Welcome to the final issue of 2024. We extend the utmost gratitude and thanks for your support and participation in The Beat Within community. We are so proud to continue to provide space to amplify your voices. This editor note shares two new voices from different positions in The Beat Within family. From an older perspective, Michael A. Kroll, commonly known as “Einstein.” at eighty-one, he is the oldest and most veteran Beat Within facilitator, the true Beat Within OG. To the impressions and observations from Tess, one of our high school student interns, who has been helping to transcribe workshop writing for publication.
One of the things I love most about The Beat Within is the discussions we have before we begin to write. I have been facilitating workshops since the birth of The Beat in 1996, so you can figure I’ve been a part of thousands of such conversations. Sometimes with a single writer, sometimes with the entire unit.
But even after reading and hearing so many of you over the years, I was truly surprised to hear the answer one Beat writer, Malcom, gave to what he would wish for if he could wish for anything.
I was expecting the usual: money, girls, freedonn!
Instead, shining that million-dollar smile of his, this young African American said, “I’d like to be white,” quickly adding, “Just for a day! Just for a day!”
“Why?” I asked, truly wanting to understand. “Why would you want to be white?”
“Just for a day,” he repeated. “Don’t get me wrong. I love being Black. But just for a day, I’d like to know what it feels like not to have to think about how people look at you. I just want to know how it feels to go into a store without being followed around, without someone thinking I’m going to steal something because of my color. What’s it like not to have the cops look at you like you’re a criminal? I just want to know how it feels not to have to carry all that weight around all the time. Just for a day.”
And that got me thinking how nobody can really know how another person feels.
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Put yourself in his or her shoes,” but Malcom’s wish, even just for a day, made me think about how impossible that is. But, at the same time, how important it is to try.
Malcom wanted to know how it feels to be white, and I understand what he meant because I want to know how it feels to be Black. Or Brown. Or Asian. Or rich. Or Hindu. Or homeless. Or blind. Or disabled. Or any of the things I am not. He realized he could never truly know the way I feel any more than I could ever truly know the way he feels.
But he wanted to know. He wanted to put himself in my shoes. And that is the important lesson I learned from his just for a day wish. He reminded me of how important it is to try to feel what another human being feels, even if we can never fully succeed in doing it.
There is an old saying, “There but for the grace of God go I,” meaning that could have been me. You could become the enemy you want harm, and the enemy could be you. “There but for the grace of God go I.”
One strategy I have tried over the years is to imagine people I don’t like as newborn infants. When I am able to think of my worst enemy as the innocent baby he once was, my anger goes away. When I think about the life experiences that have been piled up on this baby’s shoulders over the years, I am forced to remember that they started life as innocent as I did, and that none of us can control how we were raised, or whether we had the necessary resources to help us grow, or who our parents are. Thinking of these things, it’s much harder to hate.
Which takes me back to Malcom. What he shared in the workshop sparked not only a wonderful discussion, but also the thinking I’ve tried to share here. It’s another reminder that there is something magical about The Beat Within. From our words, both written and spoken, we are given an opportunity to learn about “each other.” And we are all “the other” to one another. The Beat lets me hear young voices from different environments that I might never be able to hear otherwise. I learn so much by listening to what you share, and hope the learning goes both ways.
I am indebted to Malcom for making me think, for being honest enough to share his secret wish with this old white man. But he is just one of the many Beat writers I have learned from and am indebted to.
And for that, I thank you all.
-Michael “Einstein” Kroll
Incarceration Should Never Be the Endpoint
Before my volunteer work with The Beat Within, I must admit that my view of the justice system and youth who are incarcerated was narrow. I had the assumption that those who ended up incarcerated were simply offenders who made bad choices, without considering the broader social and emotional dynamics that molded their lives.
My experience at The Beat Within truly confronted and broadened my scope. I soon came to realize that many of the detained youth were not just “offenders” but rather people caught in the cycle created by systemic issues of poverty, trauma, abuse, and lack of opportunity.
Many of them wrote about how they had lived lives filled with instability and violence long before their interactions with the justice system. It was powerful reading the raw, personal, and sometimes heartbreaking pieces these incarcerated youth wrote. With their words, it was possible to get insight into what they faced day in and day out: layers of pain, confusion, and vulnerability.
One piece that is stuck in my head was by a young man explaining the loss of his childhood, and how family dynamics, abuse, and abandonment set him on a course for incarceration. His was not just a story about his crime; it was a lifetime of emotional and social challenges that ultimately brought him to where he stood. This helped me to understand just how complex these people and situations were as well as how the system fails them by not recognizing underlying issues like untreated mental disorders or shattered family structures that contribute to their criminal behavior.
I wanted to volunteer with The Beat Within because this organization upholds one very important belief: that incarceration should never be the endpoint of a story.
You cannot just take away someone’s freedom and simply call it a day. Justice is in rehabilitation and personal growth, particularly among juveniles who have been marginalized because of poverty, lack of education, and trauma.
Incarceration should not be an issue of punitive acts, but an opportunity for transformation. With proper support, education, maybe therapy, and creative outlets like those provided through The Beat Within, young people can change; they can learn and they can give back positively to society.
This life-changing volunteer work has further grown my compassion, widened my understanding of the criminal justice system, and introduced me to the powerful transformer that is self-expression. The voices of these young people will remain in my head for the rest of my life.
-Tess, Urban High School of San Francisco
Thank you to Michael and Tess for sharing their personal experiences here in this end of the year message. They have given us all food for thought to carry into the new year. It makes us wonder how great it might be if we all tried to practice more empathy toward each other and wonder what it would be like to be in their place. Could it make a difference in the world?
Thank you again, to all The Beat Within writers for sharing your stories, dreams and challenges. Together in community we can inspire and support each other. Keep on writing and stay in touch.