Shortly after two teens were shot in 2011 by another boy who mistakenly thought they were part of a rival gang, a group of editors at the Boston Globe met to brainstorm ways to better cover urban gang violence. It was a familiar and vexing issue.
Project: Time to celebrate and to worry
On Hendry Street, a new sense of stability is unraveling. On Norton, a gang target plans a peace festival, which police fear will only draw trouble. Nothing is easy in Bowdoin-Geneva, but no one is giving in.
There were 19 shootings in Bowdoin-Geneva this year, but no one was killed. Here, that seems a step ahead. But progress, if real, feels like a fragile reed in a garden furrowed deep with promise and pain.
Project: Pushing back against the tide
Mayhem has a kind of momentum; it can be exhausting to resist. In Bowdoin-Geneva, an anticrime effort flops. And Big Nate explodes. But the peace festival rocks, and a son in jail has started to pray.
In the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Boston, violence seems to rise with the heat, but so do a mother’s hopes for her children, and a priest’s quest to connect. Meanwhile, from the weeds, an unlikely garden grows.
Project: Dreams cut short, dreams reborn
It’s a neighborhood known for trouble, but the Bowdoin-Geneva area of Boston is much more than that. A Boston Globe team spent a year there, listening and asking why violence persists where love and loyalty also run so strong.