Fifteen-year-old Martin Jenkins scans the newspapers, but not the usual sections where teenagers might be drawn. He checks for crime stories and obituaries about homicide victims from his neighborhood in Southeast Washington.
"I look for the crime because I want to know what's going on around here, so I can do my best to change it," Martin said.
Keagoe Stith, Anthony Franklin and Kristopher Stith toss out ideas. Producing the magazine "opened our eyes," youths who worked on the issue wrote.
(Dudley M. Brooks -- The Washington Post)
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Gunfire is often heard outside of the squat, brick buildings in and around the Barry Farm complex where Martin and his family reside, and drug dealing is prevalent. After reading about so much of the crime, Martin decided to write about it.
He and other D.C. youths contributed to a new magazine, Why? Guns Killin Youngins. Subtitled The Youth of Southeast Washington Want Answers, the publication was part of a mentoring program that works with about 40 young people from Anacostia, including Martin and his friends.
The four-month project was led by Facilitating Leadership in Youth, a nonprofit organization and student club from American University. About 2,000 copies were printed and distributed through a $2,500 grant from the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.
The magazine -- which can be viewed on the group's Web site, www.flyouth.org -- includes interviews with police, anti-violence activists, families of homicide victims and a gun shop owner. The articles are accompanied by poems and artwork done by the youths.
The poems are filled with emotion, and the interviews contain pointed questions from youths in a city where 24 juveniles were homicide victims last year. "This project opened our eyes," the youths declared in the issue. "We hope it opened yours."
In a question-and-answer piece with the owner of Southern Police Equipment Co., which operates a gun store in Richmond, Martin asked: "Anacostia is the neighborhood that we live in. There are very high rates of gun violence in Anacostia, particularly among youth. How do you feel knowing your guns may possibly be used by young people in our community?"
The company's owner, Karen Allan, took issue with the question's premise, saying, "I don't believe my guns are being used there."
Allan recently confirmed that she was quoted accurately in the magazine and said she had seen a copy. Martin also asked her about the District's strict law banning handguns, and she said, "I don't believe guns should be banned from anywhere in the U.S. I believe it is our right to own a gun. I believe that there are millions out there that are innocent people that deserve the right to own a gun."
Martin, a 10th-grader at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School, relished playing the role of reporter. He said the process empowered him.
"It felt good because many people don't listen to what I have to say," he said. "It made me feel like I can do anything I want."
The magazine also features an interview with a D.C. police sergeant conducted by Kristopher Stith, 13, an eighth-grader at Eliot Junior High School. Among other things, Kristopher asked Sgt. Derek Larsen, who has worked for years in Barry Farm, "What kind of violence prevention programs, if any, do you think work?"
Larsen replied that mediation can ease tensions between rival neighborhoods, such as the ongoing and often deadly strife between Barry Farm and Condon Terrace. Conflict among youths from those neighborhoods was behind the Feb. 2, 2004, killing of 17-year-old James Richardson inside Ballou Senior High School in Southeast.
