High-Risers

by Ben Austen

  When Bill Clinton first ran for president, he presented himself as a “New Democrat.” He derided the longtime failures of government and pledged to “end welfare as we know it,” explaining that William Julius Wilson’s writing on “concentration effects” “made me see the problems of race and poverty and the inner city in a different light.” Running again as a moderate in 1996, angling to win back Congressional seats lost two years earlier, Clinton touted the welfare reform bill that he’d signed into law only a week before his arrival in Chicago. The federal entitlement now came with work requirements and a lifetime limit of five years for any recipient. He sold himself as tough on crime as well—he was putting 100,000 new police officers on the streets and had made “three strikes and you’re out” lifetime sentences for habitual offenders the law of the land. The Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, referred to public housing on the campaign trail as “one of the last bastions of socialism in the world,” arguing for its privatization and erasure. Clinton agreed that the program needed to be curtailed, accepting that the demand-side marketplace probably couldn’t do worse than the likes of the CHA.

  Jesse Jackson spoke at the convention—reluctantly, he claimed—saying that Clinton’s cuts to the social safety net were a devastating blow to the have-nots. He said new public housing complexes were in fact being built and maintained across the land—they were the federal and state prisons that were home disproportionately to black men. Jackson argued that the Democrats still needed to be the party that fought for the social well-being of all Americans. The idea that there were enough decent paying jobs out there for anyone with initiative to seize was a fantasy. Citing Martin Luther King Jr., he said there were “mountaintops” of prosperity in the center of his city. But much of the rest of Chicago lay in a canyon. “Once Campbell’s Soup was in this canyon. Sears was there, and Zenith, Sunbeam, the stockyards. There were jobs and industry where now there is a canyon of welfare and despair.” The national economy under Clinton had rebounded, and a seemingly bottomless deficit had been filled. But inequality was deepening and widening. “What is our obligation to the people in the canyon?” Jackson demanded. “That was Roosevelt’s dream, and Dr. King’s.”

  J. R. never set foot in the United Center during the convention. He spent his days setting up events in downtown hotel rooms where visiting delegates gathered. His hands were calloused from hanging posters, his thumbs bruised from tying balloons. He didn’t hear a word Clinton or Jackson said. But J. R. reflexively dismissed the Reverend Jackson as a poverty pimp, looking to advance his own career on the plight of the poor. And as for Clinton, J. R. knew that the president hadn’t stood up for Midnight Basketball, the league he played in at Cabrini-Green. Republicans attacked the puny line item in the president’s $33 billion crime bill, ridiculing the idea that any tax dollars might be spent on what they demeaned as games for criminals and crackheads. Clinton scrapped the program rather than defend it. It didn’t matter that the league had been started under President George H. W. Bush, one of his “thousand points of light,” as a way to keep public housing residents engaged in positive activities, or that it was proven to reduce crime. J. R. was done with them all. He told Brother Jim about his decision to quit politics. “I knew you’d figure that one out,” Jim said.

  What J. R. focused on instead was perfecting his peddling business. He bought a red GMC Vandura, and later, when his profits allowed it, a blue one, too. Most mornings he parked one of the vans outside a Cabrini-Green high-rise, laid on the horn, and then began his rounds. “Tapes, CDs, movies!” he cried. “Tapes, CDs, movies!” J. R. shouldered a military duffel the size of a rowboat. Inside he placed cardboard runners to partition his wares, like in a case of wine: old soul and hip-hop in separate compartments, pirated video games in others. From the strap, he dangled plastic bags filled with Bulls T-shirts and caps, with socks and towels. Michael Jordan had given up on baseball, thankfully, and the Bulls were again winning titles—God’s gift to the city and to its street sellers. J. R. was a one-man Chicago Bulls emporium. His wasn’t some junkman’s operation, either, a strung-out barker pushing a stolen grocery cart. He was organized. He had systems. He called his daily rounds “rotating on the land.” And his rotations covered much of Cabrini-Green’s seventy acres.

