Javonte Speaks Out
Editor's Note: In October 2011, six Critical Exposure students from The Washington Metropolitan High School traveled to Baltimore to document a youth-led march to protest the construction of a new youth jail. Critical Exposure students used their cameras to document the event, in which more than 200 people participated. Young organizers from the Baltimore Algebra Project proposed that the funds marked for jail construction be used instead to provide better resources in Baltimore's under-funded public schools and more job training programs for youth. Critical Exposure's Javonte addressed the crowd to explain why they had traveled to be there. He said, Hello, my name is Javonte Anderson, and I'm from D.C. I'm part of this program called Critical Exposure. At our school we don't have a school library, so our goal was to have a library. That's what we were working towards. We had to call people that were in power, like school officials, our principal -- we had to go through them to get money to build our school library. We got donated books, we got furniture, and we're still working hard so that we can get towards our goal, so that we can get a library for the rest of our students. We still don't have it, we're still working hard, and it is kinda hard, because you know people back stab us, they renege on promises. But we're still trying. We see y'all and we look at y'all and see what y'all are doing, and y'all are basically doing the same thing we're doing. And we just came out to support y'all for the same cause.