For those of us who have never lived in them, we all have our own idea of what inner-city projects are like. We also hold personal theories as to why their residents landed there in the first place and why they can't - or don't - choose to leave. There are so many factors piled on top of one another that create such a result: economic class, race, luck, mental health, personal circumstances, physical health, gang relations, and family ties are just a few of them.
Gang Leader for a Day focuses on the Robert Taylor Projects at the very tail end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Located on the South Side of Chicago, Robert Taylor was an absolutely massive housing complex. It was initially built for about 11,000 residents; however, with multiple members living in each apartment, as well as squatters, stairwell-dwellers, and all manner of illegal and unofficial tenants, the number of people who actually resided there was enormous and pushed these high-rises beyond their capacity for reliable, safe accommodation. The tenants and visitors within these buildings were as diverse as their circumstances. They were rival gang members, drug addicts, prostitutes, young children, volunteers, tenant patrols, cops (both good and crooked), and sweet grandmas.
One person who stood out among all of the rest was Sudhir Venkatesh. Although he didn't live at Robert Taylor, he spent time there on a near-daily basis for almost a decade. A sociology student at the University of Chicago, he noted that as a new student, at every orientation he attended the students were told not to go alone beyond certain perimeters of the university that weren't patrolled by the university police as they were deemed unsafe. Sudhir's curiosity only increased as he familiarized himself with the city, and he soon felt compelled to explore these "unsafe" areas to see what he could find out firsthand. He was particularly interested in studying the poor black areas around the university, so he took this on as the basis of his academic research. Rather than asking survey questions and then breaking down the data using quantitative and statistical techniques safely behind a desk, he immersed himself in this alternate life instead using another method called "ethnography", or the studying of life by direct observation.
After a bit of an uncertain and shaky start, one of the first people he met and quickly ended up befriending was J.T., the leader of one of the most prominent gangs in Chicago at the time. This unlikely friendship and the book that resulted from it provides us with a real insider's viewpoint of life in the projects that's utterly fascinating. Okay, let's back it up for a second, though, and preface the need for any personal stances to be taken with a grain of salt. To clarify, I would say that the wide angle view (the general observation) of life in the projects was a reality check for me, as life within these dark, imposing building comprised much more depth than the stereotypes that initially came to mind, though the close-ups (the viewpoints and stories told by the residents and visitors) were often self-serving and not necessarily 100% believable, depending on the context and the storyteller. Remember here that Sudhir was the one on the receiving end of these stories, and oftentimes the narrators were involved in illegal activities or sometimes his interest was simply pumping up their egos, so the truth would often lie somewhere a few notches below the bravado. The juxtaposition between Sudhir, a middle-class privileged university student of Southeast Asian descent, and J.T., a lifer of the projects who was working his way higher through the ranks within his already powerful gang was captivating. J.T. was street-smart, caring, tough, egotistical, helpful, and community-minded. Sudhir was naive (stupendously so at times), mild-mannered, personable, and adaptable.
For me personally, one of the most surprising and revealing aspects was the comportment of the gang members, the tenant patrols and the police and the independent hierarchical structure that formed out of sheer need. The gang members weren't just focused on drug sales and weapons and drive-bys. While the source of their cash wasn't generally above board, there were some extremely altruistic members that really did give a lot back to their community - especially to the children - perhaps not via the usual routes; however, when you realize just how marginalized they've been by the government, the wider community and the housing authorities, no one is looking out for them but themselves. They become bargainers, mediators, and leaders within their home base. What else can you do when services such as ambulances simply don't show up when you call them from a certain part of town? What other choices do you have when housing authorities don't have the means to help everyone who needs it? These dire circumstances force all sorts strategies that the gang members, tenant patrols and cops utilized to cobble together their own solutions to the unique challenges of life in the projects. On the flip side was one of the tenant patrols, Ms. Bailey, whose job was generally focused on making sure the elderly tenants were doing okay. She also liaised with the Chicago Housing Authority, but she ended up taking bribes and giving preference to certain tenants over others to both feed her ego and play off both sides of her go-between position. The police were another story altogether. Sudhir couldn't figure out why the residents wouldn't just call the cops when crimes such as brutal assaults took place. There was one reliable, kind cop who was a former resident of the Robert Taylor projects who was often called to mediate, as he had a unique understanding of life there and therefore held respect, but others who viewed the residents with disdain and hatred and were so obviously racist and corrupt, it was soon obvious why they were never called to come in and sort out emergency situations.
The longer Sudhir spent integrating himself into everyday life at Robert Taylor, his focus and loyalties began to morph and spread and his naiveté started to get him tangled up. This came in a few forms: from the beginning, J.T. was under the somewhat misleading impression that Sudhir was there to write a biography about him. Furthermore, although his professors were aware of his research undertaking, Sudhir didn't disclose to them just how far he'd incorporated himself into the gang members' everyday life. Through sheer innocent ignorance, at one point he was seen as being both on the gang's side from the cops' perspective and the cops' side from the gang's perspective. This prompted some of the tenants that had always been open with him to begin to feel distrustful. He learned it was impossible to play both sides and keep everyone on an even keel. But because he'd immersed himself so deeply within the complex and its residents, he found it hard to step away and keep everyone happy and ensure his safety.
After many years, eventually his research came to a close, as did this book. If there's one thing you probably wouldn't expect from a book about life in one of the poorest, most ignored projects in Chicago, it's a fairy tale ending, though you never know...I won't ruin anything here by letting you find that out for yourself. Regardless, the level of commitment Sudhir took on with his research and the openness of these particular projects residents leaves us with an absolutely unique, intimate view of a way of life many of us, thankfully, don't have to contend with. We can be nothing but richer in understanding and more compassionate of one another as human beings if we take our blinders off, throw our preconceptions aside and truly find out how others live.
