Hip Hop Caucus

Using the voices of hip-hop artists to communicate its messages and rally support, Hip Hop Caucus has launched three left-of-center programs: “Think 100%,” a platform for environmentalist energy and combating the impact of climate change in poor communities; “Respect My Vote,” devoted to voter mobilization and ex-felon voting rights; and “People’s Climate Music,” a platform designed to use hip hop to spread environmentalist messages.

Founding

Hip Hop Caucus is a left-of-center organization that emerged from the combination of four existing organizations: P. Diddy’s Vote or Die!, Jay Z’s Voice Your Choice, the AFL-CIO’s Hip Hop Voices, and Russell Simmons’s Hip Hop Summit Action Network. ³

HHC conducts leadership development, provides leadership training and opportunities for cultural influencers, communicates left-of-center messages, and promotes thought leadership in the areas of voter mobilization, climate change, helping communities, and civil and human rights. ⁴

Activities

HHC has created three sub-platforms, each with its own website: “Think 100%,” focused on climate change communications; “Respect My Vote,” a voter mobilization campaign; and “People’s Climate Music,” which leverages influential artists to create music and culture to support HHC’s efforts on climate change. Hip Hop Caucus claims support from the radical environmentalist Sunrise Movement, the League of Conservation Voters environmentalist voter outreach network, Earthjustice, and Zero Hour. ⁵

Left-of-center positions of advocacy for felon voting, motivating students to register and vote, and the removal of voter identification laws are promoted via the Respect My Vote (RMV) platform. Hip Hop artists like Dre, Ms. Cream of the Crop, and many others work as spokespeople to promote RMV and its agenda via its website and social media platforms. ⁴

Think 100% is the face of Hip Hop Caucus’s environmentalist platform with a focus on younger people. A weekly podcast, films, music, marches, a “youth climate strike,” a tour of “The Coolest Show on Climate Change,” and conferences are used to promote disinvestment by pension funds and universities of conventional energy and related investments. ⁶

People’s Climate Music has broadly released Here Comes the Sun by Jeremih x Antonique and HOME (heal our mother earth), promoting people working together against climate change. ⁷

Working with the Justice Action Mobilization Network (JAMN), Hip Hop Caucus organized a March, 2017 climate conference along with the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City. ⁸

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

Hip Hop Caucus was one of more than 600 co-signing organizations on a January 2019 open letter to Congress titled “Legislation to Address the Urgent Threat of Climate Change.” The signatories declared their support for new laws to bring about “100 percent decarbonization” of the transportation sector but denounced nuclear power as an example of “dirty energy” that should not be included in any legislation promoting the use of so-called “renewable energy.” ²

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 19 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ⁹ An October 2018 proposal from The Nature Conservancy noted that zero-carbon nuclear plants produced 7.8 percent of total world energy output and recommended reducing carbon emissions by increasing nuclear capacity to 33 percent of total world energy output. ¹⁰

Leadership

Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is president and founder of Hip Hop Caucus. Previously he was political and grassroots director of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, was an architect of P. Diddy’s Vote or Die campaign, and established the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign after Hurricane Katrina. ³

Yearwood is a Church of God in Christ elder and was designated by President Barack Obama as a Champion of Change and was the subject of a YaleEnvironment 360 article describing how hip hop can help address environmental issues in communities of color. ¹¹

Liz Havstad is Hip Hop Caucus’s executive director and began working with Yearwood as coordinator of the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign. ¹²

Mustafa Santiago Ali served as senior vice president of HHC in 2018 and was formerly a senior advisor and assistant associate administrator for environmental justice at the Environmental Protection Agency. He now serves as vice president of environmental justice and community revitalization for the left-wing National Wildlife Federation. He stated in a South Carolina Democratic Party debate that “Environmental racism is the new Jim Crow in regard to: food, housing, jobs (and) education.” ^{13 8 14 15}

Finances

2018 revenue of $1,234,874, up from $486,914 in 2017, was offset by expenses of $1,281,429, down from $1,292,783 in 2017. ¹⁶ Salaries and other compensation accounted for $525,636 of total expenses. ¹⁷

At the close of 2018 net assets were a negative ($213,590) compared to negative ($226,149) at the close of 2017. ¹⁸

Notable contributors to Hip Hop Caucus include environmentalist groups like NRDC Action Fund,¹⁹ the Sierra Club,²⁰ and Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action;²¹ liberal foundations such as the Annenberg Foundation,²² the Surdna Foundation,²³ and the Kresge Foundation;²⁴ and labor unions including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Education Association (NEA), and Unite Here. ²⁵