any better. It’s not going to make anyone a smarter activist. And it’s not going to do anything to make sure that in 2010, when we might actually have a shot at implementing pieces of the Hip Hop platform established in 2004, convention participants will be ready and organized to push that agenda.

So since no one else seems to want to say it, here goes:

What happened to the National Hip Hop Political Convention?

In 2004, the convention boasted thousands of participants, many of whom registered at least 50 voters as a precondition to receiving full voting rights in establishing the Hip Hop Platform. While there were frictions between the different generations at the convention, the major consensus coming out of Newark was that the Hip Hop community established a vision for a Hip Hop policy agenda, and took the first steps in creating the field infrastructure required to push that plan at the voting booth.

Fast forward to last month, and only a few hundred people showed up at the convention: about 10% of the number from 2004. There was no voter registration requirement this time around. The panels and workshops were chaotic and from what I heard not well attended. How bad was it? I don’t know because no one who attended or organized it is saying anything – good or bad. After the convention in 2004, news coverage was high, at least in the progressive media and online. Today it’s crickets and tumbleweeds.

Well, not all crickets and tumbleweeds. There was one panel that grabbed a lot of headlines, and perhaps is illustrative of what went wrong with this years’ convention: the panel on electoral politics, which (d)evolved into an all-out brawl over the meaning, ownership, loyalties, and effectiveness of Hip Hop-based organizing.

You can listen to the panel for yourself here (I'd embed it, but Odeo's code is breaking the site), and Davey D does a good job summarizing the panel here.

You can judge for yourself, but I pull a couple things out of this.

• Most of the core constituency of the NHHPC – particularly those willing to engage in block to block organizing and electoral politics - are pro-Obama and are choosing his campaign as a vehicle for their activism.
• Among those who are left, there is no real consensus about electoral politics and voter registration work in the field. This means the real promise of the convention is also gone. They no longer have the numbers or consensus with which to organize effectively at the ballot box on a national scale.
• Rosa Clemente’s rant strikes me as extremely wrong headed. The Green Party has proven to be extremely inept at long-term political strategy and party building. Why is that a more acceptable vehicle for electoral activism and what does the Hip Hop generation owe to the Green Party? Additionally, I don’t really understand her beef with Tides Foundation or the youth groups funded by foundation money. Yes, some of them are very much within the Democratic party sphere of influence. Others less so. And Tides funds a lot of progressive and social justice groups who would likely be surprised to know they were mere pawns of the Democratic Party money-men.
• Finally, most people are tired of celebrity driven-campaigns within the Hip Hop community.

So basically – from my arm-chair quarter-backing, three times removed perspective – there is something of a growing consensus within the community that celebrity campaigns are not the way forward. Electoral activism is regarded equally suspiciously in so much as it merely feeds the better of two evils (Democrats), but some kinds of community organzing needs to be done, whether it is for the Greens or in local elections. But, 90% of the conventions’ previous supporters are no longer in its network and are likely out there supporting Obama and working through his campaign. That seems to be regarded as a bad thing by most of the folks on the panel.

With all that in mind, I have to ask: is the Hip Hop Convention relevant anymore? Is it ready to die? And if not, how do you get it back to where it was four years ago? Like I said, I’m really not the person who should be writing this piece. I wasn’t there and I don’t know what really went on. But someone needs to be talking about this, I think. With 3,000 members organizing in their communities in 2004, the NHHPC was a potential force in electoral politics. Now it seems like it’s a bickering community missing the game as they fight amongst themselves for what is left of their membership.

If anyone who organized the National Hip Hop Political Convention, or can speak on behalf of the Hip Hop organizing community would like to respond to this post, I’m happy to give you room on the front page of the site to rebut what I’ve written or talk solutions. You can contact me here.