Pontiac’s Nightly Marchers Establish Drug-Free Zone

The drug dealers of Colombia and the United States have guns and bullets, but the people of Pontiac have feet to march with, hands to clasp in prayer and voices to raise in protest and lamentation.

And every night at 7, the people of Pontiac, led by an elderly woman named Marie Johnson, are using their feet, hands and voices to do battle against crack and crack dealers, which have settled like a plague upon this city’s poor black neighborhoods.

Picking Up the Chant

“No more crack in Pontiac,” they chant, hundreds of them, as they march down Jessie, Wall and Osmun streets, through some of Pontiac’s most drug-infested areas.

Black and white adults, children, people in wheelchairs--they were all there Friday, for the sixth consecutive nightly march in this city’s new grass-roots campaign to establish a drug-free zone in at least one battered neighborhood.

“Pray for the drug dealers,” a local minister called out. “Picture a drug dealer, coming to testify to Jesus, crying, ‘I want to go another route.’ ”

Each night so far, 300, 400, even 500 people have joined in, sometimes in the rain, marching from a black Baptist church to a park a few blocks away where an innocent 19-year-old youth was killed when he was caught in the cross-fire of a drug feud.

And each night, they stop for a time in front of 62 Wall St., a reputed crack house; then they march on to the park, now renamed Steed Park for the slain youth. For the last few blocks, they march in silence.

For the last 500 feet, “you can only hear the beating of feet on the pavement,” Marie Johnson says.

Under police escort, the marchers then form up around the park, ready to silently stare down any drug dealers who have set up shop in the area.

But the dealers now know about the marchers and have apparently moved their operations, at least temporarily, to other sections of the city. Neighbors tell the marchers that they haven’t seen any drug activity on Wall Street all week.

‘Through Rain and Snow’

Marie Johnson vows that the community will keep the marches going, every night, “through rain and snow, until the drug dealing ceases in Pontiac.”

“I’ve been here every night, and it seems that every night the crowds get bigger and bigger,” adds Ruth Steed, the mother of the slain boy. “That says something.”

Kicked off last Sunday with a march led by national activist Dick Gregory, the campaign in Pontiac, a deeply troubled industrial city of 70,000 about 30 miles north of Detroit, is part of a larger phenomenon around the nation. Increasingly, the people of America’s inner cities--including in Los Angeles--appear to be fed up and ready to do something about drugs.

Other towns are trying to follow Pontiac’s example, and the effort here is starting to gain national attention. On Friday, city officials explained the campaign to Congress in a hearing before the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.

Mayor Visits Louisiana

Pontiac’s marches are patterned after a similar effort that Gregory helped mount in Shreveport, La. Pontiac Mayor Walter Moore visited the Shreveport marchers and then suggested to community activists that nightly marches might also help in Pontiac. Marie Johnson then got on a local radio station to ask for volunteers, and hundreds have come every night since.

“Everybody wanted to do it,” Johnson says.

Pontiac police officials are glad for the new community involvement, but some rank-and-file officers remain skeptical about its lasting impact on Pontiac’s booming drug traffic. While the neighborhood that the marchers have targeted now seems a little quieter, there are plenty of other areas where drugs still openly flourish.

‘Epidemic Proportions’

“We’ve got 350 crack houses in a city of 70,000,” Pontiac policeman Leonard McCallep said. “It’s at epidemic proportions right now. And people are going to buy no matter what.”

But Johnson and the other marchers, encouraged by the waves of support they have received, vow to keep going, pledging to beat drugs peacefully, with prayer.

“We’re going to keep on marching, we are going to keep on singing and we are going to keep on praying,” she says. “We’re going to love the dope dealers and the pushers. We think they need love, and we think that we’re going to turn them around with love.”