Hip Hop Think Tank Mission

Who We Are:

The Hip Hop Think Tank (HHTT) of California State University, Northridge (CSUN), exist to facilitate, provoke, and realize positive movement through academic analysis, research and critical discourse relative to issues which impact and/or emanate from the world of hip hop. HHTT represents the merging of Hip Hop culture with academia, completing the core components of Hip Hop Culture by advancing Hip Hop’s political, social, and economic evolution through community activism, organizing, and mobilizing the hip-hop generation. We do this by maintaining local, national, and global communication between Hip Hop organizers, activism, artist, and students via the Hip Hop Think Tank annual Scholarly Journal and its corresponding website, pod cast, blogs, publication, and other media outlets.


What We Want:

1. We want freedom and the social, political and economic development and empowerment of our families and communities; and for all women, men and children throughout the world.

2. We want equal justice for all without discrimination based on race, color, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, creed or class.

3. We want the total elimination of poverty.

4. We want the highest quality public education equally for all.

5. We want the total elimination of racism and racial profiling, violence, hatred and bigotry.

6. We want universal access and delivery of the highest quality health care for all.

7. We want the total elimination of police brutality and the unjust incarceration of people of color and all others.

8. We want the end and repeal of all repressive legislations, laws, regulations and ordinances such as three strikes laws; federal and state mandatory minimum sentencing; trying and sentencing juveniles as adults; sentencing disparities between crack and powdered cocaine use; capitol punishment; the Media Marketing Accountability Act; and hip-hop censorship fines by the FCC.

9. We want reparations to help repair the lingering vestiges; damages and suffering of African Americans as a result of the brutal enslavement of generations of Africans in America.

10. We want the progressive transformation of American society into a Nu America as a result of organizing and mobilizing the energy, activism and resources of the hip-hop community at the grassroots level throughout the United States.

11. We want greater unity, mutual dialogue, program development and a prioritizing of national issues for collective action within the hip-hop community through summits, conferences, workshops, issue task force and joint projects.

12. We want advocacy of public policies that are in the interests of hip-hop before Congress, state legislatures, municipal governments, the media and the entertainment industry.

13. We want the recertification and restoration of voting rights for the 10 million persons who have lost their right to vote as a result of a felony conviction. Although these persons have served time in prison, their voting rights have not been restored in 40 states in the U.S.

14. We want to tremendously increase public awareness and education on the pandemic of HIV/AIDS.

15. We want a clean environment and an end to communities in which poor and minorities reside being deliberately targeted for toxic waste dumps, facilities and other environmental hazards.