The fourth annual Hip Hop As A Movement conference kicked off a weekend of performances and panel discussions Friday afternoon with a march down State Street and a rally on the Capitol steps that addressed the conference's theme of anti-militarism to a backdrop of hip-hop beats.
About 200 people attended the hour-long rally, which featured rap songs and spoken word pieces by national and local artists as well as speeches from a handful of Madison peace activists.
Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. representative from Georgia who made headlines last April by implying President Bush knew about the Sept. 11 attacks but did nothing to stop them, gave the conference's keynote address at the rally.
McKinney told the crowd that protest music influenced and inspired the civil rights movement and that hip hop can be a vital tool in combating unjust wars and social injustice.
\There's too much wrong for you to be quiet,"" McKinney said. ""Organize and fight back.""
Dick Gregory, the conference's scheduled keynote speaker, was sick and unable to attend. Gregory, who ran for president in 1968, marched and was jailed with Martin Luther King Jr. and averaged 50 miles a day in a 1976 run from Los Angeles to New York that called attention to world hunger.
Many performers and speakers at Friday's rally criticized mainstream rap music for being too commercial and not tackling complex or controversial issues.
Rapper Davey D told the crowd that hip hop is a weapon for social change because it provides an easily accessible forum for anyone to speak his or her mind.
""If all you can tell me about is the new 50 Cent video and you can't tell me about world events, then you're not doing your part as a hip-hopper,"" Davey D said.
Madison-based rapper Antonio Travis emceed the rally and told the crowd that the war in Iraq is being fought to secure oil supplies.
""We're not fighting for freedom; we're not fighting for peace; we're fighting for money, and that's wrong,"" Travis said.
Jos?? Sentmanat, a UW-Madison law student who served in the army in the 1980s and trained at West Point, told the crowd how he came to oppose violence and encouraged others to spread peace.
""Do I want to spend the next 20 years, as the saying goes, traveling to exotic places, meeting exotic people and killing them?"" Sentmanat said he asked himself before leaving military service.
