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David Inocencio Co-Founder | Director of The Beat Within www.thebeatwithin.org Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Lee: In your experience of working with youth in the San Francisco Public Defender's juvenile division office and the Center on Juvenile Criminal Justice, how would you describe the relationship between these facilities administration and the youth? David Inocencio: Well, when I was at the center of Juvenile and Criminal Justice, I was dealing with the same population that I was dealing with when I was working at the Public Defenders office, and that was the San Francisco juvenile hall, which is known in San Francisco as the Youth Guidance Center...YGC. And San Francisco being its own city and county it's a rather small juvenile hall. It holds, in any given day, it can hold a population of 80 young people to 120 young people. And I think, the youth that are, describing the youth that are in there...like what kind of kids are in the hall? L: Well actually like, the relationship between the administrations, like, umm...I'm trying to figure out how to word this... D: Like counseling? Like were they supportive, the staff of the kids, like that kind of thing? L: Yes, that's what I was trying to get at. D: San Francisco juvenile hall has a small hometown feeling, but, these counselors that work inside these units, most of them have been around for a while. And, they are comfortable as counselors, I think, or they are set in their ways as counselors and the young people who come in the juvenile hall...I'm thinking this out loud as I talk to you...have a, sort of grow up in the system... they come back... it's the revolving door obviously. So the counselors get to know the kids, the young people get to know the counselors, and it becomes pretty comfortable... I think it's a pretty comfortable environment. There's a lot of manipulation that goes on, on both sides, and, there's a lot of mixed messages that go on, with the counselors and young people, and what happens also is that the counselors get frustrated because the people that are in control of their road, and control of them, the paper pushers and the bureaucrats, don't always communicate thoroughly with these front line counselors, and...so there is a lot of frustration and mixed messages up there. And some take the job... how am I trying to say it, its inconsistent, I guess. I haven't thought about it in a long time. It's inconsistent because some people go by the rules, the manual, the book, and others go beyond that and truly try to live up to the name counselor, and some just don't care and its all about a paycheck... and its being a civil service worker... being in the union... and I think that of course effects the young people, how the adults who are in the their lives are doing their job. If they are doing it right, and are trying to make a difference then I think the young people are gonna get a lot out of it. And if they are more about watching the clock and keeping kids locked up, or just not taking chances with the young people in a positive way then its gonna cause discomfort and problems, I think. L: Could you please give me some information on the history of The Beat Within? D: It was an idea in the early 90's, when I was working in the public defenders office, it was something that came to mind, not so much "The Beat Within", but giving young people an opportunity to share their written work, share their poetry, share their art work. When I was working in the public defenders office, sitting in these young peoples cells, talking to them and listening to them... a trust came out of my work there... between the young people and myself, and they would open up their diaries... and their art work books and share personal love letters and letters to families... and I was just so touched by what it was they were writing. And I thought at the time... wouldn't it be cool if these young people could share this work... with the larger community... with their peers... with the elders that are in control of their lives? And that was pretty much the extent of that... I would always think that when I would see these amazing little poems or amazing little letters and little did I know that 4 or 5 years later I would have the opportunity to create something from just that. And The Beat Within came about through... I'm gonna say through a lot of good people but mostly a lot of hard work on my part where I really took my job as a youth advocate really seriously, and I got a pretty good reputation within the juvenile justice system in San Francisco... from the probation officers and judges and various lawyers and so forth and community based people and that...when I had the opportunity to create such a writing program, conversation classes in the hall, the doors opened so quickly. There was not a hesitation on the part of the system when I told them that I wanted to start a writing workshop, I want to do a conversation class in a juvenile hall. Cause they knew that I didn't have a teaching credential, they knew I didn't teach big classes, I was a social worker... that was my background and I was totally good one on one but as for teaching... this is a roll of the dice on my part. And, I was very comfortable going at them because I had the support...when I came on board with the Pacific News Service in 1995 I shared my vision with the executive director... a dream that I had back in 1991 about giving young people a voice in the hall... she was very supportive of going after that dream and capturing that vision. So I knew that I had colleagues that were in my corner... it wasn't just me going in there by myself... I had the executive director who was ready to support me if the doors opened. And low and behold the doors did open and