The late Georgette Watson became a public figure the hard way.
Tired of living under the tyranny of drug dealers and hoodlums, she challenged people like me to camp out with her, the Rev. Bruce Wall and Ben Haith in empty apartments at places like the Lenox Street projects and Orchard Park in Roxbury.
Before the idea of community policing became standard procedure, before the inner city was held hostage by the Stop Snitching culture, there was a fearless mother – a community organizer, as a matter of fact – who dared to shine a light on evil and ask her neighbors to Drop A Dime.
Georgette Watson died about a week ago, in Baltimore. At 65, her spirit was too young to be silenced, her energy too abundant to be gone, her friends said. “You know, I’ve been dealing with the reality of Georgette’s passing for a few days now,” Bruce Wall was saying yesterday. “But as we get ready for her memorial service (tomorrow), all these emotions, along with the memories we shared, are starting to hit me.
“I thought of Georgette as my sister, the one who always had my back,” Wall recalled. “Twenty-five years ago, the two of us were out there pretty much alone. Back in 1983, (Rev.) Charlie Stith led a march from Dudley Square to Grove Hall. Georgette and I had been told that if we marched, we wouldn’t make it to Grove Hall. The message of that march was for the community to break the code of silence and she came up with the idea of placing an answering machine at an undisclosed location and asking people to do the right thing and ‘drop a dime.’ ”
An initial trickle of 10 calls a month soon exploded into a 600 a month. The log sheets were passed along to the BPD and the DEA.
“Georgette was our touchstone,” recalled former police commissioner Mickey Roache. “For all practical purposes, she was the definition of community policing. And remember, this was at a time when good and decent people found it much easier to just seal themselves up in their homes. Her courage was amazing.”
Ray Flynn, who will speak at tomorrow morning’s service, recalled the day his phone rang at the corner office in City Hall. “It was George Bush, the father,” Ray said, “He says to me, ‘I just want to let you know that I’m selecting your city, and Georgette Watson in particular, to be one of the first recipients of the Thousand Points of Light Award.’
“Then he adds, ‘Even though this (award) has nothing to do with you, and you didn’t support me, I thought it was only right that you be the first to know.’ I said, ‘Thank you, Mr. President. Any friend of Georgette Watson is a friend of mine,’ ” Flynn said with a warm laugh. “Georgette was tough as nails,” Ray added. “But more than that, her credibility on the street was absolute. Every time I asked her to walk the streets of Roxbury, or Dorchester or Mattapan with me, she did. And it made a tremendous difference, because she was able to form that bridge between the people and City Hall or the police.”
During a week when we’ve seen the role of community organizers denigrated by a pair of Republicans looking to run this country, we recall a Republican governor, Bill Weld, asking Watson to run an anti-drug agency. Her tenure ended amid cries of mismanagement and political back-stabbing. “I know Georgette’s appointment honored her work in the streets,” Bruce Wall said, “but in some ways I wish she had never crossed that bridge. I think of her as prophet. Too often, prophets get swallowed by political forces. Georgette was far more comfortable in the streets than in those marbled halls. I think of her now in the same way I think of Harriet Tubman. She was free to do many things, but came back and put her life on the line to bring peace and dignity to her community.”
Tomorrow’s service is 10:30 a.m. at Global Ministries Christian Church, 670 Washington St., Dorchester.