Gang Leader for a Day

Michael was silent.

“I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do,” J.T. said. “I’m not going to put you on the spot. You’re going to finish selling this, and next week you’re not earning shit. Your take goes to all the other guys. And you know what? You’re going to tell them, too. You’re going to tell them why it’s no good to make this weaker. You know why, right?”

Michael, his head down, nodded.

“Okay, then, you’re going to tell them it’s not right because we lose customers and then we don’t have no work. And you’re going to tell them that it was your idea, that you fucked up, and that as a way of dealing with it, you want them to have the money you would have made.”

Michael was by now visibly upset, his face set in a sort of angry mope. Finally he looked up, groaned, shook his head, glanced away, kicked a few stones on the ground. It seemed as if he wanted to challenge J.T., but he had obviously been caught. So he said nothing. After a while J.T. called over the other members of Michael’s group and finished obtaining his weekly report.

It had been dark for a few hours now. My stint as gang leader for a day-albeit in a very limited capacity-was finally over. It was both more banal and more dramatic than I could have envisioned. I was exhausted. My head was spi

I had accompanied J.T. on site visits to roughly twenty Black Kings sales teams. Two sales directors had been taken off to a secluded area and given mouthshots for their transgressions. Another one, who had failed to make his weekly payment to J.T., was levied a 10 percent fine and a 50 percent deduction of his next week’s pay. But J.T. used the carrot as well as the stick. The workers in one group who had done particularly well were allowed to carry guns over the weekend. (J.T. usually didn’t let his members walk around armed unless there was a war going on; he also required that members buy guns directly from the gang.) And he gave a $250 bonus to the members of another group that had several weeks of above-average sales.

There seemed to be no end to the problems that J.T. encountered during this weekly reco

The next day I would wake up free of the hundreds of obligations and judgments I’d been witness to. But J.T. wouldn’t. He’d still bear all the burdens of ru

But all that would take some time. My next set of answers about life in Robert Taylor came from the second-most-powerful force in my orbit, the woman known to one and all as Ms. Bailey.

FIVE. Ms. Bailey’s Neighborhood

Iran into Ms. Bailey pretty regularly. Sometimes she accompanied J.T. as he made his rounds of the building; sometimes I’d see her with a police officer or a CHA official. She always said hello and politely introduced me to whomever she was with. But I didn’t really know what she did or how she did it. Although she was present at the backroom gang negotiation I witnessed at the Boys & Girls Club, she hadn’t gotten very involved. So I was curious to learn more about her.

Specifically, I wanted to know why residents spoke of her with a mixture of reverence and fear, much as they spoke of J.T. “Oh, you don’t want to mess with Ms. Bailey,” they’d say. Or, “Yeah, Ms. Bailey can tell you a lot about what’s happening, but make sure you have five dollars with you.” Even J.T., who agreed that I should spend some time with Ms. Bailey, vaguely hinted that I ought to be careful around her.

Part of my motivation to observe Ms. Bailey came from my advisersat the University of Chicago. Jean Comaroff, an accomplished ethnographer, said that I was spending too much time with men. Since two-thirds of the community were women raising children, she suggested that I try to better understand how women managed households, secured services from the CHA, and otherwise helped families get by. Bill Wilson told me that poverty scholars knew little about the role women played in community affairs, and he encouraged me to spend time with household leaders like Ms. Mae but also tenant leaders like Ms. Bailey. Wilson and Comaroff both advised me to exercise the same sort of caution with Ms. Bailey as I would with other powerful people, never taking what they told me at face value.

Ms. Bailey was of average height and stout. Because of arthritis in her knees, she walked slowly, but always looking straight ahead with great focus, like Washington crossing the Delaware. She had a tattoo on her right arm that read MO-JO-the nickname, Ms. Mae told me, of a son who’d passed away. Ms. Bailey had pudgy fingers and, when she shook your hand, the tightest grip I’ve ever felt.

Her title was building president of the Local Advisory Council (LAC). This was an elected position that paid a part-time wage of a few hundred dollars a month. The official duties of a building president included lobbying the CHA for better building maintenance, obtaining funds for tenant activities, and so on. Elections were held every four years, and incumbents were rarely deposed. Some LAC presidents were much more powerful than others, and from what I’d heard, Ms. Bailey was on the upper end of the power scale. She had actually fought for the creation of the LAC many years ago, and she kept her fighting spirit. I’d heard stories about Ms. Bailey getting medical clinics to give free checkups to the children in her building and local stores to donate food.

I witnessed this fighting spirit firsthand when I visited her small, decrepit office one day. I wanted to explain why I’d been hanging around her building and also explain my research. I began by discussing the prevailing academic wisdom about urban poverty and the factors that contributed to it.

“You pla

I was confused. “This is a study of the Robert Taylor Homes, and I suppose that most of the people I’ll be talking to are black. Unless there are whites who live here that I’m not aware of.”

“If I gave you only one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”

I was thrown off by this seeming non sequitur. I thought for a minute. “I guess I would say I’m starving because I’m not eating enough,” I answered.

“You got a lot to learn, Mr. Professor,” she said. “Again, if I gave you one piece of bread to eat each day and asked why you’re starving, what would you say?”

I was getting even more confused. I took a chance. “Because you’re not feeding me?”

“Yes! Very good!”