ACTIVISTS SEEK TO AVERT VIOLENCE

Groups Unite To Force Dealers Off Streets, Out Of Site

Bracing for a potentially violent summer, Hartford community
activists are plotting several strategies to keep things cool as the
temperatures go up, including a risky plan to hold sit-ins at drug
dealers' hangouts.

Various community groups, including the Greater Hartford Branch of
the NAACP and the grassroots North End group Communities Against
Drugs, are hoping to mount a visible campaign against drug dealers to
prevent an increase in gunplay similar to last summer's.

The shooting of a girl on the Fourth of July prompted a wave of
protest from residents in the city's North End, where most of the
gunplay took place, as well as other city neighborhoods and
surrounding suburbs.

But in a year that so far has seen nine homicides, compared with just
three at the same time last year, activists want to get a jump on a
wide range of protests that will feature numerous marches and rallies
as well as unorthodox tactics.

The Rev. Cornell Lewis, who was behind one of the major anti-violence
campaigns last year, has already tried to call attention to the issue
by staging a campout at a North End street corner earlier this year.
He and a handful of followers slept in a tent on a corner known for
heavy drug activity to discourage the dealers from conducting their
normal business.

Now, Lewis is proposing a campaign in which he and other activists
would sit inside the stairwells and hallways of houses that have
become popular hangouts for drug dealers and drug users.

The "squatting" campaign, as Lewis called it, would mark another
attempt to force drug dealers to change the way they do business and
maybe think twice about what they are doing to the community, he said.

"We want them to know we're not afraid of them, and with luck,
they'll realize what they're doing is wrong," he said.

Also, Lewis hopes to aim his anti-drug strategies at various stores
in the North End that he said have long looked the other way when
drug dealers operated in front of their businesses.

Lewis said he has already asked some businesses if they would be
willing to chase away dealers.

The stepped-up efforts to keep gunplay from erupting this summer will
formally begin Friday night, when a rally and march will be held at
the corner of Brook and Winter streets, an area known for drug
activity.