by Barack Obama
“You’re joking,” Linda said.
I tapped on the mike. “It’ll be okay. You guys will just have to speak up.” Then, looking down at the amp again, I said, “Try not to let the director hog the microphone, though. He’ll end up talking for hours. Just hold it up to him after you’ve asked the questions. You know, like Oprah.”
“If nobody comes,” Sadie said, looking at her watch, “we won’t need no mike.”
People came. From all across the Gardens, people came—senior citizens, teenagers, tots. By seven o’clock five hundred people had arrived; by seven-fifteen, seven hundred. TV crews began setting up cameras, and the local politicians on hand asked us for a chance to warm up the crowd. Marty, who had come to watch the event, could barely contain himself.
“You’ve really got something here, Barack. These people are ready to move.”
There was just one problem: The director still hadn’t arrived. Ms. Broadnax said he was caught in traffic, so we decided to go ahead with the first part of the agenda. By the time the preliminaries were over, it was almost eight. I could hear people starting to grumble, fanning themselves in the hot, airless gym. Near the door, I saw Marty trying to lead the crowd in a chant. I pulled him aside.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re losing people. You have to do something to keep them fired up.”
“Sit down, will you please.”
I was about to cut our losses and go ahead with Ms. Broadnax when a murmur rose from the back of the gym and the director walked through the door surrounded by a number of aides. He was a dapper black man of medium build, in his early forties. Straightening his tie, he grimly made his way to the front of the room.
“Welcome,” Sadie said into the mike. “We’ve got a whole bunch of people who want to talk to you.”
The crowd applauded; we heard a few catcalls. The TV lights switched on.
“We’re here tonight,” Sadie said, “to talk about a problem that threatens the health of our children. But before we talk about asbestos, we need to deal with problems we live with every day. Linda?”
Sadie handed the microphone to Linda, who turned to the director and pointed to the stack of complaint forms.
“Mr. Director. All of us in Altgeld don’t expect miracles. But we do expect basic services. That’s all, just the basics. Now these people here have gone out of their way to fill out, real neat-like, all the things they keep asking the CHA to fix but don’t never get fixed. So our question is, will you agree here tonight, in front of all these residents, to work with us to make these repairs?”
The next moments are blurry in my memory. As I remember it, Linda leaned over to get the director’s response, but when he reached for the microphone, Linda pulled it back.
“A yes-or-no answer, please,” Linda said. The director said something about responding in his own fashion and again reached for the mike. Again, Linda pulled it back, only this time there was the slightest hint of mockery in the gesture, the movement of a child who’s goading a sibling with an ice-cream cone. I tried to wave at Linda to forget what I’d said before and give up the microphone, but I was standing too far in the rear for her to see me. Meanwhile, the director had gotten his hand on the cord, and for a moment a struggle ensued between the distinguished official and the pregnant young woman in stretch pants and blouse. Behind them, Sadie stood motionless, her face shining, her eyes wide. The crowd, not clear on what was happening, began shouting, some at the director, others at Linda.
Then…pandemonium. The director released his grip and headed for the exit. Like some single-celled creature, people near the door lurched after him, and he broke into a near trot. I ran myself, and by the time I had fought my way outside, the director had secured himself in his limousine while a swell of people surrounded the car, some pressing their faces against the tinted glass, others laughing, still others cursing, most just standing about in confusion. Slowly the limo lurched forward, an inch at a time, until a path onto the road opened up and the car sped away, lumping over the cratered street, running over a curb, vanishing from sight.
I walked back toward the gymnasium in a daze, against the current of people now going home. Near the door, a small circle was gathered around a young man in a brown leather jacket whom I recognized as an aide to the alderman.
“The whole thing was put together by Vrdolyak, see,” he was telling the group. “You saw that white man egging the folks on. They just trying to make Harold look bad.”
A few feet away, I spotted Mrs. Reece and several of her lieutenants. “See what you done!” she snapped at me. “This is what happens when you try and get these young folks involved. Embarrassed the whole Gardens, on TV and everything. White folks seeing us act like a bunch of niggers! Just like they expect.”
Inside, only a few of the parents remained. Linda stood alone in one corner, sobbing. I came up and put my arm around her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“I’m so embarrassed,” she said, gulping down a sob. “I don’t know what happened, Barack. With all the people…seems like I just always mess things up.”
“You didn’t mess up,” I said. “If anybody messed up, it was me.” I called the others together into a circle and tried to offer encouragement. The turnout was great, I said, which meant people were willing to get involved. Most of the residents would still support our effort. We would learn from our mistakes.
“And the director sure knows who we are now,” Shirley said.
This last line drew some weak laughter. Sadie said she had to get home; I told the group that I could take care of cleaning up. As I watched Bernadette pick up Tyrone in one arm and carry his slumbering weight across the gymnasium floor, I felt my stomach constrict. Dr. Collier tapped me on the shoulder.
“So who’s gonna cheer you up?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“You take some chances, things are gonna blow once in a while.”
“But the looks on their faces…”
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Collier said. “They’re tough. Not as tough as they sound—none of us are, including you. But they’ll get over it. Something like this is just part of growing up. And sometimes growing up hurts.”
