Sirens sounded, red lights blazed and yellow caution tape lined the Pasant Theatre as students gathered for the Black Student Alliance's 34th Annual Black Power Rally on Tuesday night.
This year's theme, "State of Emergency … What Next?," raised students' awareness of MSU's minority-retention rates, progress for Hurricane Katrina victims and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, or MCRI.
"This is a critical year," said Dominick Quinney, president of the Black Student Alliance. "This is an election year. We're looking at things that directly affect black students."
The rally's guest speaker, New York Times best-selling author and journalist Omar Tyree, recognized the MCRI as an issue blacks need be more aware of in order to vote intelligently.
"This year, it's voting season, and that's number one," Tyree said. "As college students, you owe it to yourselves to handle business. This whole affirmative action situation … you have to come kick ass and prove what you need to do."
Dr. Pero Dagbovie, an MSU assistant professor of history, spoke to the crowd about current emergencies on campus, including the MCRI.
"If you don't think there's a problem, look at Proposal 2," Dagbovie said. "If you don't think there's a problem, go out and read a damn book."
Dagbovie encouraged students of the hip-hop generation to stay true to themselves.
"Keeping it real, the mantra of hip-hop," Dagbovie said. "Graduating is keeping it real on the MSU level."
With the election less than three weeks away, students were encouraged to vote.
"For 18 months, people have been lying, saying that the (MCRI) would help affirmative action, end segregation or help taxes," said NAACP member Brandon Jessup. "These people came in from California. … They haven't seen what we've seen. I was raised in Detroit. They haven't been where we've been. When black women get paid 63 cents on the dollar and 1,600 young black men and women are serving adult sentences in Michigan.
"Vote for your future, your cousins and your kids, and if you can't do that, vote for your ancestors."
As students watched a movie clip from Spike Lee's "School Daze," in which Laurence Fishburne's character screams "Wake up!," some reflected on the message the rally was teaching.
"Realize that we are in a state of slavery," said Cescelie Willingham, an advertising junior. "We are still being held back by ourselves and not knowing. Instead of talking about it, we need to be about it."
