For one 19-year-old resident of San Francisco's Hunter's Point neighborhood who has seen most of his childhood friends die in street violence, hope for the future lies in the growing popularity of the one love movement. No mere fad, this is a commitment to love life rather than fear life and to respect the lives of others as well as one's own. PNS commentator Charles Jones is a writer for YO! (Youth Outlook), a publication of Pacific News Service. This is the first of several first-person essays exploring the after-effects of the Million Man March.

In light of the recent deaths of several childhood friends, I have decided to become a souljah for the "one love" movement. Unity in the community is now a must, as the bloodshed of far too many brothas demonstrates. But in neighborhoods where 20 is the life expectancy, many people have become too afraid to come forward or too used to violence to care.

Why should it be this way? Is this what Malcolm, Huey, Assata and Martin fought for? But these aren't the Malcolm and Martin days anymore. To quote a barrage of gangsta rappers and other exploiters of ghetto life, "Ain't no love." Too many young deaths have made young people afraid -- not of death but of life, of loving life.

To see a young man in a coffin is worse even than seeing my grandmother there. Her life was long and fulfilling, full of children, grandchildren, struggles and love. Young men like my friend Zel had only begun to live. Some had plans to marry, go to college. Some had kids only two or three years of age. Now all that's left are memories, failed legacies, bastard children.

Not to mention a mother's grief, the sadness of losing a child, the fear of losing another one. And another child growing up fatherless, just another statistic, or "menace to society." And that's not even the worst-case scenario. There's retaliation -- the continuing cycle of death, more funerals, more sadness, more fear.

As children you expect friends to stay friends, or at least to stay alive. I remember how my friends and I used to raid a neighbor's plum tree, or run from the local lunatic, always together. To this day our names are still inscribed on the sundial at the peak of Hunter's Point. Mine is one of the only ones that doesn't have "RIP" (Rest in Peace) carved over it.

At Zel's funeral I felt the pain of his family and my own -- not just over his loss but over the idea that his murderer viewed the act as an accomplishment. But then I also saw how so many people from the Point came to pay respect to this one man: one community showing one love for one of our own.

Slowly the one love movement is gaining popularity. I can hear it in the music, though it's still drowned out by all the graphic images of violence on TV, in the movies, in books. It was the overriding theme of the Million Man March.

One love is more than some hip new fad -- like suburban white youth wearing permed-up afros and Dashikis, playing the hood, or revolutionary black men marrying the first white woman who'll be "down for the cause." The one love movement is a way of life. It's saying hello instead of "what'cha looking at?" during eye contact. One love is saying "excuse me" instead of knocking the hell out of someone who commits the ultimate sin of stepping on your shoe. One love is dropping that gun and settling a dispute through a good old-fashioned, one-on-one fist fight.

For this weary souljah losing sight of the prize, the one love movement is about respecting and loving life and lives other than your own.