We welcome back our wonderful community of Beat readers and writers! We hope this issue finds you in good health and high spirits during these challenging times we are all facing. The Beat Within staff, volunteers, and community partners continue to work with extra diligence in the midst of this global pandemic to make sure that The Beat ends up in your hands. We are making the most of our social distancing and transition to alternate ways of learning and growing. You inspire us each and every day, and give us the strength to persevere!Â
For this issue, we’d like to welcome the voices of Nishad and Riley, two of our dedicated interns from Urban High School, to our editorial pages. In an earnest reflection, Nishad details how The Beat Within humanizes people behind the term “prisoner,†and connects the worlds of folks from radically different walks of life. Riley, a longtime intern and collaborator, is inspired by the aspirations of incarcerated individuals, and the agency of their voice in our pages. Please give it up for Nishad and Riley!
Breaking Down the Walls
The justice system can seem distant at times. Especially when you have to look at it from the outside in. And spending my last four year fours in San Francisco’s independent private school bubble definitely hasn’t made it easier to break down the walls of ignorance between me and the incarcerated. But working with The Beat Within has given me the axe to start breaking down those walls. Because incarceration is just a complicated word that doesn’t tell a story. It simply boxes those who are experiencing it and alienates them from being human. And that doesn’t seem fair, does it? 
I can’t say I ever thought about prison growing up. It felt distant. Isolated. I guess I equated Alcatraz with prison. It was a place for dangerous people, away from me for my safety. But that’s what I thought prison was. It was other-worldly in the least positive sense of the word.
The Beat Within has connected two very different worlds. Sure, we just transcribe letters. But there’s something about the tangible aspect of those letters that feels closer. And maybe the grammar and mechanics aren’t always at standard (far from it), but the ideas are what needs to be translated and shown off to the world. Hours behind these walls give people the chance to think. And these walls house people. People with stories to tell, advice to give, and wisdom to share. 
But it’s also important to note that the people inside these walls are different. They will not and should not be grouped into a categorization of prisoner. Some confess to their crimes in their letters, accepting the consequences for their actions. But others feel caught in a system, oppressive in its nature. But there seems to be an underlying theme for them all that carries different weight across the incarcerated groups: hopelessness. 
Different from the Obama ‘Hope,’ no matter how positive some may be about their future and working towards rising above these walls, they feel restless. There’s a feeling of not knowing how to vent their frustrations. Not knowing what to do. Reading these letters has given me the opportunity to help communicate the emotions and ideas of the incarcerated to the outside world. I can feel compassion for such people struggling with incarceration. But I can also communicate the joy some feel when they get their GED or finish writing an essay.
Emotions aren’t just for those living outside the walls. They’re universal and these people feel sad, happy, angry, scared, disgust. All of the cast of inside out live in these human beings. And the first step to understanding incarceration is knowing that we’re not that different. The Beat within gives people like me that chance to show the world our similarities instead of our differences.
-Nishad, Urban School of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
The Role of Silence
During my time working with The Beat Within, I have typed up more than 35 pieces written by people incarcerated in California state prisons. No two pieces are the same, yet many emphasize the role of silence in prison life. Writers like Osbun Walton call attention to the often oppressive vacuum free of human voices and interactions that eats away at one’s humanity and zaps one’s positivity. Walton recalls learning of his brother’s death through a phone conversation with his family. Feeling helpless to console his mother, he ended the call and was returned to the walled pocket of silence that was his jail cell. He “felt like the walking dead, lifelessâ€. 
While the theme of silence is used in many pieces, it does not characterize them best. The pieces I have typed up have been best characterized by their writers’ aspirations for personal and social change, and their desires to turn those aspirations into action. A few pieces were written by people who had written sets of lyrics for songs to be performed and recorded when outside of jail. One such song, written by Michael Mackey, goes: “I’m growing bigger, and stronger, and now they pay attention/This Haitian boy on a mission, still penitentiary livin’/I’m bringing death row hope, baby I’m back againâ€. 
One writer—Raymond Avila—described a non-profit he started with his wife while he was in prison, and about various community support groups in which he had taken a leadership role. Avila writes: “I work with a team that is passionate about saving these young men not travel down that destructive road that we all went down hurting others and themselves…I love doing this, it helps me grow.â€
These pieces made me realize that The Beat Within doesn’t just help provide a voice for inmates, but also helps foster and maintain their connections to the outside world and the communities that comprise it. For these people, The Beat Within was a way of putting something of their own creation—such as a song or details about a new support system for youth, to use the aforementioned pieces as examples—out into the world. 
Over the last two years, I have done research on mass incarceration as a social issue. Much of what I have learned has come through in these pieces. The dehumanizing nature of prison. The inescapable cycle of recidivism and re-incarceration that it creates for its inmates and their communities. In these pieces, hope—and a solution—also comes through. 
These pieces are the greatest tool for incarcerated people against that oppressive silence. They foster prosocial thinking. They allow their writers to maintain even the smallest connection to their own communities. Most importantly, they allow their writers to take back their humanity, and to take personal and social change into their own hands. 
-Riley, Urban School of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
We thank both Nishad and Riley for their time with us and wish them the best in their journey forward! Please enjoy this latest issue of The Beat Within and continue to build and practice self-care in this unprecedented time. We’re here for you! Please don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello. We want to hear from you! Take some timeout of your day to write what’s on your mind. We can’t stress this enough, but there is a place for you in this magazine! Your voice matters, more so now than ever before! Get your story into our hands and we’ll work with you to publish and share with the world. Take care of yourself.