Rapper, speakers promote voting

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 4, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Using nothing more than the rhythmic hand claps of Istrouma High School students as a musical backdrop, Los Angeles-based performer J. Flexx rapped Friday about the right to vote.

“Then you hear the cons, then you hear the pros, then November rolls around and you go to the polls,” J. Flexx sang to Istrouma High School juniors and seniors Friday in the school gymnasium.

The song, “The Right Act: Vote,” was written by Shreveport-reared Karen Chatman, now of Los Angeles, and it’s part of an education and entertainment program she put together.

Chatman, the Louisiana State Bar Association, and the Louisiana Center for Law and Civic Education put on Friday’s program to target high school students and educate them about the importance of voting.

Baton Rouge lawyer Ted James, who is black, told the students, who are predominantly black, that his grandparents and their great grandparents couldn’t vote until 1965 — the year President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

“Blacks had to fight with the police, fight off tear gas and dogs to vote. It’s important,” James told the students.

“When you turn 18, you should be as excited about voting as you are about graduating and the prom,” James said.

Before J. Flexx starting rapping and James and two other Baton Rouge attorneys spoke to the students, teachers handed out voter-registration cards to students 18 or older.

Istrouma High School science teacher Stephanie Green said she and other teachers held a voting registration drive last week and 42 seniors at the school registered.

Afi Patterson, a Baton Rouge lawyer, had two students in the audience briefly debate whether casting a vote can make a difference.

Corey Brown, 19, said he is going to vote for Barack Obama because “he could look another man in the eye and speak with authority.”

Shandricka Jackson, 16, however, said there was no use in voting because “they are going to put in whoever they want no matter what.”

Patterson told the students that they couldn’t complain about things unless they vote.