What Cost Peace? The D.C. government has given Ronald Moten's Peaceoholics $10 million to quash street beefs. What has it gotten?

One day in August, Moten calls a young woman into his tiny, glass-enclosed office at 606 Raleigh Place SE, just off Martin Luther King Avenue. Her name is Erica B. (Though Erica is 18, City Paper agreed not to publish her last name.) Erica is due to be sentenced in D.C. Superior Court in connection with a carjacking. Her mother is sick and her father is locked up. She’s part of the Peaceoholics family now.

Erica is tall but does not exude confidence. She looks down as she talks about the carjacking. She was just hanging around the wrong people, she says. She’s never been in trouble before and doesn’t use drugs, she says. “We gonna have five or six people at her sentencing,” Moten says, noting that after Erica gets a GED—through Peaceoholics—she will help kids like herself. “We don’t do that for everybody, but it’s important to give people a chance.”

Erica might be understating her level of involvement in the street life. While Moten is out of the room senior program manager Keith “Wali” Johnson is asked about Erica, and where her life is headed. “That’s a trip right there,” he says. “You might not know it by looking at her, but she can hot-wire a car in five minutes.”

On Aug. 20, before Judge Robert Richter of D.C. Superior Court, Erica’s record is exposed. Turns out she has violated terms of her supervised release numerous times since pleading guilty in June to the carjacking.

“You pleaded guilty to a crime that the city council has said should get you not less than 15 years,” Judge Richter says, noting that Peaceoholics have submitted letters on Erica’s behalf asking for leniency. “The government gave you a good plea bargain. Now you’re gonna ask for a bigger break by asking not to be punished at all. I don’t know why you should get the benefit of the doubt,” the judge says, before continuing Erica’s sentencing to October, so she can “demonstrate an ability to change.”

After the hearing, Maia Shanklin-Roberts, a Stanford University graduate and a program coordinator with Peaceoholics, says to Erica, “We need to keep you in the house girl, have some sleepovers. And we need to find you a full time job.” Erica, who is in the 11th grade at Spingarn and enjoys art, would like to graduate someday. “I wanna walk across that stage,” she says.

For the next few weeks, Peaceoholics will not let Erica out of their sight. Such vigilance has led to 100 kids making it to college, according to Moten, who cites the group’s “Triangle in One Method,” which involves wraparound youth service in communities, schools, and the juvenile and adult justice systems.

A promising display of how youth respond to the Peaceoholics’ system occurs the Sunday before Labor Day, at a graduation ceremony at the group’s headquarters for a dozen or so girls who have come through the “Saving our Sisters” program. Moten presides proudly over what he refers to as “the next generation of Peaceoholics.”

Pink and blue balloons hang from the ceiling and trays of barbecued chicken, desserts, and gift bags are lined up on tables in the meeting room, as the girls take their turns at the microphone. Erica, considered a “high-risk teenager” who has come through the program, which consists of workshops, mentoring and life-skills training, makes her speech short and sweet: “I’m not the same girl I was three months ago,” she says, practically mumbling into the mic. “Now I realize that being a gangster, or whatever, is not who I am.”

After the girls speak, Moten, dressed casually in a T-shirt, chinos, and sandals, gives one of his patented motivational speeches that usually build to a fiery crescendo. “You all look nice, like good looking young ladies,” he says to the girls. “You know I always be telling you, if you dress like a prostitute people gonna treat you like a prostitute.”

He thanks a group of boys who are there for coming to support the girls. Then he touches on the highs and lows of his own story: About how he was heating water in a microwave so he could bathe, back when he was broke but engaged in the community. About how he never used drugs even as he sold drugs. About how it’s a sin to father children out of wedlock—even though he’s fathered four, by four different women.

“I’m not always right. I don’t win every battle. But I operate on principle,” he says. “And it’s important to walk with your head up even through tough times. My purpose is with you children.”

Then Moten offers his favorite jewel of wisdom: “If you don’t stand up for yourself, if you out in the street sellin’ drugs or killin’ your brothers, you ain’t bein’ a gangster. Ain’t no gangsters no more. Real gangsters wear suits. They the ones who decide how much money people get.”

That statement is perhaps a bit of foreshadowing for both Moten and Abraham. As he wraps up the speech Moten tells the kids that he and Abraham are planning to resign from Peaceoholics in November. “We going to ground,” he says later, explaining his decision to pursue community activism, business ventures, and consulting opportunities in other cities. (Moten gets $500 an hour when he travels to consult with other cities on their youth gang problems, he says.)

The departure comes at a rough time for Peaceoholics: the group is no longer allowed to work in schools as a result of the Barry Harrison incident; their budget is going from $3.5 million in 2008–09 to a projected $500,000 in 2010; and recently they had to lay off 20 workers. Their ranks now number 47, with more cuts likely if the group can’t tap into some new grants or stimulus dollars.

Moten and Abraham are not worried for the group, which will press on with the housing initiative and other Peaceoholics programs. The two co-founders will be available for advice and counseling, and they believe in the strength of future generations. “You do good work, the right outcomes will produce incomes,” Abraham says.

The night of the Congress Street shooting, Moten and his two employees work quickly to locate 18-year-old Tayvon Williams, a member of the One Deuce crew who is the prime suspect in the shooting of Stephon Hooks, which Hooks survived. The shooting is believed to be tied to a feud between One Deuce and the Congress Park crew. The next 48 hours are crucial to ensure that Williams stays off the street and deals with an inevitable visit from the police.

By the time police locate Williams, Peaceoholics already have arranged to get him out of school so he can’t be targeted. Two days after the shooting Williams turns himself in, after meeting with Peaceoholics while police meet with his mother. He is charged with assault with a deadly weapon—not the first time he has been charged with a violent crime. “He knows we here for him whether he found guilty or not,” Moten says. “Now how you gonna put a value on that?”

But the intervention by Peaceoholics is just beginning, as the beef between One Deuce and Congress Park will roil for months.

Just last week, a younger brother of Williams was jumped and badly beaten. An honor student who attends Ballou and performs in a choir and dance troupe, the brother wants to stand tall with the other boys engaged in the beef with Congress Park, Moten says. But he has more to lose, and he may not be cut out for the street. Last Friday Moten and Peaceoholics intervened and made inroads with One Deuce, he says. Now they are trying to bring Congress Park into the discussion to quash the beef, before anyone else is shot or beaten.

Of Tayvon Williams’ little brother, Moten says, “Now there’s an honor student potentially mixed up in all this mess. This stuff happens every day in our community. Most of the time no one captures it on film or puts it on YouTube, so no one pays attention.”

Additional reporting by Jason Cherkis, Mike DeBonis, and Ruth Samuelson

Jeffrey Anderson can be reached at jeffrey_anderson@mindspring.com