Greetings friends! Welcome to another thoughtful and timely edition of The Beat Within. This double issue, 25.23/24, is full of various writings from our youth to our adults, incarcerated and free. We truly value our Beat community and the insights that they bring to our workshops and to us independently each week. The other day, we were talking to our long-time colleague, Simone, about our concerns, frustrations, and hopes with what is going on in the world. We were so inspired by our deep conversation that we asked her to write this week’s editorial note, to help us respectfully capture the world at this time, and how we as a community program fit into being a changemaker for the better when it comes to giving voice and raising awareness. We as an essential program are proud of the exceptional work we have been doing, especially during this pandemic and the outpour of protesting around the world when it comes to systemic racism in our communities and beyond. #BlackLivesMatter:
“Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name.
If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is… For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
-James Baldwin, If They Come in The Morning, November 1970
To our Beat writers, readers, and community at large: thank you for being here, for being present with us in this moment.
The Beat goes on in one of the most urgent and necessary times our country has ever seen. Amidst a global pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world are showing up to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, and the constant killing of Black people by the police. Today and every day, always, Black Lives Matter.
Our demand doesn’t stop at the trial and prosecution of the officers responsible for these deaths. We also demand the acknowledgment and dismantling of the racist systems that treat Black bodies as disposable. We also demand an end to police brutality. We also demand investment in health care, education, and affordable housing – public services that create conditions of actual safety and empowerment in our communities. We demand that the livelihoods of our country’s most exploited people are prioritized.
And we’re not only showing up in the streets to voice these demands. We’re showing up by redistributing our wealth to victims’ families, to Black-led organizations paving way in this movement, to mutual aid, to bail funds for protestors, to relief funds for small businesses impacted by the protests. We’re showing up on the steps and phone lines and inboxes of city halls. We’re showing up on social media by amplifying and circulating Black voices and experiences, exchanging information and resources for the resistance, insisting on the accountability of white people and detailing what, exactly, it means to be an ally in this time. We’re showing up for one another with fierceness and kindness, engaging in hard conversations and holding space for the vast range of each other’s emotions. There is no one right way to make your voice heard; we each have inside of us unique skills to share, and points of view to approach with.
In the pursuit of our collective liberation, we honor those we have lost – those who have been unjustly taken from us – whose lives fill our lungs and stride with fire. For some, this fire has long existed as a force that engulfs and smolders. For others, the match has only just struck. This work is difficult, this reality unacceptable, and as hard as we push we must also take care of ourselves and each other by celebrating who we are, with all our complications and all our limitless love. In the words of professor, author, and activist Dr. Bettina Love:
“The conversation has to be not just about our pain. Don’t give kids narrative after narrative about our destruction. This is an opportunity to think about the possibilities of centering Black lives at all our intersections. So tell us not only about Black folks, but Black queer folks, Black folks with disabilities, tell about Black women. Tell about all of us. It’s not about telling the heroes in the books, it’s about telling the real lives of the Black people who are putting the work in.
There is so much we can do, and the first place that starts is with young folks knowing that being Black is beautiful. Make sure the work is about joy, make sure the work is intersectional, and make sure that Black kids know the beauty of who they are. That’s the freedom work. That’s what makes us human – when you tell our full story.”
While The Beat Within has grown tremendously over the past 25 years to welcome the voices of elders both incarcerated and free, teachers and loved ones, facilitators, colleagues, and community partners, this magazine was founded – and still stands firmly – for incarcerated youth, the majority of whom are disproportionately Black and Brown.
Since 1996, we have been a platform for the young voices that this revolution so desperately needs. You have not asked for the world that you’ve been given and yet you fight for it: fight to mold it into something you’re proud to be part of, something you’re proud to pass on, something that all of us can take pride in. The Beat Within shows up for you. We embrace your voices, your full range of emotion, experience, and opinion. We raise up your resiliency, your insight, and your leadership. It is you who have built us. It is you who strengthen us. It is you we stand with.
We live for each other, we fight for each other, we make known our full and authentic selves here in the pages of The Beat Within. We heal together, we create together, we imagine together. We strive together.
Say your name. Speak your truth. The world is listening.
In solidarity,
The Beat Within