"Without community backing, good citizens who try to do the right thing risk severe punishment. The most outrageous example among many that I have run across is Baltimore's Angela Dawson. The married mother of five testified against a local drug dealer in October 2002. Two weeks later, the dealer set fire to her home as the family slept. All seven family members died.
"The killer pleaded guilty to avoid a possible death sentence. According to Juan Williams' best-selling book "Enough," the drug dealer had vowed to kill Dawson for 'snitching on people.'
"'You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possibly,' says Geoffrey Canada, a nationally recognized anti-violence organizer in Harlem. 'And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with.'"
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