Welcome to the latest issue of The Beat Within, with some locations off enjoying a brief summer break to rest and recharge, we are still here to share these amazing authentic voices and stories with you. To encourage community and commonality with everyone that touches this magazine.
You are not alone, so we hope you join The Beat Within family by reading some of these stories. Perhaps you read something that sounds like a more challenging situation than your own, or maybe it might sound like something you have actually experienced yourself. Either way, The Beat Within wants you to know now more than ever, you are not alone. You are part of The Beat Within community, and we hope you lead with love.
Einstein is back again with beautiful inspirational words that sound like they should be automatic, but humans are flawed and for some it may be incredibly difficult, to love your neighbor and love one another.
A few years ago, I was writing a magazine article about the California Youth Authority before it was shuttered in 2023. During that research, I visited each of California’s “kiddie prisons” which, at the time in the late 1980s, held more than 10,000 children.
In one facility, there was a self-contained drug rehab. program. The young people in that unit were together 24/7. They did not mingle outside their four walls. They were insulated from the rules of ordinary prison life. Not the rules imposed by the prison itself, but those imposed by the prisoners themselves: no interracial crossovers; no befriending anyone outside one’s group or one’s gang; no personal associations that violated the rules of the street.
What caught my eye were two young men, one African-American and the other Caucasian. They were engaged in an animated discussion, laughing together, and enjoying each other’s company. I asked them if they were friends outside of this program, out on the yard.
“Oh, no!” the white kid answered. He looked at his friend who added, “We can’t even talk to each other out there. You just can’t do it.”
I remembered this sad fact, friends who could not be friends, after reading the Quote of the Week from Maya Angelou, that a number of Beat writers addressed in this issue: “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
There are, of course, many barriers that are put between people by the government itself. For example, even in my own lifetime, there were laws in some states (mostly in the southern part of the United States) against interracial marriage. A white person could not marry a black person. That was the law until 1967, when the United States Supreme Court struck down a Virginia law prohibiting marriage across racial lines (Loving v. Virginia).
Similarly, until just ten years ago, during your lifetimes, laws across the country defined marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman. Whatever opinion you hold about same-sex marriage or gay people, they also feel all the same emotions we all share as human beings, including love. Yet it took another legal challenge to cross this barrier, to jump this hurdle, to allow two people who love each other to be able to express their love in marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges).
But it’s one thing when love is forbidden by law, which can only be changed by law, and another thing when we impose rules on ourselves. Shakespeare wrote of two feuding families in his play, “Romeo and Juliet.” No law prevented these two young lovers from being together, but their families would not allow it.
In the circumstances of their lives and times, it makes sense that Romeo and Juliet would not be permitted to marry. But if you look down from above, if you can see what is happening without being a part of what is happening, it makes no sense at all. They are just two teenagers in love with each other. And yet, they can’t be together. That is why “Romeo and Juliet” is considered a tragedy.
The fact that two boys locked together in the same unit, like the boys I interviewed for my magazine story, can like each other, can be friends with each other (as long as nobody on the outside knows) is also a tragedy. And I have witnessed this tragedy many times in many juvenile halls. Inside the units, young people who rep different gangs can be friends. They play games with each other. They clown with each other. They complain together about the food, about the rules, about losing points, about staff, and about so many other things they share in common. But as soon as they leave the institution, old expectations and rules take over. Now the former friend is an enemy because someone who does not know him has declared him an enemy.
When I ask street rivals why they can get along so well in confinement, but see each other so differently when they are no longer in confinement, all they can offer is, “That’s just the way it is. We didn’t make it, but we can’t change it.”
If you are taught that certain people from a different set, or a different block, or a different gang, or a different color, are the enemy, then that is what you believe. And even if you do not believe it, you are forced to live as if you do believe it.
But when you look at the situation from above as if you are not a part of it, it does not make sense. Take a good look at someone you think of as your enemy. I bet they speak the same languages you speak, like the same food you like, listen to the same music you listen to, and are attracted to the same beautiful people you are attracted to. Why is it that human beings cannot get along with our fellow human beings, even when we are just like us?
But for all this negativity, there is a force that can penetrate it. It is love. It is what Maya Angelo was talking about when she said, “Love recognizes no barriers.”
We hope you get to see beyond the limits of your lives, beyond the barriers, to look over the fence to see real people on the other side. Allow your hearts to be open to the possibility of falling in love with anyone, even your so-called enemies, and even when those closest to you are saying no.
You may already have a girlfriend or a boyfriend from another set, which may cause you problems at home or among your friends. But if it is love, you will hold onto it, fight for it, and protect it, whatever the streets or your homies or your family tell you. That is what the poet meant when she wrote about love, “It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls.” Love is one of the most powerful forces on earth.
-Michael (Einstein) Kroll
Thank you for reminding us to share love with the world. What a great challenge to us all to try to love and respect each other. Let’s try to start by being kind to others and see if maybe it will grow. Be kind to people, even when they seem like they are at opposite end of your world, maybe it will change the dynamic. Maybe it could change the world.