Voter Rapathy

Rosa Parks set it off.

She wasn't the first or the last freedom fighter, but when the Alabama seamstress refused to relinquish her public-transit perch, it was the ah, hell naw heard 'round the world.

Fuse. Spark. Explosion.

Then Martin Luther King marched on Washington. Malcolm X maligned Plymouth Rock. The Black Panthers threw a (Molotov) cocktail party. Attack dogs were unleashed. Fire hoses discharged. Billy clubs loosed. And the fissures of injustice splintered, shuddered and began to crumble.

But activism needs energy these days. It needs new warriors, fresh heroes and prescient poets capable of ascending the flanks of history, looking America in her eyes and whispering:

You ain't got [a gun], nigga, you betta run/Now I'm in the back getting' head from my hunz/While she goin' down, I'm breakin down what I done/She smokin' my blunt, sayin' she ain't havin' fun/Bitch, give it back now; you don't get none.

And so rapper J-Kwon's immortal words -- preserved for eternity in the hit single "Tipsy" -- resonate on behalf of young citizens whose votes can sway one of the most precarious presidential elections in U.S. history.

But J-Kwon is merely another pinky-ringed cog in the ambitious machine known as the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. The organization -- the board members of which include rap moguls Russell Simmons, Damon Dash and P Diddy -- is a noble, unprecedented attempt to enchant the disenchanted.

Can it succeed? The only way to find out was to see the Action Network in action.

9:30 a.m., Penn Valley Community College

Alerted to the imminent arrival of the HSAN buses that have been crisscrossing the nation with J-Kwon and "other celebrities" -- rumored to mean Nelly -- in tow, I rush to Penn Valley. The press release had touted the whirlwind tour as "the biggest get out the vote campaign in Kansas City history."

Apparently, that wasn't a particularly lofty benchmark. I arrived at the community college to find fewer than a dozen people in a mostly vacant lecture hall. None of them was J-Kwon.

Only a handful of spectators -- and probably a few freshmen mistaking the event for Trigonometry I -- were seated when the rally began with Ranford Fleming striding to the podium.

Fleming -- HSAN event organizer, Hip-Hop Express publisher and purveyor of body products that include fragrances such as "Bump-N-Grind" and "Lick Me All Over" -- took the stage, thanked everyone for coming and then explained that J-Kwon had missed his flight.

"I can't apologize enough," Fleming said. "I try to run a tight ship. This isn't a good example to show young kids you're trying to motivate."

But there was a consolation prize. Fleming and a panel of local hip-hop artists were on hand to discuss the importance of the electoral process. It wasn't long before Fleming had worked himself into a lather.

"There was a time when we could not vote," he thundered. "If you aren't going to make your voice heard, don't say nothing! You can't complain if you don't vote!"

The audience had expanded sizably by the time Benjamin Chavis, executive director of the HSAN and the former head of the NAACP, arrived. Fleming introduced Chavis as "a man I thank God for" and "a product of the movement" that had worked with MLK, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. Then Fleming abdicated the microphone.

"Most young people know me from the movie Belly," Chavis began. "It's a Hype Williams joint ... DMX holds a gun to my head."

We shall overcome, indeed.

Chavis went on to apologize for J-Kwon's absence and said that Nelly's bus had suffered a "misdirection" in Oklahoma. He added that both would be making appearances later in the day. He explained the goals of his organization and praised hip-hop as a positive "cultural phenomenon" before allowing the panelists to discuss their political concerns.

The speakers opined about health care, minimum-wage increases, job outsourcing, corporate welfare and the war in Iraq but they stuck mainly to topics they were passionate about. Namely, themselves.

"My name is X-Dash," X-Dash told the crowd. "You might remember me from the Jason Whitlock radio show theme song or the Kansas City Royals theme song."

Or not.

But Dash and other local artists, such as Darrell "The Saint" Thomas of Verbal Contact, did offer some political insights, when they weren't performing a capella or discussing making it in the rap industry. Most of the pertinent discourse came from the audience as they conversed about unemployment, public education and the "Up South" nature of Missouri in a way that suggested Cross Burning 101 was meeting down the hall.

Whenever the talk devolved into anti-Bush rhetoric, Chavis carefully steered the argument back to the middle with the assertion that the HSAN was (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) nonpartisan.

"They say Missouri is a swing state," Chavis explained. "We just want to make sure Missouri swings to hip-hop."

1 p.m., Southeast High School

It's hard to attract voters if you don't let them in the building.

Four uniformed security guards stood between me, a dozen kids and the door to the Southeast field house. We were told we didn't have clearance for what had been touted as a public event.