Photo By David Sorcher

(L-R) Dani McClain, Ahoo Tabatabai and Dapo Fakunle are organizing alienated citizens for the election.

Part of the secret's in the name. You can be pissed off -- in fact, you probably should be -- but you gotta vote. And vote smart. No more of this "Bush won the Electoral College and the election even though Gore won the popular vote" bullshit.

The League of Pissed Off Voters (LoPOV) isn't going to swallow that again, not without an organized, informed and strategic fight. That's why local members are hosting a free training Saturday based on the league's new book, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office, which suggests practical ways to use the electoral system. For example, if you live in a swing state such as Ohio, organize your friends to vote. If you're a student away from home studying in a swing state, register to vote there. If you live in a swing state but attend college out of town, use an absentee ballot to vote at home.

Pretty smart and straight-up, like the conversation in a cartoon on page 15 of the book.

Woman: "Did you know that voting was still free? In fact, you don't even have to die fighting for the right to do it! (Knock on wood.)"

Man: "You vote? Are you smoking IDEALISM CRACK? It's more fun to not vote -- then you can criticize twice as many politicians!"

Woman: "You're a goddamn fucking idiot."

That's one reason the book's billed as "the anti-politics, un-boring guide to power." But at the same time, its message is serious.

"It opens the door to what it is to be politically conscious, thinking about politics from a strategic standpoint," says LoPOV activist Dapo Fakunle.

'Politics: fun and sexy'
Sharing that message with young people, especially young people of color, is what drives Fakunle and fellow activists Ahoo Tabatabai and Dani McClain, all 26.

"We need to start having younger people of color who are representing the interests of younger people of color," McClain says. "The reality is that electoral politics is very white and very old and very male. Turn on C-SPAN. I'm tired of that."

As a first-generation immigrant from Iran, a country targeted by the current president as part of the "Axis of Evil," Tabatabai says she doesn't feel that "white, middle-class, middle-aged, very, very well-intentioned" activists can grasp the full reality of her perspective and her fear.

"I know the Patriot Act affects my family," she says. "It's front-row center in our daily lives."

Not that members of the LoPOV consider all white men The Man. The book's jacket says the current political stupidity is actually "perpetrated by Stupid White Men of all races, genders and IQ scores."

"The whole concept of stupid white men is more an ideology than it is a physical people," says Adrienne Maree Brown, 25, the book's co-editor. "It's not that people are duh-stupid, but it's a vacuousness of people, that they are able to not take into account the human aspect of their decision-making."

That's why Brown is coming to Cincinnati on Saturday to train locals about the various models of activism described in the book.

"The book was the first project," she says. "Then we realized we had to have organization to do the things we talk about in the book."

Seventy LoPOV chapters have organized across the country since the book came out two months ago, Brown says. Cincinnati is hosting the league's pilot training program.

"The Cincinnati group is one of the coolest groups in the country right now," Brown says.

Possibly that's because of activism models the Cincinnati LoPOV is going with.

"Politics can be fun and sexy," Tabatabai says.

McClain talks about a Puerto Rican woman whose festive political party inspired the kind of allegiance usually saved for sports teams.

Training the PO'd
Brown will guide local pissed off voters through exercises to teach the ins and outs of community canvassing and designing a voter guide. She'll also discuss voter blocs -- groups of people who create a slate of values, present it to candidates, then vote accordingly as a bloc.

McClain has invited other political action groups, such as America Coming Together, to the training, in the hope that different organizations can match pissed off voters' various speeds and styles.

"We don't really care about people's politics," Fakunle says. "We recognize right now that inaction is the worst kind of action."

Though LoPOV largely targets Hip Hop heads, there's definitely a place in the league for those in the Punk/Alternative scene or those of paler colors, Brown says.

"We're basically reaching out to pissed off people, and they listen to everything," she says. "We're getting e-mails from people who say, 'I'm a Republican who listens to Country music and I'm pissed off.' We're like, 'OK, cool.' "

"There's a need to organize around that constituency, young people of color, but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for other people," Tabatabai says.

Since the LoPOV sees no difference between being political and enjoying life, they're taking their message and dancing with it. McClain says they'll invite training participants out later that night to hit up the local clubs, talking up their ideas while standing in line at, say, Lava.

McClain dreams of a day when there are a dozen different league cells in Cincinnati to suit all styles, such as a "people who ride their scooters and hang out at The Comet" league. One day a LoPOV rep might even run for office; people profiled in the book have done it.

The only thing the League of Pissed Off Voters isn't down with is just talking about it.

The free training takes place 4-7 p.m. Saturday at Rohs Street Café in Clifton. LoPOV, also known as the National League of Independent Voters, holds its national convention July 16-18 at Ohio State University.

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For more information about the League of Pissed Off Voters, contact Dani McClain at 513-289-5715 or nati_voter@yahoo.com or visit www.indyvoter.com.