Welcome to Amped Up. This is Ryan Knight. And thank you guys for being so patient as I'm transitioning now over to Anchor. I appreciate all your patience. I know some of you have been tweeting me where's the

podcast where's the podcast the podcast is back today and we have a very special

guest today so please welcome Michaela Wilkes.

She is a Democratic Socialist who is challenging Steny Hoyer

in Maryland's 5th Congressional District Primary,

which is on June, which is this Tuesday, June 2nd.

Michaela, welcome to Amptup.

Hi, thank you for having me.

You know, you have such a compelling backstory.

Do you want to start off by just sharing with our listeners

a little bit about your journey to running for office and kind of what inspired you to run.

Yeah, so I wasn't always politically engaged because I didn't trust in the political process.

I didn't trust politicians either.

But when I was younger, my aunt died on September 11th.

She was one of the victims inside of the Pentagon.

And I had just began suffering

from the grief of losing her.

And so I started skipping school and running away from home

and just hanging around with the wrong crowd.

But instead of having someone to talk to or providing me with someone to talk to, I was met with

open arms with the criminal justice system.

For every one day I would miss of school, I could be sentenced to 10 days in jail even if I was just late to a class I could

...