Gang Leader for a Day

by Sudhir Venkatesh

  Outside the squat I sat down on the gallery floor, finally able to take a clear breath. I felt overwhelmed by all the new information hitting me. I told J.T. I needed a rest. He smiled, seeming to understand, and told me he’d survey the other two buildings by himself. When I started to resist, worried I might not have this chance again, J.T. read my mind. “Don’t worry, Mr. Professor. I do this every week.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I’m beat. I’ll meet you back at your place. I’ve got to go write some of this down.”

  My heart froze after I realized what I’d just said. I had never actually told J.T. that I was keeping notes on all our conversations; I always waited until we split up before writing down what had transpired. Suddenly I feared he would think about everything we’d just witnessed and discussed, including all the illegal activities, and shut me down.

  But he didn’t even blink.

  “Shorty, take Sudhir back to Mama’s place,” he told the young man who’d been standing guard outside the squat. “I’ll be over there in an hour.”

  I quietly walked down the sixteen flights of stairs and over to Ms. Mae’s building. The elevators in Robert Taylor worked inconsistently at best, so the only people who bothered to wait for them were old people and mothers with small children. The foot soldier accompanied me all the way to Ms. Mae’s door, but we didn’t talk; I tended never to talk to foot soldiers, since they never talked to me- which led me to think they’d probably been told not to.

  I wound up sitting at the living room table in Ms. Mae’s apartment, writing up my notes. In a short time the apartment had becomethe place I went whenever I needed a break or wanted to write up some field notes. J.T.’s family grew comfortable with my sitting quietly by myself or even napping on the couch if J.T. was busy.

  Sometimes the apartment was peaceful and sometimes it was busy. At the moment J.T.’s cousin and her two children were staying there, as was one of J.T.’s sisters. But the living arrangements were very fluid. Like a lot of the more established households in the projects, Ms. Mae’s apartment was a respite for a network of poor and needy relatives who might stay for a night, a month, or longer. Some of them weren’t actually relatives at all but were “strays” who just needed a place to stay. It could be hard to sort out J.T.’s relatives from the strays. Several of his uncles, I learned, were high-ranking gang members. But I didn’t even know how many siblings he had. I’d often hear him talk about “my sister” or “a brother of mine on the West Side,” but I couldn’t tell if these people were blood relatives or just friends of the family.

  Still, they all seemed content to let me hang out at Ms. Mae’s. And they all knew that J.T. didn’t want me wandering through the neighborhood by myself. Sometimes Ms. Mae would wordlessly set down a plate of food for me as I wrote, her Christian radio station playing in the background. No one in the family, including J.T., ever asked to see my notes-although once in a while he’d stand over me and joke about whether I was describing him as “handsome.” He loved the idea that I might be writing his biography. But in general everyone respected my privacy and let me do my work.

  Eventually Ms. Mae even cleared out a space for me in the apartment to keep some clothes and books. Often, during a break from writing up my notes, I would start conversations with Ms. Mae and others in her apartment. They all seemed hesitant to answer specific questions-I’d already witnessed how tenants shied away from interviews with journalists or social workers-but they were more than willing to explain basic aspects of their lives and their community. Like Old Time and his friends in Washington Park, they talked openly about their family histories, Chicago politics, the behavior of the CHA and other city agencies, and life in the projects. As long as I didn’t get too nosy-say, by asking about their income or who was living in an apartment illegally-they talked my head off. Just as important, I found I didn’t have to hide my ignorance-which wasn’t hard, since I was quite naïve about politics and race in urban America. My naïveté about these basic issues actually seemed to endear me to them.

  In my brief exposure to J.T. and others in his building, I had already grown dismayed by the gap between their thoughtfulness and the denigrating portrayals of the poor I’d read in sociological studies. They were generally portrayed as hapless dupes with little awareness or foresight. The hospitality that Ms. Mae showed and the tenants’ willingness to teach me not only surprised me but left me feeling extraordinarily grateful. I began to think I would never be able to repay their generosity. I took some solace in the hope that if I produced good, objective academic research, it could lead to social policy improvements, which might then better their living conditions. But I also wondered how I might pay them back in a more direct fashion. Given that I was taking out student loans to get by, my options were fairly limited.

