made significant contributions in the areas of film television and philosophy now some forty years after his death there's a growing movement of students who believe his achievements are worthy of being honored with a memorial garden today i sat down with jimmy also modern one of the founders of said movement and we got to talk about the campaign to honor the former husky and organizer of the bruce lee community peace garden at the university of washington and i started the project as an undergrad graduate in two thousand and seven major was american ethnic studies and comparative history and as an undergrad  i was working with a lot of student groups from the ethnic cultural center over there bruce lee went to you there and when i found out i was like what bruce lee wanted to know you know i mean i love bruce growing up so i instantly wanted to find out where on campus  had to be something you know where to go where to hang out and i couldn't find anything and instead when we started looking around the campus we started scene like there was there wasn't so much represented for you know young people of color or you know like diverse backgrounds and so what we wanted to do was come together and represent something in a more of a bruce and dedication of bruce really right because we felt like he represented the energy transformation and he went here i mean what a better person to very very least touched by outside hands and so because of that it's it has like a very natural vibe to it which is inspired by bruce  and kind of represents the philosophy that we wanted to symbolize with bruce lee which is harmonizing with nature community and unity you know all these things kind of represent bruce and his philosophy so we feel that the community p species of plants and stuff the idea is the way nature is as it is already beautiful and bruce was someone who understood that when he wrote about that the tao days you can go to one of his books i'm so what are some big reasons why  should be honored by you dive in particular and he talked about his importance to the seattle area so bruce bruce came to see i was eighteen went to garfield high school started almost instantly start instructing people in martial arts as a student from hong kong yeah later on attended the university of washington and when he was at the university of washington he actually taught here as well so as a student it's kind of similar to what i was doing so it's kind of full circle in that way i'm so when we think of various levy we kind of think of him as this icon of diversity and he's not just a role model for chinese american and spent for all people and that's something that the you'd have supports but this plan for the memorial garden has been somewhat controversial and some people think it's a race issue do you think it is you know i believe it partially is yeah i believe it's partially a race issue i believe it's partially a class issue  because all these issues still exist in the paradigm and the foundation of a school that's been around since the beginning of that is still in the still in there internationally and so we came out with the project we were saying you right i mean you've been getting a lot of community support to notable i'm you know supporters are c n n p c's daughter and linda his wife right i'm who are some other people that supported you guys there's a lot of people who support this concept when we did the facebook group we instantly got thousands of followers from around the world because people just love bruce south does the your dad ministration support your plans for a priestly memorial garden and they do support the plans now i have been working with the administration for the past two and a half years three years through christine kenney in architecture department landscape architecture department at first they were hesitant because the way that we brought up the issue was  it was pretty hot and this is what i was in to get in some time for young people who are young people who really are considering changing the world because a lot of young people want to change the world yeah and you're facing sometimes you're facing folks who are a little bit older who like the world the way the world is because they're comfortable in it and as young folks we look up to him like oh and it's got change and we bring that fire that passion which is great and when i first started this project i had a lot of that and i wanted to kind of really good to be known how i felt about a lot of issues but sometimes you have to learn how to speak to your audience and when you're speaking to some older administrators who are kind of who have where gatekeepers got power and who also have a whole new way of thinking you got to be respected there and they're kind of views on life so how can we acknowledge things in a more mature way without being kind of like a you know maybe you more frustrated overly emotional reaction a reactionary way to be proactive as opposed to reactionary a lot of us can be reactionary sometimes and sometimes being proactive takes a more much more you have to look at things in a much more bigger perspective could you talk about why you think it's important for you guys in particular to be involved in activism and to speak out publicly sure you have to speak out because a lot of times the will say things that no one else will say because when you get older the tendency is not always with the tendency is to start refining in and kind of being from coming from your conditioning gets more and more rigid  know and i feel like it's important for us to speak about those things because even though we don't have the experience all the time back behind our action or our vision we still have a vision with those feelings too because once you open them up a little bit you can see that again it's kind of like everybody kind of wants the same thing you know and and if you're able to open up and be a little more detached from your own view you know you can open in your circle administration has approved their idea for a memorial garden so they're now able to focus on fundraising they're currently working on achieving this through several means which include social media fund raising concerts the hip hop martial arts and communities in fact this fall they're going to have a concert to raise funds for the memorial garden which will feature several artists most notably dead prez and next story is about another you dub student john  socially conscious rapper with a lot to say  punchlines of our own and so throughout the course of the years we just do that and then after wow you know i'll come up with these punch lines that i want to share with my friend kyle but he want to be around and i don't want to forget him so then i would just take out a piece of paper write it down and then from there it just kind of turned into sixteen's and from six things it turned into songs i'm here now so so i know you performed so how did that lead into performing and all your performances i the next step is to perform i mean just get it all out there right it does happen like that for speaking i began doing that all under the basis of just promoting the music because we had a record label around in lakewood and i would come up to seattle to open mikes and just tell people hey i'm here in behalf of forever records and i'm here just to promote the music but i would do a poem because i'm right here right  so we know you year student a full time student how do you juggle between school and rapping and what you do outside of school how well i mean to be honest i don't know how do  i make sure that i allot some time for myself to study it and you know to read what i need to read to prepare for the presentations that i need to prepare for to write the essays i need to write you know and thankfully my major is american ethnic studies and that i'm interested in the subject matter to begin with it so it's not it doesn't feel like i'm it's not as well or heat right right so it's just like this knowledge that i learned in this  from my life yes so it just i'm ok with losing sleep because before that because what i'm learning here i put it in my music yeah i put it in my speech is together right right or aside from a student in rap or you said you're also an actor and a community organizer how do you fit in between all these roles man and i make sure that i constantly check my phone to plan ahead on connect right to know like to check my calendar to know the events that i have coming up because back in today's the double book a lot and it's terrible to have to call somebody and tell them like actually i can't make it because i have something else to do your triple book work you know and so with everything that's going on i just have to remain on point ok i can't be flippant with it so so where would you take that and if you could give a piece of advice youth right now what would it be with the way the world is heading in the direction that it's going it is becoming incredibly important for every single person specifically young person young people to follow their dreams to follow the thing that gets them going in the morning that lights the fire in their heart because with the way that the society is beginning to take form with the discrepancy of wealth and like it's like a good beginning to be a police state you know laws are going to pass they're violating our constitutional rights all these things are just making life unhappy in and f