  J. R. would sell to the guys stationed in front of the building or in the lobby. They wanted the new Nas or Wu-Tang CD, a copy of Space Jam or the Adam Sandler movie that had opened in theaters that weekend, and J. R. had the bootlegs at cut-rate prices. He’d tease them, saying that he earned more in a week than they did, and he was pushing product that at least was kind of legal. Then he climbed the high-rises, going floor to floor. He knew most people at Cabrini-Green, at least by nickname, and there were regular customers whose apartments he always hit. Other residents, hearing his shouts, beckoned him to their doors. He knew when the checks for welfare, social security, and the city payroll arrived, and he might leave a high-rise with $300 in sales. He’d restock in his Vandura, and then move on to the next building and then the next one. He went through the Whites, the Reds, the rowhouses. He set up shop as well on the floor of JJ Fish & Chicken, a fast-food restaurant on Larrabee, spreading out a mat and covering it with merchandise. The owners accepted the arrangement as part of doing business in the neighborhood.

  It added up to a considerable haul. J. R. wasn’t exactly the type to report to the IRS, but one year, when he was caught up in a criminal case, his lawyer persuaded him to file a tax return. He listed self-employment earnings of $87,900. He bought new Compaq and Hewlett-Packard computers, investing in software and drivers to make his work copying music and movies easier. He rented his sister Marzetta a place on the South Side, so he could turn her Cabrini unit in 1017 N. Larrabee into a warehouse and workshop. It wasn’t just the money that drove him, though of course he chased that. There was the sport of it, the competition, the compulsion to win. There was another hustler, known as Big Boy for his considerable girth, a family friend who’d given J. R. his start duplicating movies. J. R. took over Big Boy’s buildings at Cabrini, undercutting his prices. Willie Sr. had to come back from Alabama to intervene, scolding J. R. for his lack of restraint: “Big Boy got to eat, too, son.”

  And still it wasn’t enough. On weekends, J. R. rented tables at the Swap-O-Rama, the giant flea market that operated on a barren rail yard blocks from the old stockyards. He’d scour the market for goods he might resell back at Cabrini-Green, picking up sports jerseys and car sound systems. All those women who did hair out of their apartments—J. R. would buy a case of twenty-four $1 tubes of gel for $6, offering it for $16 to the lady in 1230 N. Burling who specialized in finger waves. For a while he made a killing at Cabrini reselling bed linens and comforters.

  Whenever a policeman accused J. R. of piracy, he would rattle off the laws he’d memorized: “These goods are protected under the US Copyright Law, section 117, dash a, dash two, which states that it is not an infringement for the owner of a digital file to make another copy if said new copy is used as a backup.” Usually, the cop would move on to the next knucklehead who didn’t have a defense lined up. On his rounds, J. R. would even drop into the station house in the 365 W. Oak high-rise, and officers on their shift would pick out toys for their children, horror movies, or porn. Once, when J. R. started selling little plug-in scooters, miniature bikes whose speeds topped out just under the legal limit requiring a license and registration, a police sergeant said he was going to arrest him, for aiding and abetting drug dealers at Cabrini-Green. He accused J. R. of giving criminals the means to zip away from the police. It was exactly the sort of slow-pitch-softball comment that J. R. couldn’t help but swing at. “Do you even read a book?” he’d shout at the cop loud enough for the crowds that invariably gathered. He was roused by a sense of indignation as well as by a need to perform. “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?” What about Sammy’s Red Hots on Division Street? Sammy’s sold hot dogs to dope dealers, right? And did t
he officer know that Mr. Gyros down the block also provided criminals with the sustenance to carry out their illicit activities? Guys in the hood were notorious for shopping at City Sports. Weren’t gangbangers using Nikes to run away from the authorities? “I’m too smart for you,” he’d tell the police officer, mouthing the words with exaggerated slowness. “This one on the plantation learned to read.”

  J. R. and Donna, the mother of his four children, had been on and off for seven years, and they’d been off for months in 1997 when she felt moved to reconcile after rewatching the Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett movie Waiting to Exhale. She looked for J. R. and found him in his apartment with someone else. They argued, Donna picking up a fork from the kitchen counter and ramming it into his chest. They were done as a couple. But after a week, he and Donna turned cordial, trying to coordinate as much as they could to raise their children.