The fallout from the meeting could have been worse. Because we had run so late, only one TV station replayed the tug-of-war between Linda and the director. The morning paper noted the frustration residents felt with CHA’s slow response to the asbestos problem, as well as the director’s tardiness that evening. In fact, we could claim the meeting as a victory of sorts, for the following week men dressed in moon-suits and masks were seen all over the Gardens, sealing any asbestos that posed an immediate threat. CHA also announced that it had asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for several million dollars in emergency cleanup funds.
Such concessions helped to lift the spirits of some of the parents, and after a few weeks of licking our wounds, we started meeting again to make sure that CHA followed up on its commitments. Still, in Altgeld at least, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the window of possibility that had been pried open so briefly had slammed shut once again. Linda, Bernadette, Mr. Lucas—they would all continue to work with DCP, but only reluctantly, out of loyalty to me rather than to each other. Other residents who had joined us during the weeks leading up to the meeting dropped away. Mrs. Reece refused to speak to us anymore, and while few people paid attention to her attacks on our methods and motives, the squabbling only served to reinforce the suspicion among residents that no amount of activism would alter their condition, except maybe to bring trouble that they didn’t need.
A month or so after the initial cleanup, we met with HUD to lobby for CHA’s budget request. In addition to the emergency cleanup funds, CHA had asked the feds for over a billion dollars to make basic repairs on projects all over the city. A tall, dour white man from HUD went over the line items.
“Let me be blunt,” he told us. “CHA has no chance of getting even half the
appropriation it’s requested. You can have the asbestos removed. Or you can have new plumbing and roofing where it’s needed. But you can’t have both.”
“So you’re telling us that after all this, we gonna be worse off than we was,” Bernadette said.
“Well, not exactly. But these are the budget priorities coming out of Washington these days. I’m sorry.”
Bernadette hoisted Tyrone up on her lap. “Tell that to him.”
Sadie didn’t join us for that meeting. She had called me to say that she had decided to stop working with DCP.
“My husband doesn’t think it’s a good idea, me spending all this time instead of looking after my own family. He says that the publicity went to my head…that I became prideful.”
I suggested that as long as her family lived in the Gardens, she’d have to stay involved.
“Ain’t nothing gonna change, Mr. Obama,” she said. “We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’M TELLING YOU, MAN, the world is a place.”
“Say, the world is a place, huh.”
“That’s just what I’m saying.”
We were walking back to the car after dinner in Hyde Park, and Johnnie was in an expansive mood. He often got like this, especially after a good meal and wine. The first time I met him, when he was still working with a downtown civic group, he had started explaining the relationship between jazz and Eastern religion, then swerved into an analysis of black women’s behinds, before coming to a stop on the subject of Federal Reserve Bank policy. In such moments his eyes would grow wide; his voice would speed up; his round, bearded face would glow with a childlike wonder. That was part of the reason I’d hired Johnnie, I suppose, that curiosity of his, his appreciation of the absurd. He was a philosopher of the blues.
“I’ll give you an example,” Johnnie was saying to me now. “The other day, I’m headed for a meeting up in the State of Illinois Building. You know how it’s open in the middle, right…big atrium and all that. Well, the guy I’m supposed to be meeting with is late, so I’m just standing there looking down at the lobby from the twelfth floor, checking out the architecture, when all of a sudden this body flies past me. A suicide.”
“You didn’t tell me about that—”
“Yeah, well, shook me up pretty good. High up as I was, I could hear the body land like it was right there next to me. Terrible sound. Soon as it happened, these office workers rushed up to the guardrail to see what was going on. We’re all looking down, and sure enough the body’s lying there, all twisted and limp. People started screaming, covering their eyes. But the strange thing was, after people got through screaming, they’d go back to the railing to get a second look. Then they’d scream and cover their eyes all over again. Now why would they do that? Like, what do they expect the second time around? But see, folks are funny like that. We can’t help ourselves with that morbid shit….
“Anyway, the cops come, they rope things off and take the body away. Then the building crew starts cleaning up. Nothing special, you know—just a broom and a mop. Sweeping up a life. Whole thing’s cleaned up in maybe five minutes. Makes sense, I guess…. I mean, it’s not like you need special equipment or suits or something. But it starts me thinking, How’s that gonna feel to be one of those janitors, mopping up somebody’s remains? Somebody’s got to do it, right? But how you gonna feel that night eating dinner?”
“Who was it that jumped?”
“That’s the other thing, Barack!” Johnnie took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke roll from his mouth. “It was a young white girl, man, sixteen maybe, seventeen. One of these punk rock types, with blue hair and a ring through her nose. Afterward, I’m wondering what she was thinking about while she was riding up the elevator. I mean, folks musta been standing right next to her on the way up. Maybe they looked her over, decided she was a freak, and went back to thinking about their own business. You know, their promotion, or the Bulls game, or whatever. And the whole time this girl’s just standing there next to them with all that pain inside her. Got to be a lot of pain, doc, ’cause right before she jumps, you figure she looks down and knows that shit is gonna hurt.”
