Ten O'Clock News

[Reporter] Washington and School Streets in Eggleston Square is territory of the X-Men. They hang here, young men with little work, uncompleted schooling, and broken families. [Interviewee 1] Basically the X-Men are- they're a great bunch of kids to hang around with. [Reporter] The Boston police would take exception to that, especially after one of the X-Men opened fire on them last Saturday. But the X-Men see themselves not as a gang and not as troublemakers. Is the X-Men a gang? [Interviewee 2] No, it's a group of kids who hang around because there's nowhere else to go. They hang around together cause they don't have nobody at home. [Reporter] This is their wall, red brick, inner city, tough neighborhood, and the mural they've created this year has become a social blackboard; their statement to the cops, the world, and to themselves. [Jennifer Roby] It brought people together in a way that I've never seen before. And it raised a lot of questions I think in the larger community-- [Reporter] Seeing the need to reach out to young Latinos, Jennifer Roby and the Eggleston Square Neighborhood Association funded the Mural Project last summer. For $2 an hour under the guidance of a mural artist, the X-Men

began expressing their view of their own lives. They called it a cry for happiness. [Interviewee 3] For a bunch of gang members to get together and to think positive and to decide to do a mural, it's pretty- it's pretty good. This mural, it's about things that- that the X-Men think, that- that they feel, that the way society has been treating them. [Reporter] There are Puerto Rican role models for instance, such as baseball star Roberto Clemente and salsa musician Willie Colon, and Albizu Campos, who campaigned for Puerto Rican independence. [Interviewee 1] As myself, I- I used to do a lot of- a lot of- a lot of bad things that I can't say on camera but I really focused myself into doing better things for the neighborhood. [Reporter] The mural is also angry and political. It incorporates Afro-American heroes Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who was a favorite of X-Man Hector Morales, who died in the shootout with the cops last Saturday. Morales worked on the

mural this summer. [Interviewee 5] Then we got Malcolm X, the kid that got killed, he believed in Malcolm X, he believed in what he did, and he wanted to put that. That's the first thing he want to do. That's Hector. [Reporter] "I'll do what I have to do to survive." [Interviewee 5] We all have to do what we have to do to survive. [Reporter] Hector's dead today. [Interviewee 5] He's dead today, yes. And maybe if the cops wouldn't have killed him, somebody else would have. But he was not going to be like that. [Reporter] The mural depicts violence the Latinos know all too well here. [Reporter] So your brother's- your brother's here? [Interviewee 5] Yeah, right there. [Reporter] Roberto, your brother's here too? Which one? William. How did he die? [Interviewee 6] He got shot down-- [Reporter] In the world of the X-Men trouble always comes to them from the outside. The mural was their voice to the outside world. [Interviewee 4] We got minds. We're just not people hangin' in the corner. We're people who- who think like you's people do but maybe your education was better than ours. Our background goes down. We started from dirt. [Reporter] Through X-Men territory today other young men walk to the wake of Hector Morales.

The X-Men have been to many such wakes. At St. Mary of the Angels they'll pay the respect to Hector Morales, X-Man, Latino, muralist, and teenage gunman. Last week a line in the mural read "stop the violence." That's now been changed. For the 10 O'Clock News. I'm David Boeri. [street noises]