Welcome, Beat Within community, to our latest publication filled with the reflections, opinions, and testimonies of incarcerated youth and adults from around the country. We’re always in awe of the work we’re privileged to publish day in and day out, and this issue is no exception!
We have a special guest joining us for this issue’s editorial note, who many of our writers know for his big hair and even bigger brain, Michael Kroll, AKA “Einstein.” Michael has been involved in nearly every aspect of The Beat since its inception, and worked closely with our late founder, David Inocencio, to bring workshops to many of our current locations. Michael Kroll remains a dear friend to us all and a fierce advocate of The Beat, and he has an important reflection to share with us on the importance of Martin Luther King’s upcoming birthday and the state of our country at large. Welcome, Michael Kroll!
First, we want to pay tribute to the brave men and women — many of whom are state prisoners — fighting the fires that now threaten California’s largest city, Los Angeles. As it happens, I began a week-long visit there on the very day the fire erupted. All week, with winds reaching up to a hundred MPH, the fire tore through many parts of the city, destroying entire communities. All through the day and night, we kept our cell phones alive, waiting for the order to evacuate.
Unlike more than a hundred and fifty thousand others who were forced to abandon their homes, we were not. The one positive in the face of this catastrophe that threatened everyone is that the entire city seemed to come together. Our hearts go out to those who have lost everything, and to the brave firefighters putting their own lives on the line to protect others.
Second, we have to note that January twentieth will bring us a new (old) President of the United States with the inauguration of Donald Trump. We do not know what the next four years will bring, but if he follows through on some of his promises — like deporting millions of undocumented people (and their families) — the consequences for some communities could be just as devastating as if a fire had left it in ruins. With the richest men (almost all men) now in charge of the country’s future, things could get very hard on the rest of us.
But finally, there is something else we want to focus on, something to celebrate: the birthday on January twentieth of the great fallen civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King understood that the Civil Rights Movement is a struggle for power. For hundreds of years, the law enshrined that power in the hands of white men in particular, giving them control over the lives of women and people of color. This led to “white only” institutions, from drinking fountains, to schools, to housing, to jobs. It also guaranteed that huge sections of our population would remain outside the economic benefits that we like to brag to the world about. It created an American Dream for some and an American Nightmare for others.
But what we have seen over and over in our workshops is that power is like wealth, which, if invested wisely, produces more wealth for all. That wealth is what our writers contribute every week in The Beat Within: the experiences of their own lives, the pain they have endured, the bad and good choices they have made, the lessons they have learned, their emotions, their thinking, and finally their art in expressing those things. By contributing this wealth to our pages, they contribute to all of us. They strengthen all of us. They make all of us more powerful.
More than forty years ago in 1963, long before any of our young detainees were born, the great civil rights leader gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. And while today, the most famous quote from that speech talks about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, we choose to remember a different passage from the same speech. Dr. King said:
“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”
Unearned suffering… Ah, every reader and every writer in these pages is familiar with unearned suffering, for how can a child “earn” the violent streets and depressed communities too many grow up in? How can a child “earn” the suffering that comes with parents who are not there to guide them, or that comes with class and race prejudice that defines them before they have a chance to define themselves, or that fails to educate them in underfunded public schools, or that puts more resources into juvenile halls, jails, and prisons than into providing the resources people need to build communities where possibilities exist for all?
As we enter 2025, we hope you know that what our writers share, week after week, is itself a treasure. As a now-deceased but longtime Beat contributor, Michael Orozco, once wrote from federal prison: “Not everybody in The Beat is a gifted writer, but every writer in The Beat is a gift.”
Treasure this gift, and hope that those who see nothing but darkness inside these walls (and inside these pages) will be freed from their self-imposed blinders and see.
Happy New Year,
Michael “Einstein” Kroll
Thank you, Michael, for not only underscoring the contemporary work of Martin Luther King Jr., but for also bringing our attention to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, and for uplifting the brave incarcerated individuals who are putting their lives on the line for their communities.
To learn more about what you can do to help support our incarcerated firefighters, we recommend turning to the LA-based organization Anti-Recidivism Coalition, which is currently raising funds to provide much needed food, clothing, and supplies to our front-line workers, at www.antirecidivism.org.
To our community near and far, we hope that your new year is off to a positive and humbling start, and that you all stay safe and healthy with your loved ones. Our hearts go out to Los Angeles and everyone affected by the wildfires there, and we celebrate the incredible work of our incarcerated community fighting every minute of the day to gain control of these fires. We stand in solidarity with them and with you, always. The Beat goes on!