Bill Cosby had just listened as five mothers who lost their teenage sons to gun violence told their tragic stories. He looked out over the audience.

"I hope none of you ever has to get that call," he said. "Those of you with children that age need to look at the walls in their rooms, see what they're writing, see what they're listening to. If you don't want to know that your child has a gun or knows how to get a gun, and if you don't want to believe that this could happen to your child, look up here."

It's stories like these that prompted actor/comedian Cosby two years ago to begin a crusade to spur action toward solving the problems that plague inner-city communities - crime, illiteracy, teen pregnancy. He has held "A Call Out with Bill Cosby" events in about 20 cities so far. They are locally sponsored gatherings aimed at finding solutions for what Cosby sees as self-destructive behavior, and at offering inner-city kids encouragement and better options.

In a National Public Radio interview after his book was published last year, Dyson said, "Cosby's overemphasis on personal responsibility, not structural features, wrongly locates the source of poor black suffering - and by implication its remedy - in the lives of the poor...'If only the poor were willing to work harder, act better, get better educated, stay out of jail and parent more effectively, their problems would go away.'"