"This generation of artists is a generation much like hip hop itself — one that reshapes, reflects and remixes the past and innovates toward the future. It is a generation that finds its voice in a variety of languages—visual, music, dance and poetry."
This month around 300 youth gathered for the fourth annual "Upset the Setup" conference in Oakland, Ca., which yearly has brought together high school age youth from across the state of California to discuss ways to organize and to stop the war on youth in their local communities.
Since its inception, the American drug war has been a structure of institutionalized racism. And its interrelated consequences of a booming prison industrial complex, zero tolerance laws, racial profiling, biased sentencing, increasing HIV rates, criminalized youth and mass disenfranchisement have had a devastating impact on communities of color.
