Marvin L. “Doc” Cheatham Sr. scanned the crowd and asked three questions.

“Are there any representatives from the state senate here? Are there any representatives from the delegates here? Are is there anyone from the mayor’s office here?”

Silence from the roughly three dozen people who showed up at the city NAACP branch office on West 26th Street last night to view a memorial to the 80 lives lost to murder this year in Baltimore.

“Pathetic,” Cheatham, the chapter president, told the crowd. “This is what you get from your elected officials.”

Many City Council members could be excused; they were in a budget hearing for the police department. But the others who represent the city? No shows, and Cheatham noted, “There should be thousands of people here.”

The evening belonged to Faith Bocian, a 19-year-old student at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, who put together a display of 80 teddy bears, one for each victim, each with a nametag. (She's at left with her mother, Katherine Bocian, a city fire paramedic). As she unveiled the artwork outside the NAACP chapter, each bear attached by a wire to a railing, so they covered the entrance, mothers and relatives of the recently killed stepped forward to find their loved ones names.

“That’s my cousin right there,” said one man as he looked through the bears.

We either come to used to death or we just assume no one cares or can do anything about it. Rallies, like this artwork, raise public awareness, but that’s a first step toward solving the problem.

Anthony McCarthy led the opening prayer: "We seem so beaten down by the violence. We’ve heard the mother’s cries. We’ve heard the broken hearts of fathers, brothers, sisters. We need to do our part. Lord, we’ve lost so much hope. Every young man, every father, every mother, every child who has given their lives to the war on these streets, it’s a lost opportunity.”

Faith, whose mother is a city paramedic, came with friends from her band wearing a white T-shirt with the slogan, “Crying out against violence” and clutching a teddy bear. She addressed the crowd with heartfelt feelings. She’s never known anyone lost to murder, but reviewing the stories of the 80s lives lost she has now grown an attachment to the departed.

“There is a war going on on these streets,” Faith said, her smiling mother dressed in her blue paramedic shirt, her ambulance, Medic 6, parked on the street. Faith said she doesn’t talk much, but lets her art speak her sorrow and anger.

“Paint a mural, instead of picking up a gun and fighting,” she told the group.

Faith unveiled the tarp covering the bears as the crowd chanted, “Save our children, stop the violence.”

“This is just this year,” Cheatham said, looking the wall of bears that represent just the first 133 days of the year. “I know it’s hard to swallow this.”

The mothers of three young men lost to the streets, one a 14-year-old boy lost to the gun of a Baltimore police officer in 2006, spoke about violence.
 
“When someone takes someone’s life, you don’t realize the impact it has on the family,” Greta Carter said. “You used to step on somebody’s foot and had a good fight and it was over. Now everyone wants to pick up a gun and take someone’s life. ... The younger ones have to teach the older ones how to act.”

One person in the crowd asked whether the display could be made permanent, and Cheatham said he’d ask the mayor’s office about finding a spot, though he doubted she’s want to highlight the darker side of the city. Faith said she plans to add bears throughout the year.

 “I just hope it doesn’t go all the way to the end of the street,” she said.