Detroit youth tell 'True Life' tales
By Serena Maria Daniels, The Detroit News
MTV 'True Life' introduction: The TV series tracks three young Detroiters trying to make a difference in the city.
Detroit — It’s a feeling that leaves many Detroit teens on edge: the anxiety over walking past abandoned homes as the night begins to fall.
It’s a feeling Alyssia Akers knows all too well. One day as a junior at Central Collegiate Academy, she was walking home from basketball practice on the northwest side when she was roughed up and robbed by two men and nearly dragged into a gutted house.
“Every time I have to walk past that house I can’t stop thinking, ‘What if I was taken into that house? Would I be raped? Would I even be alive right now?’” said Akers, now 18 and who graduated in the spring.
But instead of letting the trauma get to her, Akers is sharing the story of how she turned that experience into an empowering event on an episode of MTV’s “True Life” series, airing at 5 p.m. Sunday. The show — which follows the experiences of teens and young adults on a variety of issues — shadowed three Detroit teens in an episode titled “I’m saving Detroit.”
“At first, I didn’t really tell anybody what happened. I was kind of scared ... but when I started telling my story more and more, I realized that this was a big problem with these abandoned houses,” said Akers, adding she began to hear about others who had been raped, molested or beaten in the empty structures.
In the episode, Akers mobilized members of the nonprofit Youth Voice to tackle abandoned buildings that border her former school; another teen pushed the city to pick up piles of tires discarded on a vacant lot near her house; a third helped lead classmates at Cody High School in a cleanup effort despite the threat she and her family faced of being evicted.
Akers hopes viewers will see that young Detroiters aren’t letting the city’s troubled outlook get in the way of making positive changes. The show depicts a positive spirit by youth who, despite having to deal with the lack of resources and overcoming poverty at home, are making changes for the city.
“I think (the exposure is) great because the youth are the ones really experiencing all this stuff,” said Akers of how young people like herself react to the city’s blight, lack of public safety and poor education system. “But they're not complaining, they're saying, ‘How about you help us, and let’s get something done.’”
The episode’s premiere gives balance to the dismal headlines that are cementing Detroit’s reputation as the epicenter of urban decay following its historic bankruptcy filing.
“This is actually a great time for the show, especially for youth people to not feel discouraged because of all the news that is developing around them,” said Kayla Mason, director of Youth Voice. “These kids are all very passionate about so many things: public safety, gun control, education. It’s important that people hear that.”
Detroit is home to 78,000 abandoned buildings, posing serious safety concerns for the city’s school children who have to walk by them every day to get to and from campus. The issue has forced Mayor Dave Bing and other political and educational leaders to initiate efforts to raze vacant structures near schools, targeting thousands.
smdaniels@detroitnews.com (313) 222-2175
Resource Link: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130727/METRO01/307270021/Detroit-youth-tell-True-Life-tales?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s
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