A big hello, and a warm welcome to our readers and writers near and far. We’re back with another double issue, celebrating the brilliant testimonies of our incarcerated youth and their allies from across the country.
There are few celebrations we’d like to mention, we’ve been honored to begin The Beat Within workshops in Stanislaus County. Led by Marian Martino, the voices of Stanislaus County have been published in a handful of our previous issues, and we welcome them to the TBW family and look forward to sharing their voices.
Another huge milestone, The Beat Within celebrates 27 of service! That’s 27 years of producing powerful and necessary writing that bolsters critical thinking, literacy, self-expression, and interpersonal connection and community awareness. We’ve come a long way in our 27 years, and it’s amazing to look back and consider The Beat’s humble beginnings (with only 6 pages). On this anniversary, we continue forward in loving memory of David Inocencio, with renewed passion and commitment to continue this beautiful Beat Within legacy of voices in community, The Beat goes on…
Sharing the impact of her experience working with The Beat Within, we turn it over now to our intern Lily from Urban High School of San Francisco. Lily has been transcribing, editing, and responding to the pieces we’ve published over the past six or so weeks, and we’re immensely grateful for the time and energy she puts in this work. Welcome, Lily, to our editorial section!
Providing a Space for Reflection
“I’m labeled by the way society looks at me, and by the way the judge looks at me for the mistakes that I made.” -Luis, Santa Clara
Before my time with The Beat Within, my feelings on youth incarceration were relatively indifferent and neutral. The most I ever saw about juvenile justice was driving past the juvenile detention center on the way to the grocery store. It was out of sight, out of mind. I never knew anyone who had ever committed any serious crimes, so incarceration never crossed my mind.
I thought on one hand that only the most dangerous youth are incarcerated and that hopefully, the youth justice system was usually a little more forgiving than it is to adults. But I also knew how unjust the carceral system is in America. More than anything, I have learned while working with The Beat Within that incarcerated kids have stories to tell. Through five weeks of interning for The Beat Within, I have read and responded to over fifty submissions, all of whom have feelings they get to explore and be vulnerable with on paper.
I believe that providing a space for reflection is one of the most healing and humanizing things for youth who are really going through it. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to interact with the submissions and respond to them from The Beat. A breakthrough moment while learning about the youth justice system specifically was reading a prompted submission about how the government should spend its money. JuJu said, “[the government should] not spend money to build a big and better prison, it should be spent on people who are on the streets.” This really made me think about the way the justice system operates and doesn’t prevent crime from the source; instead it just assumes that high-risk youth will end up incarcerated and plans and spends for that instead. My dream is to go to law school and be a lawyer someday, and hopefully fight to amplify the voices of incarceration that society silences.
I participated in a class at my school last year (and I am doing it this year too) called Unity Project where our group went to California Medical Facility in Vacaville with my English teacher, who also teaches English at San Quentin. We had the opportunity to learn about the way a large-scale prison is run, and we got to meet and talk to some incarcerated mentors of the program. That class was truly life-changing for me, and is the reason I did this internship with The Beat Within.
Hearing the perspectives of adults over fifty and now youth under eighteen has helped me revisit some generally neutral feelings of the carceral system and how it is out to get you from the very beginning. Almost all of our Unity mentors grew up in the foster care system.
Something that surprised me while writing for The Beat is how many youth shared about their families and how excited they were to go home when they got out. This helped me to individualize incarcerated people and not make sweeping generalizations that I may have made in the past. I do wonder though where this rift in the background comes from and if there is a link between more serious crimes and a broken childhood? I wonder what other external factors come into the process of committing crimes and being incarcerated? Most of all I learned that the carceral system diminishes a human to their bare bones, and strips youth powerless, left with nothing but the power of their words.
-Lily, Urban High School of San Francisco
Thank you, Lily, for your deep thoughts on how The Beat and your Unity mentors have impacted you. We think it’s especially poignant that you highlight growing up in the foster care system. As you say here, it’s crucial to address the reasons for the crime, and not just the crime itself. Everyone – no matter who you are – deserves love, respect, and the right to self-determination.
As always, we extend our deepest appreciation to the readers and writers that make this magazine the success it is today. Keep writing, keep speaking up, and keep advocating for yourself and your loved ones. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of 27 years of service and counting, as The Beat Goes on and the legacy of David Inocencio continues.