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The boys and Eduardo sit along the wall. They hand the mike off to one another and nod their heads to music. Most if not all the boys participating in the show consider themselves outsiders to the Amherst community. Many have been in trouble with the law. Some have dropped out of high school. One of the purposes of the broadcast is to give the boys a platform from which to air grievances and search for answers.

The boys are certainly treated unfairly, baited, and singled out because of their school and community records, and because some are African Americans. Recently the boys were stopped by police for “a bent license plate” on their way to attend the community college in Greenfield. The police detained them long enough that all missed their classes.

Another event involved a boy who stepped between the police and his eight-year-old brother, whom they were in the process of “searching.” The police were rough with the child. They claimed he had stolen something, though their search turned up nothing. The older brother protested the search. In the end he was cuffed and charged with assault.

Once in the system, the boys are dealt with severely. A white boy—Stephen, for instance—might be given probation and community service hours for some offense, but the African-American boys are too often given mandatory time in a grim Massachusetts detention center.

Such was the case with Trevor, once sentenced to a year in DYS. During that time, not only did he live among the toughest and most hardened of inmates, he fell far behind in school.

When he returned to the community he was marked as trouble. Written off by the public school officials, Trevor was to be enrolled in Amherst's “annex school,” a sort of way station for kids to sit out the years before their sixteenth birthdays, at which time it's legal for them to quit school altogether.

We fought successfully for his right to remain in the high school. But he'd missed and lost skills, particularly in math and science. The stigma that surrounded Trevor complicated and thwarted his academic efforts.

As part of the radio broadcast, the boys recall for their listeners their trip to Washington where they participated in the Million Man March. They had planned to take one of the free buses chartered from Amherst to Washington, but the buses grew overcrowded. The organizers decided that certain people would have to be put off. To begin, anyone under eighteen had to step down.

The boys returned to our house. How they'd looked forward to this, planned, taken time off from their jobs. How badly they'd wanted to be a part of this historic event in which African-American men from all over the country came together.

I'd offered that maybe there was another way to get there. So we had checked on train schedules, other public buses departing the area, but as the boys pooled their resources, they discovered they didn't have enough money among them for each to buy a ticket.

What about if they rented a car? Emecca and Yusef had licenses. We called the local rent-a-car but we were told that the driver must be twenty-one and that he needed a credit card.

Well, then, did they know anyone who might lend them a car, I'd asked. And so six big boys climbed into my Honda Civic that Thursday evening and drove to Washington.

Their descriptions of the Million Man March dovetails into a discussion about the boys’ local heroes. One is a lawyer in town named Tom Whitney. Many times he has acted on their behalf. They offer his name to their listeners in the event someone needs defending in a court of law.

Tom knows Stephen and me. We met a few years ago when Steve began his forty-five hours of mandatory community service. Steve was assigned to work at the Amherst College planetarium. There, every Friday night, attorney at law and amateur astronomer Tom Whitney put on shows for the public.

Steve and other boys on probation helped Tom set up the planetarium shows, select the program, and run the projector. For this they received credit toward their community