Street activist Wall mulls political run

David Pomerantz

For the last three decades, Rev. Bruce Wall has crusaded to save Boston’s youth from violent crime.

He has waged his war from the altar of a Dorchester church, from the streets as a community activist and from the bench as an assistant clerk magistrate in Boston’s juvenile court for 24 years.

Now, the 59-year-old pastor of the Global Ministries Christian Church in Codman Square is eyeing a new pulpit from which to preach: Boston’s City Council.

Fueled by what he calls “righteous anger” at the political power structure’s neglect for the violence plaguing his community, Wall is considering running for the Council’s District 5 seat, currently held by Robert Consalvo.

Wall’s aggressiveness stems from a feeling that he has been frozen out by Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The pastor, who says he was a kitchen-cabinet advisor for past police administrations, claims that Menino has prevented Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis from meeting with Wall since Davis’s arrival at the end of 2006.

Wall says that he is being shunned because he called for Menino to declare the 10-block radius around his Washington St. church a “state of emergency” in December.

Menino refused, telling the Boston Globe at the time that “it’s not a state of emergency. We look at numbers around the area. As dramatic as some people want to make it out to be, the police are doing a good job.”

Wall says that his refusal to kowtow has landed him in the mayor’s doghouse and abruptly ended his long relationship with the police force.

Both the mayor and the police commissioner denied any deliberate attempt to isolate Wall.

“[Wall’s allegation] is absolutely not true,” Menino’s press secretary Dot Joyce said. “In fact, the police commissioner has met with several people in that community. You’d have to ask the police about that, but I don’t believe there was a formal request [from Wall] into the police commissioner other than the day after he took office, while he was obviously very busy.”

Davis’s office responded in kind.

“The police commissioner is a bit perplexed by the suggestion that he won’t meet with Rev. Wall,” police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said. She added that the police commissioner has been visible in attending Codman Square meetings, and that police leaders within Wall’s district have met with the pastor.

Wall insists that he is not merely “complaining” about a decline in his personal influence at City Hall, and his devotion to his cause is beyond reproach. But for a man who has worked to stop violence for over 30 years, it shouldn’t be surprising that he is taking his newfound isolation personally.

From the streets to the pulpit

Wall was born in Roxbury in 1948 and shuttled around the city in his early years, moving to Dorchester and Jamaica Plain before finally returning to Roxbury. His father left the family when he was a young boy, leaving Wall’s mother to care for him and his three sisters.

Determined to set an example for her children by getting off of welfare, Wall’s mother cleaned houses in Woburn and Newton. Without a father figure in the house, however, Wall quickly ended up on the streets.

“From 13 to 18, I was street,” Wall says. He remembers constantly carrying a hammer in his pocket and fighting against gang rivals who carried swords and kept attack dogs.

When he was 18, Wall met the male role model that had been missing in his life. Rev. Michael Haynes of the 12th Baptist Church in Roxbury was a renowned community activist in Boston, one of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest allies in the city. He had an impressive effect on Wall, pulling him into his church. At that point, Wall explains his change in behavior quite simply: “I gave my life over to God.”

Haynes got Wall out of the city, enrolling him in a small bible college in Lenox. After graduating, Wall became the youth pastor at Haynes’ church.

In 1974, Wall became the assistant clerk magistrate in Boston’s juvenile court, a job he would hold for 24 years. By the late ’80s, the crack epidemic and an upsurge in gang activity made for a rapid increase in Boston’s violence.

Wall began meeting with neighborhood youth in 1988 at the Chez Vous skating rink on Friday nights. He went out for pizza with the kids, hanging out with them and walking the streets. Slowly, he earned their respect, eventually opening a Sunday school at the rink, a day camp and an after-school program.

“By day I was an assistant clerk magistrate and by night and weekends I was a youth pastor,” Wall said of his time in the court.

Wall’s dual role in the community — one foot in the court, one on the street — placed him in a unique position to bridge the gap between the authorities and the city’s youth. He knew that the kind of coalition building he was doing could work on a citywide level, and he began to form alliances with other members of the black clergy. Along with Revs. Eugene Rivers and Ray Hammond, Wall formed the TenPoint Coalition, which linked the clergy with lay leaders in the community in a unified effort to stop Boston’s ever-growing descent into violence.

