I never doubted the privilege I possessed to have experienced an incredible journey of peer-to-peer education in college through PACE, and in 2010, as a young coordinator for this organization, I was blessed with a core of people who saw the love and value in creating a themed week of workshops around the topic of Hip Hop, specifically around Filipino Americans in Hip Hop, contributions to Hip Hop, and impacts on Hip Hop culture.

I taught a Hip Hop workshop focused on social justice, poetry, and rap, and invited my friends Jari Bradley and Richard Olayvar as guest speakers. At this time, Jari was sweeping the world of competitive spoken word through Youth Speaks, and already took Brave New Voices by storm in 2009. Rich was working on his music, recording closely with musicians like Dregs One, and would begin piecing together his debut album, Chariot to the Sun (2011). The three of us shared roots in Hip Hop, in poetry, and in the performance of spoken word, all of which took place in a tiny cafe named Java Jitters.

The workshop in itself was mostly conceptual— striving to connect the dots between social justice and rap, all the while interpreting lyrics as poetry, as storytelling. And while it seemed like a reach, Jari and Richard were two people who embodied these reaches, and having them in our workspace to share their experiences as ethnic creative artists, performers, and writers, was not only proof to the three of us that there was value in our art— it was evidence that there is a greater connection between art and community.

Today in 2018, I returned to the same little stuffy workshop space— Lower Level Conference room, Rosa Parks D— where the current PACE internship examined Rich’s lyrics from Native Immigrant (2017), along with my published essay, “Friscopinos & the Native Immigrant.” The students discussed the impacts of gentrification and displacement, and made connections to the themes of surviving displacement as a Filipino American in San Francisco through the album. Here we are, 8 years later, still connecting the dots between social justice, art, and community. As Ayana Cariaso closed the workshop, she concluded on the theme of home, and at that moment I knew I met another full circle in this room. 

It was a different coming-full-circle that I didn’t anticipate, and not only was it humbling to come back to Rosa Parks D— a space where I was transformed though peer-to-peer education and community organizing, where I honed my political views as a young womxn of color— I made it into this conversation through my writing on the same topics of Hip Hop, social justice and home. It was serendipitous to share this experience with Rich, the both of us having grown up in San Francisco, and still holding onto the dear memory of Frisco, as we continue to traverse along the lines of Hip Hop culture in San Francisco. It’s also no accident that Jari and I have been planning an entire dialogue project around the idea of home, which is slated to drop in a few months. I live in this intersection where I examine, collide and match ideas, music, art and people, to tell stories about our communities; and this complex little space in the venn diagram is home.

My heart is hella full. Hella thanks to Ayana Cariaso for putting together a great workshop, being a fantastic facilitator, and for inviting me into the interns’ learning space. As alumni, there’s nothing more for us to do than to offer what we’ve learned, so that you can take us a step further in the future. Let’s continue these learning experiences!  

Hella Recommended

• Jari Bradley | https://www.jaribradley.com/ 

• Richard Olayvar aka Ro3lay | Native Immigrant

• Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor | http://www.pacesfsu1967.com/