FINDING THE RESOLVE

How much would you give to make your violent neighborhood safer?

Would you put it all on the line like Baltimore's Angela Dawson did?

Mrs. Dawson, who lived in an area of East Baltimore called "The Badlands"
made it her mission that there be no drugs deals conducted within sight of
her children. She called police when she saw drug activity and stood on her
front stoop like a modern-day Jeremiah, condemning the evil she saw around her.

Mrs. Dawson was killed Wednesday morning. So, too, were five of her
children, ages 9 to 14. They burned to death when their home was set on
fire. Mrs. Dawson's husband survived but has third-degree burns over more
than 80 percent of his body. Police arrested a neighborhood drug pusher and
booked him with six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of arson.
The man arrested is believed to be friends with a drug dealer Mrs. Dawson
recently testified against.

When America's 20 largest cities are compared, Baltimore emerges as the
most violent. For every 100,000 residents there, police record 39 homicides
and 2,272 violent crimes. With that history of violence and with the almost
total obliteration of the Dawson family, some people in the neighborhood
are predicting that no one will dare speak out against the drug dealers again.

But it would be a shame if the Dawsons died in vain, if their deaths
signaled nothing more than a greater resolve to stay indoors and double the
number of locks on the doors.

It might be best to compare the reign of terror that now exists in certain
cities -- New Orleans among them -- with the lynchings and other acts of
racial violence that defined the Jim Crow South.

Those who were under siege banded together and took to the streets. Their
mantra, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around," was as lyrical as it was
heartfelt. Many people died. But the resolve that kept people moving
forward when Medgar Evers was killed in Jackson, when the Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church was bombed in Birmingham, when Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner
were killed in Philadelphia, Miss., must be rekindled.

No, the fight to get heroin dealers off the streets is not identical to the
fight to win equal protection under the law, and there's no sense
pretending that the strategies used to defeat segregation can be applied
unaltered to the fight against violent drug dealers.

But at the same time, fear is fear, and if citizens could be brave in the
face of the Ku Klux Klan decades ago, then they should be able to be brave
before the neighborhood drug dealers of today.

That's not to suggest that martyrdom should be anyone's goal. Mrs. Dawson
wasn't looking to die, and she admitted to her brother that she was afraid
there would be repercussions for her testimony. Still, her selfless acts
should be remembered, and her dedication should be matched by all the
besieged people she leaves behind.