Rev: Boston `can do better': Rivers challenges clergy to help stop city violence
By Laurel J. Sweet
Thursday, May 20, 2004

The Rev. Eugene Rivers could have recited the sermon by rote.

Huddled together by the latest cloudburst of murder and mayhem, Rivers and a dozen other black clergy once more threw down the gauntlet yesterday to their Catholic and Protestant brethren to show a little faith in the poor side of town.

``We need to put hips with lips - mentor, monitor and minister,'' said Rivers, who after so many years of repeating himself and so many young people ``drowning in their own blood'' is through mincing words.

``This is Boston,'' thundered Rivers, president of the Ella J. Baker House. ``We can do better.''

Keenly aware a homicide rate soaring at a seven-year high (22 slayings since January) is ``bad for money'' with the Democratic National Convention coming to town in July, Rivers also appealed to deep pockets financing Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential launching pad to send a little money the way of at-risk youth.

``It's not like we're Harvard University asking for $53 trillion-billion to colonize Allston-Brighton,'' Rivers, a Baptist, said.

The Baker House is currently exploring ways to set up a 24-hour hotline kids could call if feeling threatened by violence or victimized by police harassment.

``It took 152 murders in (1990) before all parts of the city got on the same page,'' Boston police Superintendent James Claiborne said. ``We need to get our act together. A lot of good things have happened in the city in the past decade. We don't want to take a backward step.''

Men in general were challenged to show their faces in the community and take a more positive role in the lives of children.

``We have enough chiefs, we need some foot soldiers,'' said Pastor Dmuayne Frazier of Revival Time Flame of Fire Church in Hyde Park. ``There's nothing to be afraid of because we represent hope to a generation demonstrating hopelessness.''

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston could not be reached last night.