Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day

“Not a big deal?” J.T. said, turning to Autry. “You’re more ignorant than I thought you were. You pulled all these people together, and you’re going to fuck it up like this.”

“Whoa, my brother. Like I said, he’s with me.”

“And what if he comes by my building? Is he with you then? Huh? Is he with you then, nigger?”

“Fuck, no!” Autry laughed. “Then he’s with you! ’Cause I ain’t stepping foot in that motherfucker. Hell no!”

Autry ducked inside, grinning broadly. He seemed to be having great fun.

“That’s what I thought,” J.T. said, turning to me. “If you walk in there, the first time all these other niggers see you, then you’re with Autry, not me. You didn’t think about that, did you? You’re a motherfucking impatient nigger. And an ignorant one, from where I stand. You walk in there and I can’t do nothing for you. No more. So it’s up to you.”

“I didn’t think about any of this,” I apologized. “I didn’t know how-”

“Yeah, nigger, you didn’t think.” J.T. started walking inside. “Like I said, you’re with me or you’re with someone else. You decide.”

Inside, I could see Autry, giggling at me. “Come in, boy!” he yelled. “Come in, little baby! You scared?”

I decided I wasn’t willing to jeopardize my relationship with J.T., even if it meant missing an opportunity to learn more about the community and the gangs. So I turned and walked away. I started toward the university, and then I stopped. The last time I’d had an uncomfortable episode with J.T.-his beat-down of C-Note-I’d made a mistake. I’d waited too long before speaking to him about it. That made it harder to get a satisfying explanation. So this time I headed straight for J.T.’s building, figuring he’d go there when the meeting was over.

He did. He still seemed upset and started yelling at his mother. “No one understands what I deal with!” he said. “No one listens and does what I say.” He sent his bodyguards out to buy some beer. He sat on the recliner and grabbed the remote control. He barely glanced at me.

“You pissed at me?” I asked.

“What the fuck have you been doing around here?” he asked.

I explained that Ms. Bailey had introduced me to Autry and that I was interested in what went on at the club. He seemed surprised that he no longer knew all the specifics about the people I was meeting. “I guess you were going to make some friends while I was gone,” he said, and then he asked a question I’d been hoping he’d never ask: “What exactly are you doing around here? I mean, what are you writing about?”

He started changing channels on the TV. It was the first time I’d ever been with him when he didn’t look me in the eye.

“Well, honestly, I’m… I’m fascinated by how you do what you do,” I stammered. “Like I said before, I’m trying to understand how your mind works, why you decided to come back to the neighborhood and run this organization, what you have to do to make it. But if I don’t get out and see how others look at you, how you have this incredible effect on other people, then I’ll never really understand what you do. So while you were gone, I thought I’d branch out.”

“You mean you’re asking people what they think about me?” Now he had turned to look at me again.

“Well, not really, because you know they would probably not feel comfortable telling me. I’m at stage one. I’m trying to understand what the organization does and how people have to deal with it. If you piss people off, how do they respond? Do they call the police? Do they call you?”

“Okay. So it’s how others work with me.”

He seemed appeased, so I was quick to affirm. “Yes! How others work with you. That’s a great way of putting it.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask what “stage two” was, for I had no idea. I felt a little uneasy letting him think that I was actually writing his biography, but at the moment I just wanted to buy myself some time.

He checked his watch. “All right, I need to get some sleep.” He got up and walked toward his bedroom without saying good-bye. In the kitchen Ms. Mae kissed me good night, and I walked to the bus stop.

J.T. was a little cool toward me the next few times I saw him. So to warm things up, I stopped going to the club and spent nearly all my time in and around J.T.’s building. I was unhappy to be missing the opportunity to see how Autry worked with other people behind the scenes on important community issues, but I didn’t want to further anger J.T. I just told Autry that I’d be busy for a few weeks but I’d be back once I got settled in with my course work in the coming fall semester.

Soon after the school year began, a young boy and girl in Robert Taylor were shot, accidental victims of a drive-by gang shooting. The boy was eight, the girl nine. They both spent time in the hospital, and then the girl died. The shooting occurred at the border of Taylor A and Taylor B. J.T.’s gang had been on the receiving end of the shooting, with several members injured. The shooters were from the Disciples, who operated out of the projects near the Boys & Girls Club.

This single shooting had a widespread effect. Worried that a full-scale gang war would break out, parents began keeping their children inside, which meant taking time off from work or otherwise adjusting their schedules. Senior citizens worried about finding a safe way to get medical treatment. Local churches mobilized to deliver food to families too scared to walk to the store.

Ms. Bailey told me about a meeting at the Boys & Girls Club where the police would address concerned parents and tenant leaders. If I really wanted to see how the gang’s actions affected the broader community, Ms. Bailey said, I should be there.

I asked J.T., and he thought it was a good idea, even though he never bothered with such things. “The police don’t do nothing for us,” he said. “You should understand that by now.” Then he muttered something about how the community “takes care of its problems,” mentioning the incident I’d seen with Boo-Boo, Price, and the Middle Eastern store manager.

The meeting was held late one weekday morning. The streets outside the club were quiet, populated by a smattering of unemployed people, gang members, and drug addicts. The leaves had already changed, but the day was unseasonably warm.

Autry was busy as usual, running to and fro making sure everything was ready. Although I hadn’t seen him in some time, he shot me a friendly glance. The meeting was held in a large, windowless concrete room with a linoleum floor. There were perhaps forty tenants in attendance-all fanning themselves, since the heat was turned up too high. “If we turn it off, we can’t get it back on right away,” Autry told me. “And then it’s May by the time you get it back on.”

At the front of the room, several uniformed police officers and police officials sat behind a long table. Ms. Bailey nodded me toward a seat beside her, up front and off to one side.

The meeting was an exercise in chaos. Residents shouted past one another while the police officials begged for calm. A mother holding her infant yelled that she was “sick and tired of living like this.” The younger and middle-aged parents were the most vocal. The senior citizens sat quietly, many of them with Bibles in their hands, looking as if they were ready for church. Nor did the police have much to say, other than platitudes about their continued efforts to disrupt the gangs and requests for tenants to start cooperating with them by reporting gang crimes.

After about forty-five minutes, the police looked very ready to leave. So did the tenants. As the meeting broke up, some of them waved their hands dismissively at the cops.