No room to be a kid in Oakland

Joshua Clayton wants to set a good example for his young nephew, but growing up and living on 12th street, he says, it's hard to break certain patterns.  Crime, unemployment, and broken families plague the neighborhood he calls home, the kinds of things that make a kid grow up fast.  The challenge, he says, is to give young kids a childhood, and that includes the possibility of getting off the block and into their own.  "Whenever something starts feeling like it's going downhill, I run straight back to 12th street.  I run straight back to what I know, because it makes the bad feels normal." Listen to his commentary on Youth Radio.