Urban terrorists
The bodies are mounting and so is the outrage, for the moment at least. Welcome back to Boston, Guardian Angels. We can use all the help we can get.
The slaughter in Boston's neighborhoods is about black-on-black violence, with an occasional white person caught in the cross fire. It is about the few terrorizing the many. These urban terrorists are the terrorists we should be worrying about most. They are armed; they are dangerous; and they live among us.
But stopping the killing is about more than putting a cop on every corner. There is no one answer. It is about doing something about children bearing children and fathers dodging responsibility. It is about doing something about our scandalous high school dropout rate. It is about doing something about the drugs and the guns that are everywhere. It is about, no less, what we value.
And, make no mistake, it is about economics. Andrew Sum and his colleagues at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University draw a devastating picture of what is happening to young black men in an economy increasingly driven by the forces of globalization and technology. Among black male dropouts age 16 to 24, only one in three was working at all in 2005, far lower than the numbers for same age whites and Hispanics. The loss of industrial jobs and the influx of illegal immigrants have hurt black men in particular, Sum says.
"Many of these men will end up being involved in criminal activities during their late teens and early 20s and then bear the severe economic consequences for convictions and incarcerations over the remainder of their working lives," the Northeastern report says. And many more innocent victims like Chiara Levin, age 22, and Quinntessa Blackwell, age 18, will die.
America's rising income inequality is the scorecard by which we can measure the splintering of our society. In a speech in February, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned how globalization and technological innovation are widening the gap between the best and the brightest and everyone else. The future is bright if you are a "superstar," as Bernanke calls them. What's the future if you are a dropout on Bowdoin Street and the competition is a billion Chinese and Indians?
Any solution has to begin in the families and the neighborhoods under siege. Ultimately these kids have to believe there is a path to a better life, and the way to get there is not with a gun. They have to opt to be part of the society, not apart from it. Unless we can bring some opportunity to these neighborhoods, these kids, nothing is going to change.
It is incredible to me that in the middle of this carnage Habitat for Humanity has spent years going around with a tin cup to corporate Boston begging for money to build 22 condominiums and some retail stores on Blue Hill Avenue at Intervale Street, near the heart of Boston's killing zone. This is the largest urban project ever built in America by Habitat and is exactly what a neighborhood like this needs. Habitat, which has raised about $2 million, has completed about half the project. But it is still about $2 million short. Any good corporate citizen looking for a way to make a difference need look no further.
Foreclosures are running at record levels, particularly in working-class neighborhoods like Roxbury, Dorchester, and Hyde Park, where sometimes-sleazy subprime lenders expanded in the days when housing prices only went up. The killing goes on. And the good people of these neighborhoods hunker down, held hostage by the terrorists.
There is no higher mission for a local newspaper like the Globe to report on what is happening in neighborhoods like these. You can then decide whether it is your problem or not.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902. 
