The streets are calling
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
My unforgivable transgression? My great violation? The Rev. Eugene Rivers. I like him. At a time when it's fashionable in Boston to bash him, I want him back, at a pulpit, on the streets, in a gym, cajoling young people, supporting them, twisting their arms, whatever it takes to bring sanity to neighborhoods that are falling over the edge.
This is what I was thinking a few days ago as I sat across from Rivers inside his rambling house in Fields Corner. You remember Rivers, brash to the point of abrasive, a guy in perpetual motion, but in which direction it wasn't always clear. He was a crucial player in the Ten Point Coalition, one of the chief architects of the Boston Miracle, founder of one of the city's most successful retreats for at-risk kids, the Ella J. Baker House.
Then he seemed to get too big for his own good, which is when he was accused of thuggery in Boston magazine, hammered in the Herald, splashed across the Globe. There was an allegation of rape against one of the Baker House workers. There were also whispers about misappropriated money and oft-repeated anecdotes that he didn't play well with the other clergy.
And suddenly nobody who was anybody wanted anything to do with him. Funding dried up. He resigned from Baker House. Late last summer, the guy basically disappeared.
Problem is, all the problems. Last week, a 5-year-old boy was shot as he rode in his child seat in the back of his mother's car on Interstate 93. Last weekend, a brainy and beautiful 22-year-old woman was shot in the head and killed while visiting Boston. We are amidst a plague.
Which is why I want Rivers back. I want him on the streets. I want him helping the scary little gangsters who have nowhere else to turn. I want his laugh. I want his drive. I want his smart-alecky, sharp-elbowed penchant for saying things about people in power that they don't necessarily want to hear.
And Rivers, chastened, sort of, sat at his dining room table telling me he wants the same thing.
"I am asking, in this city, permission to evangelize 1,500 kids who are extremely poor and violent and no one else wants them, which is why they're on the streets," Rivers said.
What he wants to do is preach to the fathers in the black community who ignore their children. He wants to preach to the young women who give birth in their teens and become grandmothers in their early 30s. He wants to tell the 11- and 12-year-olds who are already wielding guns that they need to have self-respect and self-restraint.
"My relationship with Boston is as a pastor," he said. "I'm going to take my pulpit into the street. I'm not going to do it with cameras and strobe lights."
No cameras? No lights? Gene Rivers?
"My career has revolved around Rivers-as-character," he said, cackling the way he does. "Right? Right? That's a one-note song. Let's see, does the guy have some capacity for growth?"
Specifically, what he wants to do is move ahead with his shelved plans to locate a boxing gymnasium and drop-in center in a barren storefront he's been renting on Washington Street in Dorchester. He wants to invite 100 young boys in, potential gang members, thugs-in-waiting, teach them to box, give them a refuge, show them that someone cares.
"The most dangerous kids in this city who have guns can be won over by someone who will father them," he said.
I called Mayor Thomas M. Menino and asked if he would welcome Rivers back to the effort. "I would," he said. "We don't need the negatives. We need the positives. If he can help get people in programs, great."
The city needs a lot right now, more detectives, more beat cops, a district attorney striving to put thugs in prison, federal prosecutors willing to take on local gangs.
And it needs ministers working from the streets, with the kids on the streets. Now is not the time to deny Gene Rivers the chance for redemption.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 