The power of expression is loud and clear in our latest double issue of The Beat Within, 24.25/26. We are incredibly impressed by all our amazing contributors who courageously share their truths and art each week in our one of a kind writing workshop sessions. The end result being published in our national magazine, The Beat Within, which reaches those (young and old) in the community and local schools, to those in custody (around the country). We hope you enjoy this latest issue!
Now as the school year comes to a close, for this week’s editorial note, we’re welcoming the voices of three of our high school interns from the Urban School of San Francisco, who we’ve had the pleasure of working with as they transcribed pieces in The Beat Without. In her reflection, Xela reminds us of art’s expressive capacity, while Riley details to us his shifting perspective of incarcerated individuals. Finally, Ben describes how his opinions have changed in regard to how justice is served. Thank you to Xela, Riley, and Ben for your contributions to our publication and our community!
Made Me Think
The Beat Within has been involved with Urban for a while, and I went in knowing about past experiences, and how amazing this service partnership is. My father has worked in the community for most of his life, and done some work within the system. I have been taught about the injustices, and disparities throughout the system especially those occurring within.
I recognized the work The Beat Within has been doing, bringing a voice and creative license to those on the inside, and I wanted to be a part of making their voices heard. All of the works I was able to read and transcribe made me think, left an impact and allowed me to empathize. Every piece was well written, expressive, and a great piece of reflection. I believe everyone should have access to art, or simply a form of escape.
Joseph Weathington’s letter to himself has stuck with me with his powerful reflection on his life, and his willingness to forgive. I admire his forgiveness of himself, as well as his ability to realize his strengths and weaknesses. I also admire his reflection on his relationship with his family– his mother in particular. His ability to empathize now shows strength and love most of all.
I appreciate the work I was able to do with you all, and I hope to continue amplifying voices within the system.
-Xela, Urban School of San Francisco
Before Reading Their Own Words
I first started volunteering with The Beat Within because they are an organization that, rather than addressing the symptoms of a societal issue, work at the roots of that issue by giving people the tools they need to lift themselves and their communities out of difficult situations. This was accomplished by giving inmates the education and community-centric empathy that would ensure the weight of incarceration would not be passed down from generation to generation.
In order to give aid, The Beat Within makes efforts to understand the people they work with. I was interested in The Beat Within also because I hoped to gain this same understanding. I had no concept of what it meant to be incarcerated—or even what incarcerated individuals were like—before reading their own words. My own privileged community gave me a buffer of willful ignorance separating myself from communities that suffered from mass incarceration and overcriminalization. The only image of incarcerated people I possessed came from movies, which often show someone with a rough exterior without bothering to venture into the interior.
One of the writers that allowed me a window into the mind of the incarcerated individual was Ricky Sevier. He wrote a free form poem called “It’s Just Different” that was essentially a string of thoughts abruptly cut short by dashes. Those fragments expressed what he felt to be a lack of control over his own life. His attempts at “emotions”, he writes, were blocked by poor parenting, drugs, low self-worth, and “the game”. Sevier describes “the game” as an inevitable fight for survival. He writes that “the only choice is to take the violence to the most extreme levels” in order to survive, and that he was metaphorically “Locked on target before I squeezed” in that he had no choice. But Sevier’s identification of the forces that drove him to his incarceration do not constitute a lack of willingness to assume any fault in himself. He also tips his hat “to the few that stuck to the code—not because it was easy but because they stood on what they believed”.
Sevier’s poetry has much in common with the writings of the other incarcerated people I had read. Largely, they are trying to accomplish two things. First, they are trying to come to terms with what brought them to where they are—the factors out of their control and within it. Second, they are trying to find a way to address these factors, for their own sake and for that of their community. Many want to find a way to not let themselves be defined by their environment, and then find a way to change that environment. This manifests in different ways for different people. Some took control of their education. Some wrote about empathy. Some found religion. Some gained more of a “pro-social” (or community-centric) outlook.
This last point resonated with me because of my own reasons for wanting to volunteer with The Beat Within. It struck me that these incarcerated people, who I thought were so different from myself, wanted many of the same things. Their apparent growing sense of civic and personal responsibility was inspiring to me. I hope to take these lessons with me in the future.
-Riley, Urban School of San Francisco
Resonance
Before I began volunteering for The Beat Within, my contact and experience with incarcerated people, and especially incarcerated youth, was very limited. I did not know very much about the system itself, nor did I know anything about the people’s stories. My views on incarceration predominately came from what I had seen on television and the news. With little other chances for contact with people that had experienced incarceration, my view was impersonal and somewhat warped. Working with The Beat Within changed this, because it allowed for me to read the stories that are the most important to the people writing them.
The pieces that are written for The Beat Within are representative of both the author’s emotions as well as the system that they are a part of. The frustration expressed by a lot of the writers speaks to their personal conscience, and how they are treated while incarcerated. Reading about this changed my opinions on the justice system. The individuals that wrote about being taken away from the rest of their lives made me reconsider how people are subjected to ’justice’ in the United States. I was also able to see a lot of growth in individuals, especially youths, by reading their stories. It made me think a lot about the consequences to mistakes that people make when they are young and whether or not they should still be held accountable for them throughout the rest of their lives. As someone that is still at this stage in their life, I felt a lot of resonance here.
I would like to thank The Beat Within for expanding my perceptions about incarceration through reading individuals’ experiences.
-Ben, Urban School of San Francisco
All right, we certainly hope you appreciate these thoughtful writers’ views of The Beat Within and we are grateful for the good work they contributed to our amazing publication. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the issue! There’s plenty to take in and find inspiration from!