It’s the last days of August, and we warmly welcome you devoted readers back to another double edition, 27.31/32, of The Beat Within. What a beautiful and most inspiring magazine we have to share with our important and most powerful community of friends, writers, readers, associates, partners and colleagues, to name a few. We hope you enjoy reading this one-of-a-kind magazine to see what your favorite writers have to say. Starting with OT, as he has plenty to share this week in this editorial. This is OT reporting live from the hot tropical, muggy and the lightning striking skies
Continue ReadingHow I will Prepare for my Future…
by Ivan, Santa Cruz A way that I’m going to prepare myself for the future is that, one, when I get out of the hall I’m gonna be looking for a job for myself. I look forward to bettering myself and do good things. I want to do good for things that do not affect me. Another thing to prepare for my future is that I’m learning things here at the hall. I’m also preparing myself for the future to try to enroll myself to take some college classes or to work for construction, so when I get out I’ll
Continue ReadingSociety Needs To Change
by Lily, San Francisco I could change one problem in the world, it would be society. Why? you ask. Because social media has made it so that you’re not cool if you don’t fit the image that Instagram or Twitter has put out. If you don’t have Vape or Jordans you’re broke or you don’t compete. So a lot of people put this mask on because who they are doesn’t fit the Instagram look or is not following the trend. It’s too many rules or should I say standards for our young people. And being on social media is hard
Continue ReadingRunning Out of Time
by Efren Bullard, Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, CA Has there ever been a time in your life where you felt like time was slipping away? For almost three decades I have felt like I missed so much of life that for the first time in my life I thought, why not tell you guys what I’ve been thinking and feeling. I grew up spending most of my life in Juvenile Camps, California Youth Authority, and Prison. Never really experiencing much of anything. I haven’t really had a meal with my family sitting at a table in my life. We
Continue ReadingPriorities
by Antoine Williams, Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, CA Throughout the course of my 37 years of living I would say half of that time was spent seeking things that I thought were important. When I was a teenager I believed that having a lot of girlfriends, money and street cred were the goals to strive for. Without question, if it was not about these things it did not matter to me. So from the age of 13 to 15 years old I was in the streets with no regard to how my actions would impact me, my family, or
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Volume 27.29/30
Please contact Lisa Lavaysse if you would like to purchase the full PDF or a printed copy of this issue.
Continue ReadingEd Note 27.29/30
Greetings friends! We welcome you back to another double edition, 27.29/30, of the one and only, The Beat Within. We are very proud of our latest work, as you all continue to embrace this important platform to share ideas, stories and art, while creating hope, inspiration and new ways of seizing the moment and the days ahead. We hear this constantly from our writers, young and old, free, and incarcerated. We still can’t believe for 25 years, closing in on 26, wow, that we have created such a powerful publication over the years that continues to touch many lives, free
Continue ReadingLearning the Hard Way
by City Boy, San Mateo Today I’m going to talk about being down bad and no one to depend on. First off I just want to say everyone has a different type of struggle in life that helps that person to persevere through or to stress about. Either way you can have one or another, or both sides. I just want to say that I have that feeling of being down bad or just nobody to talk to or just unmotivated. I’m just always been down-bad money wise and relations with family, but every day I pray. I just have
Continue ReadingSeeing My Daughter’s Birth
by AK, Sacramento I heard good news one day while being incarcerated. I went to court one day and the judge himself pushed my court date back a whole month, only due to them wanting to investigate where they want to put me at. But I feel like most likely they’ll send me back home to my loved ones like last time. And the good news really is I’m most likely going to go home on July 14th. I messed up coming back here, but the judge gave me a day pass to see my girl give birth to our
Continue ReadingDidn’t Go As Planned
by William Curl, CSATF/ State Prison Corcoran, in Corcoran, CA Hey how’s the people. Been a minute since I wrote. I got two classes for summer college semester. Sociology and History. A lot of reading and writing to add to the schedule. The other day I was chilling with the fellas going over options in search of ways to motivate the stalled Life Without Parole(LWOP) legislation. The discussion quickly got heavy about how horrible judges were interpreting-enforcing laws that benefit us. One guy went on a really educated dissertation about how the Eight Amendment to the Constitution guarantees us “equal
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