the first workshops was in January of 1996 in the girls unit in San Francisco Juvenile Hall and I'm not going to say it took off from there but... the publication didn't start right then and there, it took 9 months for the paper to come out. The first 9 months... we did surveys, conversations classes about issues of the day, a little bit of writing, this and that... we'd bring in topics, they'd write, we'd bring in food to entice the kids to come through and what have you... and I would occasionally get their pieces into another youth publication called YO which is also part of Pacific News Service, YO stands for Youth Outlook. Sometimes I'd get it into the local news paper in the city here... called the San Francisco Examiner. But that wasn't enough for these young people. They were writing and writing, and they kept calling me, "Dave what are you doing with my writing, I never see my writing, I write for you, I never see it"...and I really never knew how to answer that because I wasn't thinking publication at the time... and what really triggered that was I think, well I know what triggered that... it was the death of Tupac. When Tupac was murdered that was the topic of the week. The young people either paid tribute to him, or talked about why they hated him, or talked about why they thought he wasn't murdered or why he was hiding out, or... how they felt about this rapper/entertainer... and this writing was really powerful. And I went to Sandy, the executive director, "we need to put this out, the kids need to see their writing." And from that point, it was almost like a passing, she said, "yeah lets do it", and I said "great, lets do it, lets call it The Beat Within", and it was this 2 minute exchange, and from that point in September of 1996, we did a weekly publication ever since. So it started with the girls unit in January, and within those 9 months, I picked up a few more units in the San Francisco juvenile hall, and, by September we had this first issue, on the death of Tupac, we had this 4-page publication... which essentially grew in every unit in the San Francisco juvenile hall and their county camp... and at times it would hit 8 pages sometimes 12, but it was always around that size, the first month of the publication. Slowly but surely we worked our way into...we were invited into other counties, first it was Alameda county... and that was a whole other bunch of workshops... and a bigger county... they hold about 300 kids in their juvenile hall and the publication sort of just grew and its grown organically ever since. Its never been something that I've pushed to grow, but it sort of just happened by word of mouth, by people hearing about it, giving us a call and a soliciting us and... I've taken the chance and till this day we are doing 50 workshops... in...I don't know how many counties now, but not just in the Bay Area... we are also in Arizona, we are also in Virginia, San Louis Obispo...which is in the middle of California... and we get people writing us from all over the United States and wanting to share their stories, poetry, commentary with The Beat Within and its been an incredible ride to give young people an outlet... to give young people an opportunity to tell their stories... to teach one another and I think that's what the Beat is all about... its about us giving young people a chance to form their own ideas and to realize that they do have a voice and that they...from their pain, from their experiences, the good and the bad, most times bad... it can help another person. And it helps the young person...I hear it time and time again...that they say, "its good to read The Beat cause I realize that I'm not alone." "It's so important to feel that I'm not alone." Its always reassuring that someone else has it worse or the same as you, or just gives you some pointers with how to live your life maybe a little bit smarter. I don't want to take credit to saving many lives but I do think that people have been touched by The Beat and they save their own by just listening to one another. The Beat is totally a two way street... we need these young people as much as they need us... if they take the publication seriously it is them that make the publication what it is and it is them trusting us. They see us a community program... we don't receive any money from the government or the system... they know that we are a community program, they know that we leave our politics... for the most part at the door... us facilitators don't come in with an agenda... or... we don't get on our soap boxes and preach to them and tell them to say no to drugs and stay away from prostitution or gangs. That's something that they have to figure out for themselves... if anything, we give them a form to express themselves and learn how to get their pains off their chest and learn how to hopefully make better choices. It's not to say that I don't get on my soap box sometimes and say to say no to drugs and what not. If it goes that way then of course you step up and play teacher or elder and wear that hat. But for the most part its us facilitators going in and asking numerous questions and getting them to realize that they do have a voice and do have an answer. L: Yeah, participating in the workshops we conduct with the ASP students... I've asked myself when a facilitator is suppose to step when the conversations get out of hand. David Inocencio: Yeah, exactly. And I think its you being the broken record, and its you constantly reiterating the guidelines, or what is respectful for The Beat Within and what... what the parameters are that they can work in... and not to incriminate themselves or cause more problems for themselves in any sense of the word, or cause some kind of drama in the unit that they are housed in.
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