PHILADELPHIA -- A thickset man called "Earthquake" slips yellow cards into the open windows of passing motorists at 60th Street and Woodland Avenue. A tall man with movie-star good looks wedges a poster into the windshield of a city bus stopped at a traffic light. A man with a radio host voice calls for support over a portable microphone.

The three are among a small army of men trying to energize this city's black community to put an end to the violence that is claiming lives in record numbers.

Their goal is to produce 10,000 men at an assembly today, a symbolic show of force that they compare to the 1995 Million Man March in Washington. But organizers also hope to have an impact on crime by persuading those men to patrol the city's most dangerous neighborhoods for 90 days.

Philadelphia, like Baltimore, wakes up every day to yet more bloodshed. Just as in Baltimore, nothing, from policing strategies to bursts of community activism, seems to have worked.

Perhaps 10,000 Men Philly, a street-level mobilization, will.

Organizers, drawn mostly from nonprofit groups, are careful to emphasize that they do not want the volunteers taking up arms and getting aggressive. Instead, the focus is regaining control of neighborhoods through the mere presence of men.

After today's gathering at Temple University, volunteers will undergo training in community outreach - how to direct residents to education and jobs and steer them to services such as drug treatment.

Then they are to be divided into small "platoons," each ideally led by an off-duty officer who has volunteered his or her time, and sent on three-hour patrols in areas where police district captains have directed them to go, organizers say.

"Go tell your children that the men are coming," music mogul and community activist Kenny Gamble thundered at a news conference on Monday.

"We are calling our community to order."

The concept has enjoyed wide support - from the police commissioner, who calls it a "tremendous idea," to a 24-year-old dressed in all red who thinks it will help keep his North Philadelphia neighborhood from being flooded with more police officers.

Others, including Michael Nutter, a City Council member who is expected to be the next mayor, are more measured in their endorsements: "I want to be careful about asking people to go into the streets," he recently told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Police chiefs across the country have long implored residents to become more involved in their communities - even by simply reporting crime and coming forward when they are witnesses.

Baltimore police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said police must "shame, cajole, plead, whatever it takes" to get residents to care. As he walked Thursday night with "citizens on patrol" in Canton, he said he is eager to hear about the turnout for 10,000 Men Philly - and to hear what happens afterward.

"It can't just be a publicity stunt," he said. "There has to be a real message to the community, and it has to be backed up with action. It can't just be talk."

Last week, Philadelphia event organizers conducted a final blitz of promotion at a series of street rallies. They pushed clipboards at passers-by, urging them to volunteer. About 4,000 had signed up as of Friday, said Norm Bond, a spokesman for 10,000 Men Philly.

On Tuesday, a group that included community activist Paul "Earthquake" Moore, local celebrity Charles "Charlie Mack" Alston and city manager Mannwell Glenn, swarmed 60th and Woodland, stopping traffic as they talked up their cause.

They were in Southwest Philadelphia, the deadliest area of the city.

Trolley lines hang like cobwebs above streets of abandoned rowhouses and shuttered businesses. The night before, a few blocks down 60th, a high school student was shot to death, inspiring a 15-year-old girl who knew him to have "Killadelfia" tattooed across her back.

At the rally, Alston, an entertainment promoter and personal assistant to actor and fellow Philadelphian Will Smith, was the center of attention, posing for photographs with children and swooping down to gather women in hugs.

"It's a new day!" Alston shouted over and over again, as he did at a news conference the day before.

He describes himself as "Robinhood-esque," making money in Hollywood and pumping it back into his hometown, where two of his brothers were shot to death and where much of his own youth was squandered as a drug dealer.

10,000 Men Philly is his idea. He says he was inspired to do something grand after meeting Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali on movie sets in recent years.

"We have to stand united," he says. "This is an epidemic. It's urban genocide that we're dealing with right now. If we don't get this together, we're coming to the end. It's just that simple."

This anticrime effort, he says, is different because it's about various groups coming together with one goal: Stop the killing.

With a population of about 1.4 million, Philadelphia is more than twice the size of Baltimore, a city that has a higher per capita rate of killings. Still, Philadelphia logged 406 homicides last year - its worst record since 1997. And at about 320 since Jan. 1, this year's total looks to be about the same.

In one particularly bloody incident in late July, four people were shot to death inside a bar in Southwest Philadelphia.

Officer Jeremy Broscious, who has been on the beat in that region for about two years, says he has "seen just about every crime you can imagine."

On patrol Monday night, Broscious pointed to recent crime scenes mixed in with the area's historic features. Its Bartram's Garden, homestead of an early American scientist, abuts a crime-ridden public housing project.

It was shaping up to be a slower night, when, just before 9 p.m., the police dispatcher called out reports of shots fired. Broscious flipped on his lights and siren and raced to the 1700 block of 60th.

As he arrived, other officers were heaving the limp body of 17-year-old Anton Mitchell into the back of a police van. An 18-year-old lay in the street nursing a gunshot to his right foot.

Officers strung yellow crime scene tape and chalked circles around spent shell casings from at least two guns. Women on the porch where the shooting had occurred hollered and wept.

The men in suits arrived. Broscious snugged on his cap. "This is officially a homicide," he said.

The next day, Karebah Lewis, 15, struts down 60th showing off her "Killadelfia" tattoo, the black script gleaming with petroleum jelly. "I'm not trying to be rude," she says of it. "It's the truth. I've seen too many bodies dropping."

City police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson has counted the number of black homicide victims since Jan. 1, 1998, the furthest back such statistics were kept.

"Two thousand, eight hundred and eighty four," he said in a telephone interview Oct. 11, extolling his support of 10,000 Men Philly. Local newspaper editorials have said Johnson, a 40-year police department veteran who plans to retire in January, should focus on police work.

Johnson defends his position, saying he's more than police commissioner; he's a black man. "Our community has been devastated. ... We're bleeding right now. We don't want any excuses. We're not drafting anybody, but we think men should be men."

At a street rally on Monday in North Philadelphia, a 24-year-old musician dressed in a red ball cap and sweat shirt eagerly grabbed a clipboard.

"We need to do this before it turns into a government thing," Maj Toure said, explaining why he registered to volunteer. "I would rather us police ourselves before the police come in with more guns."

In Southwest Philadelphia a day later, Alston said that is exactly his aim.

"What we're doing right here, right now," he says standing on the curb of Woodland Avenue as the rally ends Tuesday, "this is it."

"Right here, right now, there's no dealing. There's no crime. There's just people talking to each other. That's all. That's all we're trying to do."

julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com