Year: 2017

Sharing Our Deepest Scars

The Beat Without

by Keith Erickson The scars of my childhood are the very parts of me that so many men like me, incarcerated men, want to keep locked away from the rest of the world around them. The Alternatives to Violence Project Workshops bring out the courage in men that you would never expect to witness within a prison. This weekend was like a whirlwind of emotions and laughter that left many of us crying, yet with the realization that our personal af ictions are so much bigger than just ourselves—they also belong to so many others within and outside of these

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Solitude? More like Solitary

Piece of the Week

by Quani After being in here for a moment, you think about life, about how things could’ve been better if you never made your move. But it’s different in your cell. As soon as that door closes, there’s like a whole different life waiting for you. It’s like a nightmare because you’re only thinking about how long you’re gonna be in there, how long you’ll be staring at that locked door. Then boredom hits. Instead of being stimulated, that isolation makes you cry. You think about your mom, about what might be happening to her. When you think about so much

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Introduction

The Beat Without

by  Michael X. Bell A lot of people often ask and wonder “How does a person manage to survive (mentally or physically) after spending nearly two decades of their life in prison? And what is to become of someone who gets incarcerated at age of fourteen and is sentenced to spend the rest of their entire life locked away in prison?” I ask, rather the conviction was just or not, how can such a cruel and unusual punishment tactic as giving kids life sentences in adult prisons, be allowable under the code of law?” And then there are those who

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The Cry of My City, Oakland

Piece of the Week

by Dejon My city cries for help in so many ways. People think we kill ‘cause we senseless, but it’s really hurt and pain. From the outside looking in, people say we’re possessed by evil. But come from where we come from, we all trapped from our mindset to our freedom. Look into my eyes, I’m the tears of my city, I’m the pain and the suffering, I come from the nitty-gritty. All we want is help, we want a lending hand. We want somebody to care and don’t give up and understand. Don’t judge us from the out, try

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To The Beat! 

The Beat Without

by Vernon Smith  Greetings and peace and blessings upon each of every one of you that listen to this beat of ours… I want to share with you all some of my own “calls for help”– the first two relate to each other and a little bit more of what I’m going through now within my own journey. And the third one will be a shout-out and a cry-out for help from all of you, as you will see… Alright now on my last prison term, which I ended up doing in ASP/Avenal from 2008-2012 I landed on the B-yard

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The End Of My Beginning

Piece of the Week

by Big Boone I used to question life. I used to plot on the lives of others with malicious intent. My own life was a test to see how far I could push myself: how much I could take and how it would change me, to hurt another person, to have low regard for life. How would it make me feel; would I be the same person after that I was before? Would it make me a better person or a worse person? Would I feel sorry or not? The things I did and things I learned made me the

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