Best Philadelphian 2007

IT’S LATE ON A FRIDAY NIGHT. Maybe early Saturday morning. Certainly past Dorothy Johnson-Speight’s usual bedtime. She stands huddled over a cup of coffee, on the north side of City Hall.

It’s the exact spot where, more than a century ago, legendary activist Mother Jones started her March of the Factory Children, an effort to reform child labor laws and save children’s lives. Johnson-Speight has a similar vision. But she, a matronly 50-something who took a long nap today, has a different approach.

You can hear her helpers before you see them, rumbling and whining somewhere to the east. Then suddenly several motorcycles round the corner of City Hall, and they sound like a ground-level thunderstorm.

“All right, then,” Johnson-Speight murmurs. She is a reserved woman, a poised woman, not given to outbursts and not easily impressed.

But several motorcycles become dozens, then dozens become scores, and then — as her eyes widen — the scores become hundreds. Maybe 300 motorcycles in all, roaring and screaming as they circle Philadelphia’s City Hall. Their riders wear tattoos and black leather, and one sports a skull mask. They park on the north side, at Johnson-Speight’s feet. Many are members of a Philadelphia-based group called Bikers Against Violence, but others came from up and down the Eastern Seaboard. They’ve come to give Johnson-Speight a hand in her mission tonight: to infiltrate some of the city’s deadliest neighborhoods, occupy them during the deadliest hours, and spread the word about the anti-violence group Johnson-Speight founded after her own profound encounter with violence.

It’s a tactic bordering on vigilantism, pushing into territory where government programs can’t reach. But the city’s murder rate has climbed beyond all accounting, and Johnson-Speight has called for action.

Before the bikers begin the night’s ride, they climb off their motorcycles and surround Johnson-Speight, who passes out doughnuts and worries for the riders’ safety, as some aren’t wearing helmets. “Anybody hungry?” she asks.

A massive biker named Darryl, in a head scarf and black leather vest, grabs a bullhorn and addresses the throng. He warns them about the neighborhoods they’ll be overtaking. They’re lethal. “But if we can stop one murder tonight,” he says, “we will have accomplished our goal.”

The bikers all raise a fist into the air. For a full minute they stand that way, still and silent as statues, with Johnson­Speight at the center.

“All right, then,” she says.