An activist, a city adrift
People have heard just about enough about how safe Boston is compared with other cities.
It doesn't matter that people get shot in other cities or that some 11-year-old has surely shown up at school with a gun somewhere else. We don't live somewhere else. We live here.
The mounting anxiety over crime explains the annoyed reaction to the news that the Guardian Angels, those relics of the first Bush administration, want to come to Boston to make us safer.
Surprisingly, the Angels have found an ally in the Rev. Bruce Wall. Wall is a longtime crusader against street violence and has earned respect for his courage, if not always his common sense.
Wall is hosting two meetings for them today, one with local officials in the morning and a community meeting tonight.
I called Wall yesterday to ask him why in the world he thought this was a good idea.
Well, Curtis Sliwa, the group's founder, talked him into it.
"The more Curtis talked, the more I said what he's talking about makes sense," Wall said of the Guardian Angels founder. "What I've heard is that he can put some men and women on the street and take some of the pressure off the police and can help free up police to do more serious things."
The Boston police have made it clear that if there is one thing they don't need, it's a bunch of self-appointed peacemakers from out of town looking for the nearest photo opportunity.
It's sad that the Angels have found the sponsor they need in Wall, who once played an important role in fighting crime in this city.
Wall mentioned that the Angels had worked in Boston before in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That's true, but even then most people wished they would go away.
The timing for this sideshow couldn't be worse. Parts of this city are in the grips of violence that the police are plainly powerless to prevent.
The best response the mayor seems able to muster is to grumble about late-night parties, which are a problem, but hardly the crux of the problem. Outrage is beginning to boil and not a moment too soon.
Yet, this episode has given Wall a platform for getting back in the game. He has been a thorn for Mayor Thomas M. Menino for ages, lobbing volleys at him via e-mail and a late-night radio show.
In the 1990s, Wall was one of the first people Menino called when he wanted to know what was happening on the streets. That changed after Wall's high-profile "occupation" of Lyndhurst Street in Dorchester last summer, which Wall followed by demanding that the mayor declare a state of emergency in response to violence.
Even that was not as incendiary as his call this week for tourists to avoid Boston because the city is too dangerous. That was too much for the mayor, who broke his silence by calling Wall yesterday to chew him out.
Wall was feeling conciliatory when we talked yesterday.
"What's killing us in the city right now is that there are too many different factions, and the idea is to unite all these factions under the mayor and the police commissioner," Wall said. "But we're not there yet."
That much he's got right.
There is certainly a place for Wall's inspired work with youth on the streets. But the Guardian Angels don't bring much to the table, and neither do alarmist warnings implying that the whole city has become a shooting gallery.
Wall used to be a living example of how community activism could undercut crime. Now, he is an example of a community that is so adrift and fragmented that any idea, however silly, begins to sound reasonable.
The community will eventually be a central component in restoring a measure of peace to the so-called hot spots where crime reaches its peak. But relief is going to come from hard work, not headlines or pronouncements. Bruce Wall was once a person who understood that.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