  Once J.T. saw how much I enjoyed accompanying him on his surveys of the buildings, he took me along regularly. But he often had other work to do, work he didn’t invite me to see. And he wasn’t ready yet to turn me loose in the buildings on my own, so I generally hung out around Ms. Mae’s apartment. I felt a bit like a child, always in need of a baby-sitter, but I could hardly complain about the access I’d been granted into a world that was so radically different from anything I’d ever seen.

  Ms. Mae introduced me to the many people who stopped by to visit. In their eyes I was just a student, a bit of an oddball to be sure; sometimes they jokingly called me “Mr. Professor,” as they’d heard J.T. say. Several of J.T.’s aunts and cousins also lived in the building, and they warmed to me as well. They all seemed fairly close, sharing food and helping one another with errands or hanging out together on the gallery during the hot summer days.

  Life on the gallery tended to be pretty lively. In the evenings families often set up a barbecue grill, pulling chairs or milk crates from their apartments to sit on. I probably could have made friends a lot more quickly if I hadn’t been a vegetarian.

  Little kids and teenage girls liked to tug my ponytail when I walked past. Others would chant “Gandhi” or “Julio” or “Ay-rab” in my direction. I was still enamored of the view of the city, and still nervous about the fencing that ran around the gallery.

  Whenever a child ran toward the railing, I’d instinctively jump up and grab him. Once, a little boy’s mother laughed at me. “Take it easy, Sudhir,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them. It’s not like the old days.” In “the old days,” I found out, some children did fall to their deaths off the Robert Taylor galleries, prompting the CHA to install a safety fence. But it was obvious that the first mistake had been building exterior hallways in windy, cold Chicago.

  After dinner parents sent their kids inside the apartments and brought out tables and chairs, cards and poker chips, food and drink. They turned the galleries into dance floors and gambling dens; it could become carnivalesque.

  I loved the nightlife on the galleries. And the tenants were generally in a good mood at night, willing to tell me about their lives if they weren’t too high or too busy trying to make money. It was gettingeasier for me to determine when people were high. They’d stagger a bit, as if they were drunk, but their eyes sank back in their heads, giving them a look that was both dreamy and sinister.

  It was hard to figure out the extent of crack use among the tenants. A lot of people pointed out that other people smoked crack- calling them “rock star” or “user” or “hype”-while insinuating that they themselves never did. Aside from a few older women, like J.T.’s mother, just about everyone was accused of smoking crack at one time or another.

  After a while it became clear to me that crack use in the projects was much like the use of alcohol in the suburbs where I grew up: there was a small group of hard-core addicts and a much larger group of functional users who smoked a little crack a few days a week. Many of the crack users in Robert Taylor took care of their families and went about their business, but when they saved up ten or twenty dollars, they’d go ahead and get high. Over ti
me I’d learn enough to estimate that 15 percent of the tenants were hardcore addicts while another 25 percent were casual users.

  One of the first people I got to know on the gallery was named Clarisse. She was in her mid-thirties but looked considerably older. Beneath her worn and bruised skin, you could see a beautiful and thoughtful woman who nearly always had a smile ready. She worked as a prostitute in the building-“hustler” was the standard euphemism-and called herself “Clarisse the Mankiller,” because, as she put it, “my love knocks ’ em dead.” Clarisse often hung around with J.T.’s family on their gallery. This surprised me, since I had heard J.T. and Ms. Mae openly disparage the prostitutes in their building.

  “That’s part of life around here,” Ms. Mae had said, “but we keep away from them and I keep the kids away from them. We don’t socialize together.”

  One quiet evening, as J.T.’s family was getting ready to barbecue, I was leaning against the gallery fence, looking out at the dusk, when Clarisse came up beside me. “You never tell me about the kind of women you like,” she said, smiling, and opened a beer. By now I was used to Clarisse teasing me about my love life.

