Please contact Lisa Lavaysse if you would like to purchase the full PDF or a printed copy of this issue.
Continue ReadingMonth: July 2020
Ed Note 25.29/30
Hello and welcome to all our readers, writers, and community members far and wide. The Beat goes on under such extenuating circumstances, and during one of the most urgent and unprecedented times our country has seen in recent history. We turn our editorial pages over today to our interns from Urban High School of San Francisco. Over the course of their school semesters, our student interns work to transcribe pieces sent to us from jails, prisons, and other adult institutions. We’re so grateful for their dedication to our mission, and for their consistent efforts to make this publication what it
Continue ReadingPride Month
by AGee It’s pride month, so let’s let ‘em know what it isGay love, man that’s the best love there isFemale and female, male and maleI don’t care what you are, we’re all human, can’t you tell?I don’t get why people hateLove is effing loveLGBTQ we’re all humans, no one’s aboveWe can’t change who we areWe won’t change just for you‘Cause everyone is differentMan, it’s nothing newIt’s like the color of your skinAin’t nothin’ you can do about itBut you can change your mindsetChange how you think about itGay, straight, bi, trans, and everything elseI love you for who you
Continue ReadingLife Before And During COVID-19
by MW Waking up in a cold sweat. It’s a little past seven in the morning. I’m getting ready for school. Mom’s cooking woke me up out of that bad dream. I wonder what life would be like if these were different? “Your bus is going to be outside, get there!” As I ate the last of my bacon, I forgot my dang coat. It was raining. “What are you doing?” I snatched my jacket as I ran from her voice. Thinking to myself, I can never get a break. I been so annoyed that I didn’t even talk to
Continue ReadingThe Knee That Broke America’s Neck
by Floyd D. Collins In my entire lifetime I had never personally experienced Racism. Yeah I knew what “Race Riots†were all about in prison, but I never disliked nor do I dislike any other race. I was not raised to dislike anybody for the color of their skin. President Trump recently said, “I made Juneteenth famous…†I laughed at his rhetoric, but in my 24 years and counting being in prison I never knew what day Juneteenth was on, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know what it represented. Why is that? History was taught to me
Continue ReadingMy Life Story
by Sean Walker This is an understanding of where I come from and my thought process as a review of the things I’ve lived through. I’m looking at who I was, and who I am now and how did I get there? How did I plan to live for the future? They say the sign will pay for the sins of the father. My pops The Hustler, the dope man, the player, the Junkie, the abuser, the non-existent Father Figure. Makes sense seeing who I have become the Hustler, the baller, the player, the cheater, the abusers magnet attracting all
Continue ReadingAmerica’s Forgotten
by Z In 2000, I was fourteen years old, in Los Angeles’s Skid Row. You wouldn’t believe such a third world slum existed within history’s richest country, oh, but it did. It does. A section of one of the world’s most glamorous cities set aside to hide thousands of homeless people, to hide America’s unwillingness to deal with poverty, mental health, drug addiction, and homelessness. It’s all swept under the rug, or under the shadow of downtown’s skyscrapers from the top of the world, down to a grimy, violent underworld, where you had to fight just to eat, and humanity
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Volume 25.27/28
Please contact Lisa Lavaysse if you would like to purchase the full PDF or a printed copy of this issue.
Continue ReadingEd Note 25.27/28
Welcome back to this latest double issue, 25.27/28, of The Beat Within! We hope that our community of readers, writers, and supporters are staying safe and healthy as COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country, and as our fight for a more equal and just world persists. As we’ve done before, we’re continuing to highlight the reflections of our student interns from Urban High School of San Francisco. These students have been working hard and diligently during their school semester to transcribe pieces for publication in The Beat Without. Below, Dabney describes how quarantine has prompted her to turn
Continue ReadingThe Change
by Milton Alcantara The change I am fighting so hard to change for the better is quite frankly my entire way of being. At the moment I am writing this while sitting in a cell no bigger than my bathroom back home. I am an inmate in San Quentin State Prison. And I am here because of the way that I have conducted myself, as well as the way I learned to perceive the world around me over a hard and troubled life. A life that taught me nothing but aggression, violence and disappointment. It hard wired an impulsive and
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