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One morning in January, on the eve of the primaries, Dayton rapper Tyheir Kindred (alias YelloPain), awoke to find that his song, “My Vote Don’t Count,” had gone viral overnight, earning praise from luminaries like Chelsea Clinton. The music video starts with Kindred walking down the streets of downtown Dayton, Ohio, rapping about its shuttered storefronts and potholes, recounting how the hopes of young people like him have been dashed prematurely during the past few presidencies.

He later turns his despair on its head when the scene switches to him in a classroom, and he starts breaking down the three branches of government for his attentive students — a surprising array of Daytonians of all ages, races and places. The video, which has since received over 5 million views on social media, recently went viral again in the lead-up to November. The video ends with Kindred’s cousin, Desiree Tims, a young Black woman reiterating the importance of voting in local elections. (Tims is currently running for Congress for Ohio’s 10th District.)

Local artists like Kindred are natural political organizers because they are already imagining a world without pain through their art. In 2018, I was among a handful of young, Black and Latinx creatives and organizers who founded the Midwest Culture Lab to reimagine the future of the Midwest, and to engage unlikely voters in our own communities. This included organizing art crawls, poetry slams, music videos and, in the age of COVID-19, virtual concerts.

The road to progressive victory does not lie in the so-called “white working class.” As a life-long resident of Dayton — a city that many have been too eager to paint as a symbol of the dying Rust Belt — I knew that Black and brown communities had their own stories to tell. Better ones. Stories that breathed new life into tired, old narratives about the Midwest. New stories of hope, imagination and creativity that envisioned a better future for all of us.

In the 2018 cycle, we tapped into issues like criminal justice reform that young voters cared the most about. The Ohio Student Association produced a video called “Imagine a World Without Cages” that reached 3.5 million people on Facebook, including 1.6 million video views and more than 380,000 page views. This effort helped double Ohio’s youth vote from 11.6 percent in 2014 to 24 percent in 2018. And more importantly, it proved that artists and culture-makers could inspire the real swing voters, the young people who are deciding between voting Democratic and staying home.

Videographer: Kailah Ware (@kailahwiththecamera); Music: Mariah J (@mo.luv); Producer: Amber J Phillips (@amberabundance)

Now, as former Vice President Joe Biden and Donald Trump battle for Midwestern swing votes in the countdown to November 3, activating young, Black Midwesterners through art and culture could transform the outcome of the 2020 election and help build a better future for all of us here and our communities.

In 2016, Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes, even though 506,691 youth of color were available to vote in the state. Even though Trump won Ohio by an eight-point margin, Ohio is now a toss-up that could be decided by the 480,148 young people of color in the state. When we are in the margins, young people of color make the difference and cultural organizing knows how to find and activate those voters.

To be clear, cultural organizing is not simply about putting on a show and shouting out “Be sure to vote!” at the end. The simplistic message of “Go vote!” does not inspire most young people.

Instead, cultural organizing goes much deeper. The artist takes responsibility for the political education of their audience, many of whom live on the margins. Cultural organizers truly engage with young people, asking how they are feeling and what they care about.

They ask: “What is the world you want to see? What is the system you want to transform?” And more importantly: “What does real safety look like for Black and brown people? What if we didn’t have to deal with rampant police violence, failing schools and an unjust health care system that leaves our families bankrupt?”

The Democratic party often calls upon Hollywood celebrities to energize donors, volunteers and voters. Yes, we need to hear from John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, from LeBron James and Gina Rodriguez. But young voters, especially voters of color, need a way to plug in locally. That is why the leadership of local creatives is so important.

Cultural organizers know how to center conversations around local issues. Young people interested in decriminalizing marijuana need only look at their local District Attorney’s race; people who are just starting their families and worried about the safety of their water need only get their answers from their mayor and city council. Local concerns can get young people to the polls. Once there, they can be pushed to vote for the top of the ticket.

For example, a Michigan rapper, Tina Bina, recently joined Detroit Action’s 18 year-old youth organizer for a conversation about filling out the census and registering to vote, followed by a performance. The artist and her audience are building a political home together and co-creating “the world as it should be.”

In Milwaukee, two local musicians, Genesis Renji and Miguel Leija, wrote an original song and created a music video to inspire Black and brown young people to fill out the census. The hip-hop beat drove home the point that 800,000 Black people, especially children, were missing from the last census count. “If we’re not counted, then we don’t count. And they keep all those funds for themselves. Unemployment, health care, school lunch, food stamps, even elderly help.” The video, which was recorded in both English and Spanish, was viewed more than 2.3 million times.

Art has also provided us with a vital space to process the collective heartbreak and mourning resulting from 2020’s never-ending tragedies — from the COVID-19 deaths in our communities, the loss of beloved figures like John Lewis, Chadwick Boseman and Kobe Bryant, to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Indeed, their murders have poured lighter fluid on the frustration and anger that had been smoldering for a long time. Young people like me took to the streets to demand an end to the racial terror they have lived with all their lives. At last, our pain was in public view.

But Vice President Joe Biden should not assume that the tens of thousands of young people who turned out for the protests will necessarily turn out to vote. Cultural organizers hold the key to fighting fatigue and disillusionment as young people come down from the high of being in the streets. Artists and culture-markers are the political strategy for the Midwest if Democrats are serious about winning.

The winds of culture are already shifting in our favor. From Vogue’s two September covers featuring the art of Kerry James Marshall and Jordan Casteel, the Vanity Fair issue dedicated to Breonna Taylor, to the myriad of corporate brands speaking out for Black Lives Matter, the energy for Black stories, Black art and Black representation is steadily gaining momentum in these spaces that traditionally excluded us. But there is still much work to be done.

“If the form is beautiful but there’s no function behind it, no change that holds the person up, then [all you can do] is look at it,” says Marshall Shorts, who serves as creative director for the Midwest Culture Lab. Since graduating from the Columbus College of Art and Design in 2016, he has vowed to make art accessible for the people in our community.

A leader in the Ohio arts scene, Marshall reimagines narratives about Black bodies through graphic design and video. Like many cultural organizers, art and activism have always been a part of Marshall’s identity. He has organized multiple paint-by-numbers and mural-making events for the community, encouraging people to participate in art-making and patronize Black artists. Recently, he also helped spearhead the opening of a shipping container gallery and performance stage in the historically Black neighborhood in Columbus, where he lives.

“It was never about me being the best artist or designer. It was always about having agency and creating agency for my community,” Marshall tells me.

Right now is the moment. If cultural organizers like Marshall can mobilize young Black and brown voters here in the Midwest to show up at the polls, they can change the course of history. While it is easy to look to the streets today and believe that they will turn out, translating this street protest energy into political power requires a healthy dose of political and creative imagination.

If Democrats are serious about winning the White House and the Senate, and increasing their numbers of elected officials across the board, they would be smart to support and engage the local singers, rappers, DJs and other artists and tastemakers who are building the power of their communities.

Videographer: Charles Hairston Music Credits: T. Wong (@twongcreates) Photo Credit: John Landry (@Top5ivephoto)

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Prentiss J. Haney is the Executive Director of the Midwest Culture Lab, a project of the Alliance for Youth Organizing in collaboration with Chicago Votes, Ohio Student Association and Leaders Igniting for Transformation in Wisconsin.

Prentiss J. Haney

Writing since February 2022 · 1 story contributed