The effort worked. In 1996, Boston did not have a single juvenile become the victim of homicide, a success that became known as the “Boston Miracle.”

Today, the Miracle is a hazy memory. Boston recorded 75 homicides in 2006, the highest number in 11 years, and it is on a similar pace this year.

In a way, Wall says, the Boston Miracle was too miraculous for its own good. When the nation took notice of Boston’s success, the ensuing grant money soured many of the era’s most important relationships. At the same time, the sudden drop in homicides gave Boston’s leaders a false sense of complacency. Wall says now that the “years of achievement” that produced the Boston Miracle were subsequently followed by “years of neglect.”

Weighing a run

Today, Wall says, Boston needs a new miracle. He sees his personal isolation as symbolic of the lack of willpower in City Hall to address the problem.

“We need all hands on deck, and people are playing political games while kids are dying,” Wall said.

The rift between himself and City Hall is so deep, Wall says, that he has heard rumors that people are trying to slander him.

“I’ve been warned that people are looking for dirt on me,” he said.

While he reserves his harshest criticism for Menino and Davis, Wall also noted that other members of the black clergy have not rushed to his defense.

“Only one clergy person offered me support,” Wall says, referring to Minister Don Muhammad, a leader of the Nation of Islam and one of Wall’s staunchest allies. “What about the 300 others?”

Wall may be overestimating his isolation from the clergy. Several clergymen joined Wall at a large rally against youth violence he held in Codman Square on Sunday, and Wall certainly has not lost any support financially. The Black Ministerial Alliance, a grant-making organization led by Rev. Gilbert Thompson, has supported Wall to the tune of $221,000 in grants since 2003, according to Harold Sparrow, the organization’s executive director.

“We have a healthy and strong relationship with Bruce,” Sparrow said. “I’m the kind of person where I think it’s not what people say, it’s what they do. We’ve demonstrated time and again that we’ve leveraged resources and have really helped Bruce Wall Ministries on several different fronts.”

Rev. William Dickerson of the Greater Love Tabernacle Church has known Wall for over 20 years and joined him at his rally on Sunday. He says some other clergymen may be turned off by Wall’s confrontational and highly public style.

“It’s Pastor Wall’s style that he’s going to do his thing regardless of who’s in support of what he’s doing, because his deep conviction in what he’s doing is all he needs, along with his wife and church,” Dickerson said.

“Of course, people who are more conservative may back away from that for fear of being looked upon as radical. A lot of people don’t like to rock the boat.”

Feeling that he has been “kicked out” by City Hall and not fully supported by his brethren, Wall says his ears perked up a when he was approached by certain members of the City Council’s “Team Unity” coalition to consider a run. Team Unity is composed of Councilors at Large Felix Arroyo and Sam Yoon as well as Dorchester Councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey.

“Here’s my statement,” Wall said. “Either work with me to have a dialogue, or I’ll do it the hard way. And if I run for office, it will strengthen Team Unity, which the mayor can’t deal with anyway.”

Wall says he first considered a citywide run, but since the two at-large seats are held by Arroyo and Yoon, aiming at Consalvo’s District 5 made more sense.

District 5 consists mainly of Hyde Park and Roslindale, as well as some small portions of Mattapan. Its constituents are 43.8 percent white, 34.5 percent black and 15.5 percent Hispanic. Consalvo was elected unopposed to his third two-year term in 2005.

Wall says that before he decides whether or not he will run, he must pray “to see if God wants me to do this and it’s not merely a reaction.” He also said his wife and the church must sign off.

If he does decide to run, Wall thinks he can win. The issues of preventing crime and ending violence would resonate with voters in Hyde Park, he says, despite the fact that the area has not experienced the same level of violence as Roxbury or Dorchester.

“[Crime] is the number one issue in the city,” Wall said. “Hyde Park had a murder last summer. It has a low crime rate, and they want to keep it that way … I would not consider a run if I thought I’d lose, but even if I lost by one vote — and that’s how close it would be — I’d still be able to raise all these issues.”

Wall would enjoy the benefit of a lot of free publicity — he broadcasts a talk radio show every day on one of three Boston-area stations.

The message he’s offering is simple: “It should not be normal for kids to die in the city, because it’s not normal outside the city.”

It’s a message that Wall says has fallen on deaf ears in City Hall. If he decides to run in November, the pastor will get a chance to see if the voters of District 5 are any more receptive.