  “I told you,” I said, “my girlfriend is in California.”

  “Then you must get lonely! Maybe Clarisse can help.”

  I blushed and tried to change the subject. “How long have you been in the building, and how did you get to know J.T.?”

  “They never told you!” Clarisse yelped. “I knew it! They just embarrassed, they don’t like to admit I’m family.”

  “You’re part of their family?”

  “Man, I’m J.T.’s cousin. That’s why I’m around. I live upstairs on the fifteenth floor with my man. And I work in the building, too. I’m the one in the family they don’t like to talk about, because I’m open about what I do. I’m a very open person-I don’t hide nothing from nobody. Ms. Mae knows that. Shit, everyone knows it. But, like I said, they don’t always come clean about it.”

  “How can you live and work in the building?” I asked.

  “You see these men?” Clarisse pointed at some of the tenants along the galley, hanging out in front of their own apartments. “You should see how they treat women.” I didn’t understand what Clarisse meant; when she saw my face blank, she laughed. “Oh! We have a lot to talk about. Clarisse will educate you.”

  She then gestured toward a few women sitting on chairs. “See, all of them are hos. They all hustle. It’s just that they do it quietly, like me. We have regulars, and we live here. We’re not hypes who just come and go.”

  What’s the difference, I asked her, between a “hype” and a “regular”?

  “Regulars like me, we hustle to make our money, but we only go with guys we know. We don’t do it full-time, but if we have to feed our kids, we may make a little money on the side. I got two kids I need to feed, and my man don’t always help out. Then you got hypes that are just in it for the drugs. They don’t live around here, but J.T. lets them work here, and they give him a cut. I don’t hang around with them. They’re the ones that cause trouble. Some of them have pimps, some of them work for the gang, but they’re all in it for the drugs. Clarisse don’t mess with drugs. And that’s why a lot of people accept us-even if they say things behind our back. They know we’re only trying to take care of our families, just like them.”

  “Are you working now?” I said.

  “Baby, I’m always working if the price is right!” She laughed. “But J.T. probably don’t want me working tonight, so I won’t be hustling.”

  This confused me, since J.T. had specifically told me that his gang didn’t run a prostitution racket. Most gangs didn’t, he explained, since there wasn’t much money to be made. Prostitutes were hard to manage and required a great deal of attention: They were constantly getting beat up and arrested, which meant long periods without income. They needed to be fed and clothed, and the ones who used drugs were notoriously unpredictable. They were also prone to stealing money.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “You mean J.T. controls you?”

  “No, but he told me once that if I wanted to hang out with his family, I had to play by his rules: no hustling when there’s a family thing going on. Like tonight. And he runs things around here, so I have to play by the rules.”

  Even though J.T.’s gang didn’t actually control the prostitutes in his buildings, Clarisse explained that he did extract a monthly fee from both the hypes and the regulars. The regulars usually paid a flat fee (anywhere from fifteen to seventy-five dollars a month), and in return the gang would beat up any johns who abused the women. The hypes, meanwhile, turned over a cut of their income (ranging from 10 to 25 percent) to J.T.’s foot soldiers, who tried to keep track of how many tricks each woman turned. Clarisse said that J.T. was actually one of the nicer gang leaders on the South Side. He regularly lent money to women, helped them get medical care, even kept a few vacant apartments for them to use as brothels. So although J.T. didn’t technically run a prostitution ring, he certainly controlled the flow of prostitution on his turf and profited from it.

  The conversation with Clarisse that night made me realize that I was hardly the only person in the projects whose movements were dictated by J.T.

  Whenever he took me on a survey of his buildings, I’d watch him deal with the various people who hung out in lobbies, stairwells, galleries, parking lots, and playgrounds. He warned a prostitute not to hustle out in the open. He told a man selling sneakers-they looked like counterfeit Nikes-to move away from the lobby where J.T.’s gang members were selling drugs. J.T. often forbade homeless men from hanging out in the playground, especially if they were drinking. And if he spotted a stranger on the premises, he’d have one of his senior officers interrogate that person to learn his business. J.T. hardly knew every single person out of the roughly five thousand in his domain, but he usually managed to figure out whether someone was a local, and if he couldn’t figure it out, he had plenty of people to ask.

