Drifting away from the prime of life

A man-sized cross, draped in unseasonable black cloth remains beside the Greater St. Matthew's Baptist Church at 23rd and Fitzwater streets. Good Friday has passed, but the mourning cloth remains in front of daffodil bed waiting to be deadheaded. Last Friday, Nafes Johnson, a 19-year-old youth minister, was shot and killed nearby by a stray bullet as he rode in a church van through this South Philly area known for heavy drug trafficking. "Statistics say that if you have parents who are in prison, you will probably end up in prison. Statistics say that if you have parents addicted to drugs and alcohol, you will probably end up addicted to drugs and alcohol. But I stand here before you today as a living testament that there is another way, God's way," Johnson said on April 8, the date of his confirmation before the large congregation of his church. Two weeks later, he was dead. Recently, the Rev. Steven Avinger, pastor of St. Matthew's, gave an assignment to his congregation -- set up a ministry to support those in substance abuse recovery and their families. So they did. On May 7, 2000, the Ministry of Social Services of GSMBC began offering spirituality-based 12-step recovery programs. Sadly, the outreach into the all-day, all-night, open-air drug market of South Philadelphia enjoys such a high product demand that when police displace sellers, turf wars ensue. Perhaps Johnson was caught in one the night he died. On the dark corners around Taylor and Tasker streets, the drug trade is heavy. I asked my neighbor, who is in and out of drug recovery, where the activity is heaviest. He laughed. I had a map in my hand, so I continued, "Let's just say we start at 24th and Moore streets." He said, "Yep." "OK, going north, where is the worst? Pierce?" "Yep." "Watkins?" "Yep." "Mountain?" "Yep." "Fernon?" "Yep." I sighed. "OK, meaning the worst, how about Greenich?" "Yep." "Cross?" He interrupted me, "All them little alleys, man, they be dark and each corner, not no 'street,' girl, all four corners of every street you name, and then some, be heavy with drugs. Each corner got one on it. They look each other in the eye. We lucky we all don't be hit by no stray bullets." So finally, I had to ask him. "T., was it a turf war that killed that kid?" He glanced up and down our street. "Somebody owed money, and finally some other said 'I'm gonna take it out on a member of your family.'" He said this with stern certainty. "Do you know this, or do you think this?" I asked him. "Shit, I know. Believe me, I know. I got to go." When my neighbor gets uncomfortable with my endless questions, he glances up and down the street, squinting at the corners, then hops down his steps and is gone. GSMBC pastor's assistant and critical care nurse Beverly Moss confirms that the congregation plans to continue to hold rallies in the area of Tasker and Taylor streets until "the area gets cleaned up." Will it drive the trade elsewhere? North? West? "Probably," she said, "But we must take proactive steps to help the community. We all are stricken; we all are frightened of the random shootings, of the drug activity. [The rallies] are part of what is needed to make the community a safe place to live." Penn Sociology Professor Elijah Anderson writes that the inner city continues to be "locked out of many working class occupations." In W.E.B. DuBois, Race and the City, he writes that "Building trades are organized around family connections: fathers and uncles bring in sons and nephews. Now the inner-city drug industry is composed of uncles and nephews too." DuBois himself wrote that the environment of South Philadelphia is "peculiar," where among other factors, "the influence of economic exclusion which admits Negroes only to those parts of the economic world where it is hardest to maintain ambition and self-respect" causes the migration to the underworld economy. He wrote this in the 1890s. "He was warm, caring, very innocent, but not na‹ve, and he showed a sincerity that made you know that he really cared about what you were saying," Moss said. "It hasn't hit me. I'm typing his obituary right now." An assistant placed faxes and letters of condolence in her inbox. A beribboned balloon drooped nearby. Moss confirms the details of Johnson's life. "It was through his evangelical outreach that his mom joined the congregation." His grandmother raised him as his parents struggled with addiction. "But Nafes never stopped loving his parents," Moss remembers, her voice wavering, "He was so special." Outside the church office, along Fitzwater Street, the trees are stooped over, heavy with cherry blossoms. At the peak of flowering, some petals have begun to drift away.

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