Johnnie stamped out his cigarette. “So that’s what I’m saying, Barack. Whole panorama of life out there. Crazy shit going on. You got to ask yourself, is this kinda stuff happening elsewhere? Is there any precedent for all this shit? You ever ask yourself that?”
“The world’s a place,” I repeated.
“See there! It’s serious, man.”
We’d almost reached Johnnie’s car when we heard a small pop, compact and brief, like a balloon bursting. We looked in the direction of the sound, and watched a young man appear from around the corner diagonal to us. I don’t clearly recall his features or what he wore, although he couldn’t have been older than fifteen. I just remember that he ran at a desperate pace, his sneakered feet silent against the sidewalk, his lanky limbs pumping wildly, his chest jutting out as if straining for an imaginary tape.
Johnnie dropped flat onto a small plot of grass in front of one of the apartments, and I quickly followed suit. A few seconds later, two more boys came around the same corner, also running at full speed. One of them, short, fattish, with pants that bunched around his ankles, was waving a small pistol. Without stopping to aim, he let out three quick shots in the direction of the first boy. Then, realizing that his target was out of range, he slowed to a walk, stuffing the weapon under his shirt. His companion, skinny and big-eared, came alongside.
“Stupid motherfucker,” the skinny boy said. He spat with satisfaction, and the two of them laughed to each other before continuing down the street, children again, their figures casting squat shadows on the asphalt.
Another fall, another winter. I had recovered from the disappointments of the asbestos campaign, developed other issues and found other leaders. Johnnie’s presence had helped relieve my workload, and our budget was stable; what I’d lost in youthful enthusiasm I made up for in experience. And in fact, it may have been that growing familiarity with the landscape, the counsel of time, that gave me the sense that something different was going on with the children of the South Side that spring of 1987; that an invisible line had been crossed, a blind and ugly corner turned.
There was nothing definite I could point to, no hard statistics. The drive-by shootings, the ambulance sirens, the night sounds of neighborhoods abandoned to drugs and gang war and phantom automobiles, where police or press rarely ventured until after the body was found on the pavement, blood spreading in a glistening, uneven pool—none of this was new. In places like Altgeld, prison records had been passed down from father to son for more than a generation; during my very first days in Chicago I had seen the knots of young men, fifteen or sixteen, hanging out on the corners of Michigan or Halsted, their hoods up, their sneakers unlaced, stomping the ground in a desultory rhythm during the colder months, stripped down to T-shirts in the summer, answering their beepers on the corner pay phones: a knot that unraveled, soon to reform, whenever the police cars passed by in their barracuda silence.
No, it was more a change of atmosphere, like the electricity of an approaching storm. I felt it when, driving home one evening, I saw four tall boys walking down a tree-lined block idly snapping a row of young saplings that an older couple had just finished planting in front of their house. I felt it whenever I looked into the eyes of the young men in wheelchairs that had started appearing on the streets that spring, boys crippled before their prime, their eyes without a trace of self-pity, eyes so composed, already so hardened, that they served to frighten rather than to inspire.
That’s what was new: the arrival of a new equilibrium between hope and fear; the sense, shared by adults and youth alike, that some, if not most, of our boys were slipping beyond rescue. Even lifelong South Siders like Johnnie noticed the change. “I ain’t never seen it like this, Barack,” he would tell me one day as we sat i
n his apartment sipping beer. “I mean, things were tough when I was coming up, but there were limits. We’d get high, get into fights. But out in public, at home, if an adult saw you getting loud or wild, they would say something. And most of us would listen, you know what I’m saying?
“Now, with the drugs, the guns—all that’s disappeared. Don’t take a whole lot of kids carrying a gun. Just one or two. Somebody says something to one of ’em, and—pow!—kid wastes him. Folks hear stories like that, they just stop trying to talk to these young cats out here. We start generalizing about ’em just like the white folks do. We see ’em hanging out, we head the other way. After a while, even the good kid starts realizing ain’t nobody out here gonna look out for him. So he figures he’s gonna have to look after himself. Bottom line, you got twelve-year-olds making their own damn rules.”
Johnnie took a sip of his beer, the foam collecting on his mustache. “I don’t know, Barack. Sometimes I’m afraid of ’em. You got to be afraid of somebody who just doesn’t care. Don’t matter how young they are.”
After I was back in my own apartment, I thought about what Johnnie had said. Was I afraid? I didn’t think so…at least not in the way Johnnie had meant it. Wandering through Altgeld or other tough neighborhoods, my fears were always internal: the old fears of not belonging. The idea of physical assault just never occurred to me. Same thing with the distinction Johnnie made between good kids and bad kids—the distinction didn’t compute in my head. It seemed based on a premise that defied my experience, an assumption that children could somehow set the terms of their own development. I thought about Bernadette’s five-year-old son, scampering about the broken roads of Altgeld, between a sewage plant and a dump. Where did he sit along the spectrum of goodness? If he ended up in a gang or in jail, would that prove his essence somehow, a wayward gene…or just the consequences of a malnourished world?