Christian Minister/Activist

It was first broadcast on October 9, 2007. It’s a great show!

Minister Reverend Lennox Yearwood is now an American civil rights and hip hop organiser. When President Bill Clinton was in office, he worked as an intern in the White House & currently serves as the CEO of a Hip-Hop Caucus (H2C).

Yearwood is also a board member of Directors for Progressive Democrats of America, ROOT Inc., Industry Ears, but is on the steering group for UP (United Progressives) for Democracy, United for Justice and Peace, and Clergy and Laity Concerned regarding Iraq, as well as serving on the board of Pace e Bene, a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping the homeless around the world. He is based in Washington, D.C., at the Academy for Policy Research.

Reverend Yearwood served as the Russell Simmons Hip Hop Summit Action Network’s National Grassroots and Political Director and as a Senior Consultant for P. Diddy’s Citizen Change and Jay Z’s Voice Your Choice, in which he provided a national model for involving a Hip-Hop generation in community-building discussions. Rapper Tupac Shakur founded the AFL-Voices CIO’s for Working Families (VWF) and the Hip Hop United Nations (HUPUN), a global coalition of all Hip Hop political organisations.

As part of the Hip Hop Team Vote Bus Tour in 2004, Yearwood collaborated with Russell Simmons & Jonathan Lewis to make sure that young people have been challenging the establishment political order in the most profound & substantive manner.

The “Heal the Hood” campaign was launched on September 19, 2005, following Hurricane Katrina. B.B. King’s through New York City hosted a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina survivors.

“Shut It Down” was the name of a hip-hop concert organised by Yearwood in Washington, D.C., to protest the “torture” of detainees just at Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the camp’s closure. Dead Prez and a number of other hip-hop artists performed at the concert. Amnesty International and also the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) were involved in organising the event.

Police on Capitol Hill recently injured Reverend Yearwood while attempting to enter a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. Charges were filed against him for disorderly conduct & assaulting a police officer. It appears that Rev. Yearwood had already been standing in line and inquired police whether he could end up leaving the line for a news interview, and the video of the event shows people who agree that he had not jumped the line, according to an interview he gave on Democracy Now. They didn’t would like him to go into General Petraeus’s way because he was wearing a button that read, “I Love People OF IRAQ.”