1 hr 2 min
05 - The Beat Within - writing in juvenile halls in San Fran with David Inocencio Beyond the Big House
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- Society & Culture
In this episode, I talk with David Inocencio from The Beat Within. David talks about his upbringing and how he always thought he was going to follow in his father's footsteps and be a photographer, but instead in the late 1980s and early 90s that he found that he wanted to do something different and give back to the community in some ways. It was just the beginning of the gangster rap and crime rates were climbing in San Francisco and across the States and people were learning about it through music like Public Enemy and Ice Cube. David decided he wanted to make a change and was going to become a social worker and work with young people. He got a degree in social work and became a youth advocate working with young people. Some of the young people started opening up to him and sharing their journals and stories with him. At that stage there was nowhere to share these stories. But he wanted to create a platform to give them a voice. In mid-September 1996 Tupac was murdered and all the young people were devastated by his death and he asked them to write about it. The writing was incredibly powerful and he knew he had to do something with it and that was the birth of The Beat Within. From that point on he has committed the last 22 years of his life to giving a voice to young people who feel like they don't have a voice. It has grown beyond San Francisco and is a publication that has been incorporated into schools, community organisations, with adults in the adult system, and young people in juvenile halls and the community. He gets about 500 to 600 letters a month from people who have come across the writing or past writers who want to share their stories. You can learn more about the The Beat Within by heading to http://www.thebeatwithin.org/ or at https://www.facebook.com/thebeatwithin/. This episode is brought to you by Audible. With over 400,000 audiobooks to download you can access your 30 day free trial with two free audiobooks by heading to http://thissimplespace.com/audible Listen on apple podcasts or Spotify and if you like what you hear the best way you can support the show is to leave a review on apple podcasts and share it with someone you know.
In this episode, I talk with David Inocencio from The Beat Within. David talks about his upbringing and how he always thought he was going to follow in his father's footsteps and be a photographer, but instead in the late 1980s and early 90s that he found that he wanted to do something different and give back to the community in some ways. It was just the beginning of the gangster rap and crime rates were climbing in San Francisco and across the States and people were learning about it through music like Public Enemy and Ice Cube. David decided he wanted to make a change and was going to become a social worker and work with young people. He got a degree in social work and became a youth advocate working with young people. Some of the young people started opening up to him and sharing their journals and stories with him. At that stage there was nowhere to share these stories. But he wanted to create a platform to give them a voice. In mid-September 1996 Tupac was murdered and all the young people were devastated by his death and he asked them to write about it. The writing was incredibly powerful and he knew he had to do something with it and that was the birth of The Beat Within. From that point on he has committed the last 22 years of his life to giving a voice to young people who feel like they don't have a voice. It has grown beyond San Francisco and is a publication that has been incorporated into schools, community organisations, with adults in the adult system, and young people in juvenile halls and the community. He gets about 500 to 600 letters a month from people who have come across the writing or past writers who want to share their stories. You can learn more about the The Beat Within by heading to http://www.thebeatwithin.org/ or at https://www.facebook.com/thebeatwithin/. This episode is brought to you by Audible. With over 400,000 audiobooks to download you can access your 30 day free trial with two free audiobooks by heading to http://thissimplespace.com/audible Listen on apple podcasts or Spotify and if you like what you hear the best way you can support the show is to leave a review on apple podcasts and share it with someone you know.
1 hr 2 min