Students from the Baltimore Algebra Project and other youth groups have been lobbying for weeks for Mayor Dixon to set aside $3 million that the City Council recommended in funding for Peer to Peer Enterprises, but the mayor hasn't budged. The students want to use the money to create an investment fund to pay 10- to 24-year-olds for knowledge-based work, such as tutoring, playwriting and coaching debate. The point is to show young people they can make money using their brains, that they don't have to turn to the streets and sell drugs, that they don't have to work dead-end jobs at fast-food chains.

Never afraid of a fight, the students vowed to begin camping out in City Hall Plaza on Monday and not leave until Dixon commits the money. As a result of the rain, the campout didn't begin until Tuesday, but anywhere from a half-dozen to two-dozen students at any given time were there in tents until last night. Early in the evening, Dixon finally came out and talked to them. I'm told she recommended that the students take their cause to the state. They already did that in February, and state officials told them to go to the city. Around 10:30 last night, after multiple threats, the campers were kicked off the plaza. They moved a block away, where, when I last talked to them around 11:15 p.m., they were plotting their next move.

I don't expect they'll go away quietly.