Despite the uptempo party music and the perception of free-spirited fun, it's clear that 2006 was a violent year in my Northern Californian community. But until recently, I hadn't stopped to consider the issues impacting the kids of the Bay Area in the early 2000s, during the hyphy movement: violence, crime, poverty, sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination. These are no different from the issues we're facing today. If you look closely enough, you'll see that all these issues are rooted in capitalism and imperialism.

In this episode we talk to Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who represents the East Bay, about her history of dealing with these issues while serving this community for the past 25 years; Rich Iyala, a younger San Francisco based musician who wrote a song that inspired multiple aerosol artists to write tags that read, "hyphy children got trauma(s)" and "hyphy kids got trauma,"; and T'Jon, a senior at Oakland's Fremont High school, who was born in 2006 and views the hyphy movement as a groundswell of art, culture and community.

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