SETTING UP CAMP FOR A BATTLE ON DRUGS

The swarm of young girls on foot and bicycles was just the sort of
attention Burnell Bourgeois had hoped to attract. As the
inquisitive-looking bunch drew closer, the 43-year-old custodian and father
of two handed each a flier, then asked them to take it home to their parents.

As darkness fell Friday, Bourgeois was one of just 13 volunteers milling
around a chilly, windswept campsite on Brook Street in Hartford, where they
planned to sleep in tents to discourage drug dealers from conducting their
normal business. If the message in the flier gets delivered, they hope more
residents will turn out for future vigils and activities intended to drive
the drug dealers and violence from this and other streets in the city's
North End.

"We as neighbors have to take our streets back," said Bourgeois, whose
pastor, the Rev. Cornell Lewis, helped organize the campaign. "I can't wait
to see how this grows in the summer."

Lewis and the other activists planned the camp-out - the second since March
- - as the launch of a summer offensive. Their hope is to generate enough
interest among residents to have two or three activities going on different
corners in the neighborhood simultaneously. Marches such as those of last
summer are planned, and soon, Lewis and others will begin "squatting"
inside stairwells and hallways of occupied and abandoned buildings
frequented by drug dealers and users.

The shooting of 7-year-old Takira Gaston last July 4 prompted a wave of
protest from residents in the North End, where most of the city's gunplay
took place, as well as other city neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs.

Eric Stamm, a social worker from West Hartford, stopped by Friday in the
jacket and tie he wore to work. He didn't plan to spend the night, but
wanted to stay for about an hour in a gesture of support.

"A lot of my clients are in the shelter system because of drugs in the
North End of Hartford," said Stamm, a member of the Community Coalition for
Peace and Justice, one of several grass-roots organizations involved in the
effort.

The camp-out is scheduled to continue today and Sunday with food, music
and, organizers hope, more people. Looking around the neighborhood Friday,
Bourgeois saw reason to be encouraged that the effort was already having an
effect. Drug dealers, once a common sight in front of two convenience
stores on the corner of nearby Mather and Brook streets, aren't around as
much anymore.

"That corner too," he said, pointing to another across the street. "There
are too many corners. We've got to take back the neighborhood."