Welcome to our year-end double issue, 23.51/24.01. What a year we have had! Thank you all for making The Beat Within the success that it is. We could not do it without you all. As for this issue, there is so much good writing that awaits you readers, we are grateful you stopped by this latest editorial note. As some of you know, we have an amazing partnership with the students at the Urban School of San Francisco. Throughout the school year (for some even during the summer) our high school interns are hard at work transcribing pieces of The Beat Without and supporting our community workshops. Here we’re featuring the reflections of two of our interns, Tara and Sally, who both provide insight into their experiences. In Tara’s piece, the pieces of The Beat Without are like a portal in her hands, fostering a sense of connection to an individual she’ll never know face-to-face. In Sally’s essay, The Beat has given her a chance to see incarcerated folks as individuals, rather than a group solely defined by their common circumstance. We’re so grateful for our partnership with the Urban School, and to be able to work with young people on the outs to challenge perceptions of incarceration. Stay tuned for more of our interns’ reflections! Enjoy the following!
Fixing The System
Last year, I took a Constitutional Law class at my high school. Through this experience, I was able to formulate a more nuanced understanding of the US judicial system, as I now understand that this system is broken. We live in a society in which criminalization and incarceration are the goals while rehabilitation is disregarded. Thus, many institutions neglect to improve society as they fail to support those incarcerated along a path of healthy progression.
I left the class with a desire to learn more, to take my interest outside of the classroom, and provide support in any way that I could. I chose to intern for The Beat Within because I believe that rehabilitation programs are a vital step necessary for those incarcerated to become effective members of society. Furthermore, rehabilitation programs such as writing and art classes give those incarcerated an opportunity to learn new skills, expand their passions, and find ways to channel their thoughts and feelings productively. The Beat changes lives by giving a chance to those who felt otherwise lost, hopeless, or already too far gone.
Although I am not forming face to face relationships, and the people writing to The Beat do not know who I am or that I am reading their work, I feel an internal connection to these individuals. Opening a packet and reading the pages in front of me is like holding a portal to someone who I otherwise would never have come into contact with. The moment in which my experience is the most informative and transformational is when I sit in my school’s student center, typing the words sent to me from a penitentiary while my ears are filled with the sound of my conversing classmates.
Many of the pieces I read speak to society as their audience, advocating for opportunities for youth to get out of the hood, to get an education, and to make a life for themselves that doesn’t involve going to prison.
They aren’t saying forget the system, they are saying ​change​ the system, fix t​he system. They are urging us to establish programs that help at-risk youth, to provide increased school funding, and to foster a greater sense of care and respect for people of color/from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Here I am, standing between the world within and the world outside. I look up and see privilege and money and power, a stark contrast to the words in front of me.
The work I read is not only informative and powerful, but also eloquent and personal. From stories to letters to poems, I am constantly engrossed in whatever it is that has been written.
The most touching piece I received was a poem called “The Lent,†by R. Bankston aka Nephew, from San Quentin State Prison. The end is the part that stuck out most to me:
“What I wish I never lent
got spent, bent and misplaced
It still bug me to this day
In the mirror asking “Why you give it away†……â€
These last four lines have stuck with me since I read them a couple months ago. This poem really made me think about myself and the things I have in my life that I take for granted. When I read it, this poem gave me chills. While society tends to portray all those incarcerated as merely violent beings, I have learned that this notion is far from the truth. Those incarcerated do have something to offer society, in fact there is so much talent, passion, and joy that is hidden away. Society needs to stand by it’s youth rather than shunning them away.
-Tara, Urban School of San Francisco
Understanding The Writers of The Beat Within
Typing for The Beat Within has provided me with the opportunity to read the writing of people who live very different lives from me. Although I cannot begin to try to relate to many aspects of the lives of the writers whose pieces I read, by reading their words and stories, I was able to build up a person in my mind to match each writer… a person with feelings, stories, experiences, goals, and regrets. I was able to extract bits and pieces with each word I read to imagine a person behind the writing. And for the writers whose work I read more than once, I was able to keep adding to this image.
It is important to me that I got this chance, and I wish more people could because I now see these people, who have been involved with incarceration, as individuals. Before having narratives to base my image off of, I saw incarcerated people as one group. I didn’t know enough about any of them to alter my image of a group into individual people who share this one thing in common: incarceration.
I especially enjoyed reading the writers’ plans and goals for self-improvement. I admire the program for prompting them to think and write about things they may not have had the time and space to, if they were not involved with The Beat Within.
Sometimes it was difficult to read someone’s words and just keep typing because I felt like I was minimizing their experience. I didn’t want their stories to only be words that I see and then type onto a document. Some stories took me longer to write, not due to their length, but their depth.
I hope to continue involvement with The Beat Within beyond the time my school has provided because I want to keep helping these writers’ voices be heard and I want to keep adding more individual narratives to the small group I’ve gathered during my time with The Beat Within.
I want to say thank you to Simone and David for coordinating with the students at Urban because not only have they given the people in The Beat Without program a platform for their voice, but they have given Urban students a chance to hear these narratives and learn from the writers.
-Sally, Urban School of San Francisco
We hope you enjoyed these two essays by our young friends as much as we did. We certainly hope this is not the last time we hear from them either. With that said, writers of The Beat Within, please know your words truly go beyond the walls – juvenile halls and prisons, schools and organizations you are writing from. You are being heard, so take advantage to teach and share with the world! See you all soon.