"Hip-Hop for Hope," a benefit aimed at raising money for Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science & Technology, will be held Nov. 16.

    A 3:30 p.m. block party on Magazine Street, at Laurence Square, will be followed by a 7 p.m. concert at Tipitina's featuring the Soul Rebels Brass Band, Luther Gray, Baby Boy Ba Prince and others.

    Hip Hop for Hope will also seek to raise awareness of the AIDS virus and education issues.

    The event was organized with help from several Tulane University organizations, including Tulane College Democrats, the African-American Congress of Tulane and Tulane University Campus Programming.

    Students on Tulane University's campus in New Orleans have been slowly amping up their work for campaign 2006. College Democrats and Republicans have held informal and formal events to encourage students to become more active in local, state and national elections.

    One of the best-attended events was the "Drinking Liberally" party at the beginning of fall term. The event was affiliated with the Tulane College Democrats and held off campus as a way for students to get acquainted with the organization. Local Democratic candidate John Edwards Jr. (District 2 congressional race) even attended.

  

    On the left side, the single most important issue for the Democrats, according to College Democrats President David Friedman, is focusing on "why the country is doing so much worse than it was before.".
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    The Tulane College Democrats have also been hard at work campaigning for several candidates.

    The group has made over 350 phone calls and volunteered at a community dinner in LaPlace for Charlie Melancon (District 3 Congressional race). The group also made phone calls for Amos Cormier, who is running for the Plaquemines Parish presidency.

    John Edwards Jr. (Distrct 2 Congressional race) attended the loosely affiliated Drinking Liberally party and spoke at a recent College Democrats meeting. There are also plans for a canvassing trip to Tennessee for Harold Ford Jr.'s Senate campaign. Ford holds the potential 6th seat for the Senate, which would give the Senate a Democratic majority.

"We're going to do our part to take back the Congress," Friedman said.

    This Saturday, College Democrats will begin their New Year for New Orleans program, a community recovery project in partnership with Tulane College Democrats, Louisiana College Democrats, ACORN and various other organizations. The four-day program will bring volunteers together from all over the country to help rebuild and revitalize New Orleans.

    Tulane College Democrats are expecting up to 200 volunteers to help rebuild houses with Habitat for Humanity.

    "This has been by far the best year the Tulane College Democrats have ever had. We are better organized and more effective than anytime in the past. The Tulane College Democrats have achieved all of the club's goals," new College Democrats President Christopher Stowe-Serge said. Wolf, former president of College Democrats recently abdicated the position, turning it over to former Vice President Stowe-Serge. Wolf will be devoting his time to the Charlie Melancon for U.S. Congress campaign.

    Wolf said the College Democrats feel a great marker of their success has been the increase in voter turnout, up 400 percent since 1996 in the Tulane precinct. "One of our main reasons for being is to support Democratic candidates and Democratic policies. The rawest measure of that is how many votes we got and what the improvement was from before, so in that sense, we were very successful," Wolf said.