  That’s when he was introduced to Iesha. Eighteen, tall, and graceful, she had a job in one of the Arab-owned groceries along the mall on Larrabee. J. R. liked that she was work oriented, like himself, and that she’d been an athlete, also like himself. When they first started dating, the Master P movie I’m Bout It had just released. In no time J. R. sold out of his first fifty pirated copies; by that evening, a hundred other people had asked him for the tape. “When something goes viral on the land, in a project thick with people, you could be a millionaire off it,” J. R. roared. He bought ten more VCRs to speed up production. Iesha not only didn’t mind holing up in his apartment as he made the VHS copies but was eager to help. That was a woman for him. Their relationship would end bitterly ten years later, as Iesha finally, tearfully, came out as a lesbian. In the nineties at Cabrini-Green, it was hard to admit you were gay to others, let alone to yourself.

  But J. R. and Iesha lived happily enough for the time being. “We were the stars of the projects. A hustler and a worker,” he would say of their union. “That was my heart.” He bought a new Oldsmobile, midnight blue with gold-flake paint, and they would drive to Wisconsin or Michigan for the weekend. Once for Iesha’s birthday he chartered a boat; they were served a candlelit dinner on Lake Michigan as they sailed to Michigan City, Indiana, where Iesha dropped another $800 at the premium outlet stores. “I loved flashing money and helping people out,” J. R. would say. He got himself colorful Coogi sweaters and throwback basketball jerseys. He burned through thousands of dollars betting on horses at the nearby off-track parlor, getting fat on the cheese fries.

  When Iesha gave birth to their first of four children together, they moved into a fifth-floor unit in one of the red high-rises at Cabrini. And there they enjoyed a version of a traditional family life. J. R.’s children would wake him in the morning, clambering atop him with big smiles. They’d sit down for breakfast, drinking orange juice together. He walked them to school, only a couple of blocks away. And then J. R. would head off to work, rotating on the dwindling land.

  ANNIE RICKS

  WHEN ANNIE RICKS first moved into 660 W. Division, a woman who lived on the third floor of the high-rise stopped her. “You’re going to be my neighbor,” she said. “Yes, ma’am,” Ricks replied. It turned out they were related. Over the years, when the elevators weren’t working and Annie had to walk up the five flights to her apartment, she often popped in at this cousin’s place on the third floor and sat for a while at the kitchen table to talk. Then she’d walk up one flight and stop again on the fourth floor, where another set of relatives lived. Annie thought about leaving Cabrini-Green after a shooting in the building. But it was the third-floor cousin who soothed her. “Baby, stay,” she said. “It’s going to get better.”

  And it always did. Her son Deonta was named the eighth-grade valedictorian at Schiller, where the students would still see Jesse White from time to time. “It’s Mr. White to you, and Jesse to your mama,” he’d say when they shouted his name. Annie’s other children won basketball titles and all-tournament honors, and their trophies lined her living room. Her older children found jobs working in construction, retail, and a private residential complex built atop the old Madison Street Skid Row, an area that had been renamed the West Loop. In one of the classrooms in which Annie worked, the teacher surprised her with a pair of earrings as a thank-you. Her rent fluctuated, from as much as $300 a month when the adults on the lease were all working, to less than $50 a month when they weren’t. One Christmas, her son Reggie had his name pulled out of a bag, and he was “adopted” by the Slick Boys, the rapping cops bringing him gifts for the holidays.

