NEW YORK (Billboard) - Today's hip-hop constituency possesses even greater media access and financial clout than when Public Enemy first exhorted the hip-hop generation to "Fight the Power" in 1989.

Rap artists have since tackled gang violence, South African apartheid, drugs, police abuse and more. Now they want to play an instrumental role in this year's presidential election.

Political groups are tapping hip-hop to engage not just young people but all disenfranchised people of color, hoping their votes will unseat President Bush.

"Most hip-hop followers come from struggle. There's a common agenda for all of those who are locked out," says Russell Simmons, chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN). "Maybe they will vote in a way that will help not only young people but all of those who are in struggle."

HSAN has registered more than 500,000 new voters at its series of star-studded summits in major cities since 2001 and thousands more through its Web site, hsan.org.

As the election nears, follow-up phone calls will remind new registrants to vote. HSAN hopes to register 2 million voters by the end of 2004.

Its 19th summit in Chicago attracted 30,000 new young voters for its ongoing Hip-Hop Team Vote project. The March 27 event invited attendees to participate in a panel discussion featuring such musical luminaries as Kanye West, Ludacris, Twista and Common. Topics ranged from voting and rap profiling to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

"The majority is under 30 in a lot of communities. That in itself becomes a potential swing vote or voting block," Davey D notes. The Bay Area journalist and political activist reports extensively on hip-hop and politics through his daveyd.com site.

HSAN is the most visible hip-hop organization. President/CEO Dr. Benjamin Chavis works with a board that includes Roc-a-Fella partners Jay-Z and Damon Dash, Bad Boy's Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and former presidential candidate the Rev. Al Sharpton.

In addition to its voter campaign, HSAN is fighting New York's Rockefeller drug laws, which impose lengthy sentences on first-time offenders.

The group is also rallying support for poet Sarah Jones. She filed suit against the Federal Communications Commission after it fined a Portland, Ore., radio station for airing her anti-misogyny spoken-word song, "Your Revolution."

FIRST POLITICAL CONCLAVE

Hip-hop culture will serve as a platform at the inaugural National Hip-Hop Political Convention, set for June 16-19 at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. Organizers say the conclave will be more inclusive and wider-ranging than HSAN.

"The aim is to bring together a diverse roster of local grassroots groups -- men, women, activists, artists, educators, workers and professionals -- and create a national political forum for the hip-hop generation," says Bakari Kitwana, a convention co-founder and author of "The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture."

Convention organizers also want to move beyond registering voters and calling on rap/hip-hop artists to represent the issues.

"We want to force the powers that be and the middle-class elite leadership to notice that we are a powerful block," organizer Rosa Clemente says of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. "We make up over 15 million to 20 million people in the U.S. We won't be taken for granted, nor will our issues."

The National Hip-Hop Political Convention (hiphopconvention.org) is modeled on the precedent-setting Gary, Ind., convention of 1972. Facing a second term under then-president Richard Nixon, political, civic and educational leaders convened to strategize.

The upcoming confab's invited guests include Simmons, Chuck D, Dead Prez, activist Ras Baraka and representatives of activist groups from across the country.

Agenda topics encompass economic empowerment, criminal justice, education, health care, foreign policy and unifying the civil-rights and hip-hop generations.