Activist Rosa Clemente to deliver Hip Hop Alliance keynote

The music and culture of hip hop?popular world-wide?has another dimension to it: a growing grassroots activism to promote positive change in areas such as access to education, prison reform, immigration rights, politics, and youth development.

Rosa Alicia Clemente, an activist, independent journalist, and community organizer, will talk about hip-hop activism when she delivers the 2009 keynote speech for the Skidmore student club, Hip Hop Alliance. Clemente's talk, titled "It's Bigger than Hip-Hop: Sustainable Politics and Culture for a Radical Hip-Hop Generation," will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Born and raised in the South Bronx, Clemente is a graduate of the University at Albany, State University of New York, and Cornell University. While at Albany, she was president of the Albany State University Black Alliance (ASUBA) and director of multicultural affairs for the Student Association. At Cornell, she was a founding member of La Voz Boriken, a social/political organization dedicated to Puerto Rican independence and the support of Puerto Rican political prisoners.

Clemente's work has been published in Clamor and The Ave. magazines, The Black World Today, and on numerous Web sites.   She has been the subject of articles in the Village Voice, The New York Times, Urban Latino, and The Source magazine, and has appeared on CNN and C-Span.

For the past 10 years, Clemente has presented workshops and lectures at colleges, universities, high schools, conferences, community centers, and prisons. Her topics include African-American and Latino intercultural relations, hip-hop activism, and the intersection of women, feminism, and hip hop, among others. In 2003, she helped form and coordinate the first National Hip Hop Political Convention, which was organized to create a national political agenda for the hip-hop generation. In the 2008 national election, she was the Green Party's vice-presidential candidate.

"Rosa speaks from the heart with truth, fire and passion," according to Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy.   "She is one of this generation's most important political voices and community organizers."

Skidmore's Hip Hop Alliance sponsors concerts, lectures, discussions, and interactive cultural events designed to increase awareness of the positive and significant dimensions of hip-hop culture. The club's past events have included concerts, a beat-boxing and break-dancing night at the Tang Museum, sessions on hip-hop arts such as being an emcee and deejay, graffiti, and film,   and athree-discussion series on racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Co-sponsors of Clemente's talk are the student club Ujima, the Skidmore Office of Student Diversity Programs, Speakers' Bureau, Higher Education Opportunity Program, Academic Opportunity Program, and the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work.  For more information, call 518-580-8212.