Category: Editor’s Note

Happy New Year! Welcome to our first issue, 27.01/02, of the new year! Thank you all for your time and work and for playing such a vital role in this one of a kind publication we know and love, The Beat Within.  For 25 plus years we have been doing the graet work and this magazine is proof! Thank you all for being a part of this journey and embracing with us this latest chapter, 2022. Without further ado, lets’ pass the keyboard to our dear friend and colleague, OT!  Welcome! It’s OT once again reporting live to you from

Welcome to our year-end issue, 26.49/50, of The Beat Within.  What a journey we have all been on, as the Covid pandemic continues, and adjustments in our day to day lives are necessary to move forward in a healthy and safe manner. We are thrilled that our longtime colleague and friend, Alyssa, whom many of you know, has embraced the opportunity to take us into 2022 with her thoughts on the past year and of course goals for the upcoming new year, with the last editorial note in 2021  Before we get there we too want to personally thank you

Greetings! It is hard to believe it is the month of December. Where does the time go? We are quickly approaching the winter holidays, as we are weeks away from the new year, 2022, doing our best to wrap up 2021, as we approach our year-end issue. While looking forward to taking a break in the action, as we will take our annual break between Christmas and New Year’s. Until then, The Beat goes on… the workshops continue, and the hard work behind the scenes for this one of a kind publication, The Beat Within. This week we deliver you

Greetings friends! Welcome to double issue 26.45/46!  We know you will LOVE the writings featured in this latest issue, but before you check out the whole magazine, allow us to share the other night. Thanks to the support and sponsorship of the California Endowment, our 25th Anniversary online event “Why I Write”. The night was amazing, with heartfelt stories, poems and testimonies from former Beat writers followed by questions from the audience. We could not ask for a better writer and friend to break down the other night’s festivities than OT, who will share his take on this past Sundays

Greetings friends! Welcome to double issue 26.43/44.  As we continue to celebrate our 25th year of service, we are honored to have our colleague OT share the latest. The other night during our workshop, OT was inspired by us all to rap the following piece to the young men during a recent workshop. We encouraged him after the session, to build an editorial note around the piece and that he has. Thank you.  This whole issue is amazing, as we are thrilled to showcase all the writings and art featured in this issue from our amazing workshop participants who step

We would like to welcome you readers back to another double dose edition, 26.41/42, of the one and only The Beat Within. This is the only magazine keeping it real for you readers one thousand percent for 25 years! This week we pass the mic or should we say keyboard to our dearest colleague, OT.  Most of you know OT by now, if it’s through this editorial note, or for the few of you who have met him over Zoom in our workshops. Regardless, he is great person with plenty of heart and we think his following message will truly

Greetings friends of The Beat Within! Welcome to our latest issue, 26.39/40. It is such an honor to share with you all this latest publication of writing and art from inside juvenile hall and beyond. Over the last month, we have been incredibly touched and humbled when dear friends, colleagues, peers, associates, and even strangers reach out to us and offer their respects to us for accomplishing 25 years of The Beat Within. It seems like yesterday we were just getting this program off the ground in San Francisco.  Fast forward  25 years and wow, have we seen and done

As we embrace our 25th anniversary of this good work, it is only right to look back on how this all began.  There are several moving parts that play a key role in The Beat Within’s success, besides the San Francisco Juvenile Justice Center aka Youth Guidance Cntr (YGC), aka the “Mothership” for being so open to the idea of our weekly groups back in 1996. It was Marynella Woods, former social worker in the Public Defender’s Office Juvenile Division, taking a chance on our founder, David, way back in the early 1990s.  It was also Jack Jacqua, cofounder of

Happy 25th Anniversary to the one and only, The Beat Within! What a benchmark! What an amazing journey! We have definitely learned plenty from those early days back in the 1990s, to where we are today, September 2021.  We are humbled and full of gratitude for this trek we have been on. From the early days, when San Francisco, the mothership, was where we were birthed the magazine, as the youth shared their feelings on the death of Tupac Shakur, to where we are today in nearly 25 + sites. We are touched and very proud to be on this

Greetings! We are incredibly impressed with the amount of writing many of you are sharing with us each week, thank you.  We would like to welcome you readers back for another double issue of writing and art from our amazing friends – young and old – inside and outside of the system. We are also incredibly grateful to you writers who are embracing this opportunity for the first time.  The chance to have your voice heard is important. To tell your story is important and to educate your take on our topics means plenty to us and our many readers.