It’s just after 11 a.m. on a hazy Memorial Day in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. Outside Tillie’s of Brooklyn, a trendy café near the corner of DeKalb and Vanderbilt avenues, a multiracial group of a dozen young men and women arrange themselves in a semicircle to be briefed on their itinerary for the afternoon.

Standing before them is the author and activist Kevin Powell, 42, who holds up a voter registration card. “You all have a working knowledge of local politics,” Powell says. “You’re gonna hear people say, ‘I don’t think my vote matters,’ but you gotta have a quick response.” Soon after, the lively group splits up and veers into different directions, hauling campaign literature, voter registration news materials and bottles of water.

The plan is to canvass local parks and outdoor barbecues throughout Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant for the next several hours, as well as the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s annual outdoor festival, DanceAfrica. While striding briskly along Clermont Avenue wearing a brown suit, sans tie, Powell is joined by a bodyguard, a cameraperson, a videographer, and three young volunteers, one of whom deliberately lags behind with a bullhorn. As the words “Kevin Powell for Congress” – though the prospective candidate prefers the slogan KP4C (”I’m a hip-hop head,” he says) – pierces through the neighborhood’s quiet air, the campaign takes its first step in what some political observers contend will be a heavily-watched contest this summer.

For Powell, the Sept. 9 primary marks a fresh chance to challenge 13-term incumbent congressman Edolphus Towns, 73, for the Democratic nomination in the 10th House of Representatives district, which includes parts of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene along with East New York and Canarsie. In 2006, the district’s Democratic congressional primary garnered headlines with a fiercely competitive race in which Rep. Towns fended off insurgent campaigns from City Councilman Charles Barron, a Democrat representing East New York, and Assemblyman Roger Green, who left his seat representing Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in the aftermath of a 2004 conviction on petty larceny charges to focus on the unsuccessful Congressional effort. Powell threw his hat into that race as well, but pulled out after realizing his campaign wasn’t quite cranked up enough to win a seat in Congress.

Now Powell is Towns’ only declared challenger, capturing instant attention when he announced his entrance into the race April 27. In the midst of a historic presidential election in which U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has effectively mobilized a new base of young voters, political scientists wonder whether the 18- to 35-year-old demographic in the city’s electorate also can be stirred by candidates who directly engage them.

This is one local race where that possibility will be played out. “Kevin Powell sort of has that Obama mystique with a vibe that makes him interesting to a lot of people in that district,” says Jose Sanchez, chairman of urban studies at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. “But Towns has been in Congress for a long time and has already achieved a certain kind of leadership. Whatever revolution that Powell is trying to represent has to be even more progressive than what Towns already offers.”

Source:
City Limits