IN DORCHESTER, WALKING THE WALK

Citizens, Leaders To Spend A Week In Crime Hot Spot

Lyndhurst Street, with its shade trees and large, cheerfully-painted
clapboard homes, doesn't look like a haven for drug dealers and gangs.

"This is a beautiful street," said Richard West, 46, as he trimmed the
hedges outside the Victorian home he has lived in for decades. "It's just
the trouble at the top of the hill."

That trouble -- four people shot, one fatally, at a cookout last month and
reports of gun flashing and drug dealing near apartments on the corner of
Washington and Lyndhurst -- concerns the Rev. Bruce Wall. He announced
yesterday that he plans to bring an army of church members and officials to
walk, pray, and live on the Dorchester street for seven straight days
starting Sunday.

"It's almost like an invasion from the men in the community," said Wall,
pastor of Global Ministries Christian Church, which is a few blocks away.

Wall and church members plan to sleep in an apartment on Lyndhurst Street,
loaned by the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation for the week.

"I wanted to experience it the way the residents do, be out there at 12 and
1 in the morning," Wall said.

What he is billing as the "occupation and liberation" of Lyndhurst Street
represents the latest action by Boston clergy, who are becoming more active
in fighting crime.

Wall, 56, is no stranger to neighborhood "occupations." In the 1980s, he
and other activists temporarily lived in several Dorchester neighborhoods
to pressure drug dealers to leave, he said.

He has invited Boston police, MBTA officials, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and
other local politicians to join him on walks next week, he said. Seth
Gitell, the mayor's spokesman, said Menino is "very supportive of Pastor
Wall," but hasn't decided whether he will spend a night at the apartment.

Wall also plans to hold a joint rally with Nation of Islam Minister Don
Muhammad. He hopes their partnership will show youths that Christians and
Muslims are united against violence and drugs.

Georgianna Richardson, 38, said she's not sure Wall can reach the hard-core
drug dealers and users on the corner. A recovering crack addict when she
moved into an apartment there about two years ago, she relapsed because she
was surrounded by users, she said.

"I couldn't even step outside my house without people trying to push drugs
on me," said Richardson, who moved out last month. "You've got from teenage
to 80 years old getting high out here on the street."