  When he got older, Reggie would say that Cabrini-Green was never as bad as people said. “They maintained that it was the most notorious project. But the two big things that people say about it are Dantrell Davis and Girl X, you feel me? They hold on to that.” Reggie had gone to school with Girl X, as she was called to protect her identity. In 1997, the nine-year-old was attacked on the sixth-floor landing of her Cabrini high-rise, just feet from the apartment in which her grandmother had lived for forty years. She was raped and then choked with a T-shirt, the assailant spraying roach repellant in her mouth and leaving her for dead in a pile of dirty snow. She survived, though she was left blinded, mute, and partially paralyzed. Again, another unimaginable crime at Cabrini-Green dominated headlines, and for outsiders, at least, the tenant lawsuit that was holding up development came to seem obscene. “What lifestyle is it that residents want to protect there anyway?” a columnist for the Tribune asked.

  The city had already invested tens of millions of dollars in public funds into the surrounding blocks for upgraded sewers and utilities, for the widening and repaving of roads. Outside the Rickses’ home along Division, a 145,000-square-foot shopping center was under construction. Work had also gotten under way on a new library and new police headquarters. Seward Park was renovated, and a manufacturing district was being revived on neighboring Goose Island, with huge tax incentives for companies willing to relocate there. Across the street from Seward Park, the Oscar Mayer factory had closed for good in 1992, after a century in the neighborhood. But in 1997, Old Town Square opened on the site, with 113 new condos and single-family homes. Dan McLean, the well-connected developer of Central Station, Mayor Daley’s new home, secured the desirable land and lucrative tax breaks in exchange for setting aside a dozen of the units for CHA families.

  Eager to settle its lawsuit with residents, city officials tried to assure Cabrini families that the rebuilding in the neighborhood was in their best interest. Weeks after the Girl X assault, the mayor’s office held a community meeting at one of the local schools. A special assistant to Daley showed the crowd “before” and “after” slides of the plans for the area. “Not a pretty picture. . . . Not much to look at,” he said of the “before,” which for everyone else was both past and present. The “after,” he promised, would be a “complete community.” A Cabrini resident cut him off: “A complete community for who?” They already had a community, people shouted. At another meeting, after the same official invited residents to take part in the planning process, a woman told him that her forty-nine years on the Near North Side had taught her one thing. “It’s always the same. The forums start, then it breaks down,” she said. “They’ll go behind your back.” A Daley official at one of these public meetings chastised the crowd for interrupting her before she could deliver prepared remarks. A Cabrini tenant shot back: “You interrupted a way of life, lady.”

  The Coalition to Protect Public Housing was formed in 1996 by Carol Steele, a Cabrini-Green resident, and Wardell Yotaghan, from Rockwell Gardens on the West Side. The group hoped to safeguard residents from these dubious development plans, taking as its motto “Redevelop! Don’t Displace.” The state of public housing might have been deplorable, but the Coalition argued that the solutions so far didn’t look much better. “It wasn’t about tearing down the bricks and mortar; it was about moving out the people,” Steele said. She hosted Saturday workshops and town halls at Cabrini, telling residents about studies that tracked Section 8 famili
es in Chicago and found they were ending up in all-black neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Many landlords refused to rent to large families with children altogether, and a third of the people given Section 8s were unable to find suitable housing before the vouchers expired. The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the Community Renewal Society, and other civic-minded nonprofits joined the coalition and its fight to preserve affordable housing in the city. A pamphlet the group distributed asked, “IF NOT HERE . . .” above a photo of a boy standing outside a seven-story red Cabrini high-rise, followed by the question, “WHERE?”

  The group’s largest action, “a people’s march to protest public housing policies,” took place on June 19, 1997, Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas and other Southern states learned belatedly about their freedom. Some two thousand people gathered outside city hall and the CHA’s downtown offices. Many of them had come to Grant Park just two days earlier for the rally celebrating the Bulls fifth title in seven years. “This championship goes to all the working people here in the city of Chicago who go out every single day and bust their butts to make a living,” Michael Jordan had announced from the stage. For the public housing call to action, there were speeches, performances, and booths to register voters. Those gathered sang an old spiritual that had been used throughout the civil rights era and which took on special meaning when uttered by people fighting to stay in their housing of last resort. “Like a tree that’s standing by the water / We shall not be moved.” They needed to stand together and demand a more inclusive city. “If you don’t plan your community’s future,” a Coalition handout warned, “someone else will!!”