Ed Note 29.03/04

Welcome back, readers and writers across the nation, incarcerated and free, to another stellar issue of The Beat Within! This publication is chock full of powerful reflections on 2023, and our hopes, dreams, and goals for 2024. We’re also incredibly grateful for the raw and vulnerable writing we received about the status of your mental health, feeling misunderstood, and the growing pains we all experience as a necessary step in becoming better versions of ourselves. Your words, stories, and testimonies are taken to heart, and we send our love to each and every one of our writers who is currently

Continue Reading

Ed Note 29.01/02

Greetings to our Beat Within community, and to 2024! With each new year that passes, we’re met with new opportunities to learn, grow, and to challenge ourselves to become the people we want to be. Each new year is also an opportunity to honor our journeys — however difficult they may have been — and look back on our past with compassion. We’re thrilled to be on this journey with you, and are excited about the potential this year holds for all of us.  We’re turning it over now to our good friend and longtime colleague Omar, to share some

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.49/50

Thank you for your support and partnership, we made it! We celebrated The Beat Within’s 27th anniversary of service and we made it through our hardest year ever, after the loss of my beloved husband and Beat Within founder, David Inocencio. I know he is proud to watch us from his angel perch and see that we have continued his legacy. The Beat goes on, just like he always said. David’s work this year expanded into Stanislaus and Vacaville, we are proud to share their stories and welcome them to our Beat Within family.  Please continue to send us your

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.47/48

Welcome back to another stellar issue of The Beat Within! We’re thrilled to have you with us to share the important and necessary mission of uplifting the voices of our incarcerated community around the country. As always, the writing in this issue is honest, critical, and deeply personal. Thank you, we are so impressed by the level of care and attention our writers bring to their work day in and day out.  Now, we turn it over to two of our interns from Urban High School of San Francisco, Kaya and Noah, to share their reflections for our editorial section.

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.45/46

To our readers and writers far and wide, greetings from The Beat Within! The weather outside may be frightful, but the writing of this latest issue is oh-so-delightful. As you’ll see, it’s our pleasure to showcase a range of writing dedicated to extending gratitude to ourselves and to each other – writing that honors how we came to be here, what we’re working towards, and the people and places we take with us along the way. Joining us in our editorial section are two interns we hosted this fall from Urban High School of San Francisco, Vaani and Leili. Vaani

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.43/44

Greetings to our Beat Within community! It’s a pleasure to welcome you back to another stellar issue of writing and artwork from the inside and beyond.  For this issue, our community delves into the complicated feelings that can arise with returning home, what it means to live a healthy life, who we celebrate during this year’s Day of the Dead, how “responsibility” shows up in our life, quotes from John Lennon and Toni Morrison, and much, much more. The weather outside may be getting cold, but the writing in The Beat remains as fire as ever.  As many of you

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.41/42

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!

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.39/40

Hello Beat readers and writers, far and wide! Welcome back to another double-issue of The Beat Within, 28.39/40. We’re always so inspired by each and every one of the pieces we publish, and the writing here is no exception.  For this issue’s editorial note, we turn it over to Omar Turcios, to talk about what it means to fight the good fight. Omar, take it away!   It’s OT, reporting live from Managua, Nicaragua, from the land the quakes, shakes, and under this hot sun we all get baked! I want to extend a warm embrace to all of our

Continue Reading

Ed Note 28.37/38

Welcome, readers and writers of The Beat Within! We’re back with another double-issue featuring your recent reflections, testimonies, and opinions on our weekly topics. You also may notice that this issue contains writing from earlier this summer, before we took a break from programming and publication to grieve the loss of our founder, David Inocencio. If you’ve been waiting to see your piece published, please know that it’s not lost! We’re working hard to make sure that we publish everything we received in June and July, and are aiming to get caught up to speed within the next couple issues.

Continue Reading

Editor’s Note

In July, The Beat Within announced with great sadness the passing of its founder and executive director, David Inocencio. Over the past six weeks, our Beat Within team has worked tirelessly to publish a special tribute issue of The Beat Within Magazine. In this issue, youth, David’s colleagues, former and current TBW participants, and community leaders shared their reflections on the impact of The Beat Within, David Inocencio, and the topic of grief. The issue was empowering and almost therapeutic, rallying our team to stand up and ensure that the beat goes on, as David always said. With passing the

Continue Reading