Mary J. Blige & Sean Combs: Vote or Die!
R&B
star Mary
J. Blige is known for her mix of soul bearing songs of faith and inspiration
blended with hip-hop beats. “The Queen of Hip Hop Soul” explained
the meaning of the "Vote or Die!" slogan.
“I’m gonna get real raw,” Blige warns. “I saw ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ and I’m about to go there. I’m not afraid because God has taught me one man can change history.”
Blige’s emotional anti-war, pro-woman speech elicits a range of emotions from the crowd. Some yell “Amen!”; others cry. She says her father went to Vietnam and “came home a nut. And he abused my mother. He abused us through my mother. And she abused us because my father abused her.” The “Children of the Ghetto” singer blamed the government for brainwashing her parents.
“I don’t think I want to benefit from a robbery of innocent poor people’s blood who did not deserve to die the same way you do not deserve to die today,” Blige says. “But that’s what will happen if we do not vote. We will die.”
Sean “P.
Diddy” Combs, the mastermind behind all those "Vote or Die!" t-shirts
explains further.
“There will be an opportunity to have a woman president, a black president, a Latino president, a gay president,” he told AP.
“Anything’s possible if a community flexes its power. That won’t happen overnight though. We have to stay focused. We have to grow our power within politics to be able to break down those barriers.”
Entire Story from
AP
Citizen Change ("Vote or Die") website