  All of this was accomplished with little drama. “You folks need to move this activity somewhere else,” he’d say matter-of-factly. Or, “What did I tell you about hustling in the park when kids are playing?” Or, “You can’t stay in this apartment unless you deal with Creepy first.” I saw a few people resist, but none for any great length of time. Most of them seemed to respect his authority, or at least fear it.

  In most of the sociological literature I’d read about gangs-they had been part of the urban fabric in the United States since at least the late nineteenth century-the gang almost always had heated relationships with parents, shopkeepers, social workers, and the police. It was portrayed as a nuisance at best, and more typically a major menace.

  J.T.’s gang seemed different. It acted as the de facto administration of Robert Taylor: J.T. may have been a lawbreaker, but he was very much a lawmaker as well. He acted as if his organization truly did rule the neighborhood, and sometimes the takeover was complete. The Black Kings policed the buildings more aggressively than the Chicago police did. By controlling lobbies and parking lots, the BKs made it hard for tenants to move about freely. Roughly once a month, they held a weekend basketball tournament. This meant that the playgrounds and surrounding areas got thoroughly spruced up, with J.T. sponsoring a big neighborhood party-but it also meant that other tenants sometimes had to call off their own softball games or picnics at J.T.’s behest.

  Over time J.T. became less reluctant to leave me alone in Robert Taylor. Occasionally he’d just go off on an errand and shout, “Hey, shorty, watch out for Sudhir. I’ll be back.” I generally didn’t stray too far, but I did start up conversations with people outside the gang. That’s how I first began to understand the complicated dynamic between the gang and the rest of the community.

  One day, for instance, I ran into C-Note, the leader of the squatters, installing an air conditioner in Ms. Mae’s apartment. C-Note was a combination handyman and hustler. For five or ten dollars, he’d fix a refrigerator or TV. For a few dollars
more, he’d find an ingenious way to bring free electricity and gas into your home. When it came to home repair, there didn’t seem much that C-Note couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do.

  After he finished work at Ms. Mae’s, I sat with C-Note on the gallery and had a beer. He told me that he had lived in the building for years and held various legitimate blue-collar jobs, but after being laid off several times he had lost his lease and become a squatter. He always found a little work and a place to sleep in J.T.’s building. He stayed out of people’s way, he told me. He didn’t make noise, didn’t use drugs, and wasn’t violent. He got his nickname, he explained, because “I got a hundred ways to make a hundred bucks.”

  I learned that a lot of tenants welcomed C-Note into their homes for dinner, let him play with their children, and gave him money for medicine or a ride to the hospital if he was hurt. But this began to change once J.T. moved his operations back into Robert Taylor. J.T. saw squatters as a source of income, not as charity cases. Nor was he pleased that C-Note was in the good graces of tenants, some of whom lobbied J.T. not to tax C-Note’s earnings. Even J.T.’s mother was on C-Note’s side in this matter.

  But J.T. wasn’t one to compromise when it came to money. He had to pay for the upkeep of a few cars as well as several girlfriends, each of whom needed her own apartment and spending allowance. J.T. also liked to go gambling in Las Vegas, and he took no small amount of pride in the fact that he owned dozens of pairs of expensive shoes and lots of pricey clothing. But instead of acting charitably toward someone like C-Note, J.T. was openly resentful of the idea that he was getting a free ride.

  One hot Sunday morning, I was hanging out with C-Note and some other squatters in the parking lot of J.T.’s building, across the street from a basketball court. The men had set up an outdoor auto-repair shop-changing tires, pounding out dents, performing minor engine repairs. Their prices were low, and they had lined up enough business to keep them going all day. Cars were parked at every angle in the lot. The men moved to and fro, hauling equipment, swapping tools, and chattering happily at the prospect of so much work. Another squatter had set up a nearby stand to sell soda and juice out of a cooler. I bought a drink and sat down to watch the underground economy in full bloom.