10,000 Men, a volunteer organization of black men who pledged to police their Philadelphia neighborhoods in order to dent the city’s intractable murder rate, got tons of press coverage last fall when its legions were set to hit the streets. But since then, the group has been bogged down, and enthusiastic volunteers have been left scratching their heads.
(Sounds like everything else Wyclef’s involved in! Okay. That ain’t ‘Clef. But it could be, right?)
More than five months after [former police commission Sylvester Johnson’s] announcement, why can’t [volunteer] Mark Ensley find the 10,000 Men? Simple: The movement has been marred by declining momentum, poor communication and shoddy organization. It’s not that they’ve given up; they haven’t. But the difference between the movement at the Liacouras Center and the movement today is drastic. As Ensley said, “This is too important not to do right.”
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The project’s organizers were so hyped about this idea that in the month after the…rally, they wouldn’t tolerate basic questions of logistics. Consider what happened a week after the Daily News ran the mid-October editorial “Nine Concerns We Have About 10,000 Men.” It began by saying, “Of course we hope it works,” and raised a few good points, like No. 4: “Encouraging unarmed men to intervene in conflicts between people with guns is not only naive, but dangerous.” About a dozen representatives from the movement — including Gamble, radio executive E. Steven Collins and spokesman Norm Bond — walked in to the Daily News offices and accused its staff, in a roundabout way, of being “an enemy of the African-American community,” as columnist Stu Bykofsky put it. “It seemed to me almost as if we didn’t have a right to ask questions,” Byko later said.
Can You Find the 10,000 Men? [Philadelphia City Paper]