Activism with style

Bonnie Boswell and five friends crowd around a table under a sky-blue tarp that provides little relief from the blazing noon sun on a recent Saturday. They are staking out the sidewalk in front of the New Millennium Sport Barber Shop and Beauty Salon, a popular spot on Crenshaw Boulevard. They are not waiting to get their hair done. They want a place to have a conversation with other African Americans.

“Like a marketplace in the old country,” Boswell says, referring to the bustling public meeting places she visited while studying in Ghana.

Such gathering places (unless Starbucks are counted) are hard to find in a city where almost nobody walks. But on this day, many pedestrians stroll past the women on their way to get a haircut, heading to the McDonald’s across 43rd Street or ambling in the opposite direction toward the Warehouse Shoe Store.

Everyone is greeted (this in a city where few strangers say hello) and asked a single question:

“Are you registered to vote?”

Answer no, and the women pounce.

Janice Littlejohn jumps from her chair to provide a form.

Brenda Roberts offers encouragement.

And then there’s Alfre Woodard.

The presence of an actor at this table, in a city dominated by celebrity, is a big draw on Crenshaw. Woodard is currently starring in “The Forgotten,” a psychological thriller.

“I just want to say I love you,” a young man murmurs to her as he completes the papers. He passes her his cellphone and asks her to speak to his mother in San Antonio -- who responds that she is registering voters in Texas.

Standing off to the side, Boswell debates a musician who isn’t registered and thinks voting is useless.

Another actor, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, arrives, and is quickly recognized from her sexy roles in the movie “Barbershop 2: Back in Business” and on the television series “NYPD Blue.”

She and Boswell go inside the barbershop, where about two dozen men wait their turn on risers set up behind two large pool tables.

“Does anybody want to register to vote?” Boswell asks.

Myles Thompson, who is waiting for his weekly haircut, steps forward and receives a hug from Beauvais-Nilon.

This will be his first election. He is 18, and a senior at nearby Crenshaw High School. He decides to register “to bring all people up, especially African American youth and the black teenage community. There are so many teenagers, so many youth that don’t vote. They actually could make the world a better place.”

As he carefully fills out the paperwork and produces his driver’s license for identification, Beauvais-Nilon and Littlejohn literally take to the streets. When traffic comes to a stop, they dash onto Crenshaw Boulevard to hand out voter registration forms to motorists, and even to passengers on a bus.

“Hey,” a man shouts from his white station wagon. “I need two for my kids.” He gets them.

These hustling women are not part of a civil rights thrust, public service group, church or the national network of influential black organizations working to register a million voters, although on this day they do partner with members of Delta Sigma Theta, a black sorority, who work six hair salons in Inglewood.

They are, for the most part, affluent, middle-aged black women who leave their homes in Hancock Park, Hollywood, Los Feliz, Pasadena, Sherman Oaks, West Hills and other parts of L.A. to add black voters to the rolls during the run-up to what is expected to be a close presidential election. They belong to African American Women for Peace and Justice, which Boswell started in response to an experience she had after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when she joined a large group that was concerned about war as a response to that tragedy. “I looked around the room,” she says. “I didn’t see many black faces.”

The Harvard-educated former television journalist grew up with a tradition of social activism. Her uncle, Whitney Young -- the subject of a documentary film on which she is working -- headed the national Urban League from 1961 until his death in 1971, during the height of the civil rights movement.

Boswell decided last year to form the women’s group, and recruited many of her friends, among them physicians, educators, lawyers, writers, stay-at-home moms, artists, entrepreneurs and actors. Using her connections, she got Aaron McGruder, the creator of the “Boondocks” comic strip, to design a poster. Hattie Winston, a regular on the television series “Becker,” and Kiki Shepard, from another program, “Showtime at the Apollo,” did public service announcements for radio that could be downloaded from the website, aawpj.org.

The idea of trolling for new voters in beauty salons and barbershops came to Boswell while she was getting her hair done. “At the beauty shop where I go, I interact with folks from all walks in the community. We do talk about politics from time to time, and there is a lot of misinformation,” she says.

So in July and August, the women spent Saturdays seeking the support of hair stylists and barbers, and leaving voter registration forms in dozens of black establishments. Then they set up their tables.

During their first outing to salons in Leimert Park, they signed up 25 voters in two hours. Seven were former felons.

“They thought, mistakenly, they couldn’t vote. In the state of California, if you are not in jail [prison] and if you are not on parole, you can vote,” Boswell says. “They didn’t know that. Most of the people we knew didn’t know that.”

Quiana Baca, a 25-year-old barber, didn’t know. “I didn’t think I was eligible,” she says while waiting for a client at New Millennium. “I had a felony.”

Baca, who does not want her crime revealed in a newspaper, served four months and was released. Had she gone on parole, she would have received voter information with her discharge certificate. After members of Boswell’s group alerted her, Baca immediately registered and also took forms for her sister, her cousin and her cousin’s boyfriend.

“There’s so much stuff going on. I want a say-so. I want to make a difference,” Baca says, as Boswell makes yet another pitch inside the barbershop.

Carine Fabius, a Haitian art gallery owner, works the adjacent salon.

“People in Haiti take their lives in their hands every time they vote, and we take it so for granted here,” she says. “You go up to people in a salon and ask if you are registered to vote, and it’s so casual -- ‘Oh, I’ll take one of those.’ It’s a uniquely American mind-set. You go to Haiti and the people who are running up to vote are illiterate and impoverished, yet they still get involved in the political process.”

As the shifts change, two of the women walk to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall, where, they report, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s oldest black sorority, and of Jack and Jill, an exclusive national organization for upper-middle-class black families, are also signing up voters.

That’s good news to Boswell, who also has friends working Mesch, a salon in Studio City. There they are registering whites, blacks and Latinos.

Back on Crenshaw Boulevard, considered the heart of the black community in Los Angeles, Boswell and her group measure their success at the end of the day by the number of signatures. The total: 49 new voters.