Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day

A few weeks later, Ms. Bailey invited me to the building’s monthly meeting. It was open to all tenants and posed one of the few opportunities for people to publicly voice their problems.

There were about 150 tenant families in Ms. Bailey’s building. That included perhaps six hundred people living there legally and another four hundred living off the books. These were either boarders who paid rent to the leaseholders or husbands and boyfriends who kept their names off the leases so the women qualified for welfare. There were likely another few hundred squatters or people living temporarily with friends, but they were unlikely to attend a tenant meeting.

Ms. Bailey didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about these meetings, but she let me know that she well understood their symbolic value. “They need to see that something is going on,” she said, “even if nothing is going on.”

The meeting was held in Ms. Bailey’s office on a Saturday afternoon in December. Although it wasn’t very cold outside, the radiator was at full blast and the windows were closed. Ms. Bailey entered the steaming room and calmly walked past the few dozen people assembled on folding chairs, parking herself up front. She always sat down in the same awkward way. Because she was so heavyset, and because she had arthritis in her legs, she usually had to grab someone or something to help ease herself into a chair.

I was surprised at the small turnout. The attendees were mostly women and mostly in their mid-fifties like Ms. Bailey. There were, however, a few younger women with children and a few men as well.

Ms. Bailey deliberately arranged a sheaf of papers in front of her. She motioned for a young woman to open up the window, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Okay, this meeting is in session,” Ms. Bailey said.

A well-dressed man toward the back of the room immediately jumped up. “I thought you said you’d talk with those boys!” he said. “They’re still hanging out there, making all that damn noise. I can’t get no sleep.”

I assumed he was talking about the parties the Black Kings threw inside and outside the building.

“Did you make a note of that, Millie?” Ms. Bailey asked an old woman to her left. She was the official LAC recording secretary. Millie nodded while scribbling away.

“Okay,” Ms. Bailey said, “go on, young man.”

“Go on? I’ve been going on. I’m tired of going on. Each time I come here, I go on. I’m tired of it. Can you do something?”

“You got that, Millie?” Ms. Bailey asked, looking over the rims of her glasses.

“Mm-hmm,” Millie answered. “He’s tired of it, he’s been going on, and he wants you to do something.”

“You can probably leave out the tired part,” Ms. Bailey said in a serious tone.

“Yes, okay,” Millie said, scratching away in her notes.

“Will there be anything else, young man?” Ms. Bailey asked. He didn’t say anything. “Okay, then, I’m figuring you don’t want to talk about the fact that you’re living here illegally. Is that right? Now, who’s next? Nobody? Okay, then, we have some serious business to discuss. Before I take questions, let me tell you that Pride will be here on Tuesday registering all of you to vote. Please make sure to show up. It’s very important we have a good turnout for them.”

Pride was the organization I’d come across earlier, made up of ex-gang members and devoted to gang truces and voter registration. Ms. Bailey had already told me that she worked closely with them.

“What are we voting for?” asked a young woman in the front row.

“We’re not actually voting, sweetheart. You need to register first. If you’re already registered, you don’t need to come. But I want every apartment in this building registered.”

“Ain’t you even a little bit concerned that we’re just helping J.T. and the rest of them?” an older woman asked. “I mean, they’re the only ones who seem to be getting something out of this.”

“You want these boys to turn themselves around?” Ms. Bailey answered. “Then you got to take them seriously when they try to do right. It’s better than them shooting each other.”

“The voting hasn’t done a damn thing for us!” someone cried out. “So why are you so accepting of what they’re doing?” A chorus of “oohs” followed the question.

Ms. Bailey shushed the crowd. “Excuse me, Ms. Cartwright,” she said. “If you’re suggesting that I may be benefiting in any way by the voting stuff going on, you can just come out and say it.”

“I’m not saying you may be benefiting,” Ms. Cartwright said. “I’m saying you are benefiting. You get that new TV on your own, Ms. Bailey?”

This produced some more “oohs” and a round of outright giggling.

“Let me remind you,” Ms. Bailey yelled, trying to reestablish order, “that we ain’t had no harassment, no shooting, no killing for six months. And that’s because these young men are getting right. So you can help them or you can just sit and moan. And about my TV. Who was the one that give you fifty bucks for your new fridge? And you, Ms. Elder, how exactly did you get that new mattress?”

No one answered.

“That’s what I thought. You-all can keep up the bitchin’ or you can realize that every one of us is benefiting from me helping these young men.”

The rest of the meeting was similarly animated and followed this same pattern. Tenants accused Ms. Bailey of going easy on J.T.’s gang and personally benefiting from her alliance with them. She replied that her job was to help the tenants, period, and if that meant finding creative solutions to a multitude of problems, then she needed to be allowed such flexibility. To nearly every resident who complained, Ms. Bailey could cite an instance of giving money to that person for rent, for a utility bill, or to buy food or furniture. She plainly knew how to play the influence game. I’d been to her apartment a few times and, although she never let me stay for long, it was a testament to her skills: There were photos of her with political officials, several new refrigerators from the CHA, and cases of donated food and liquor. One bedroom was practically overrun with stacks of small appliances that she would give to tenants in her favor.

At one point during the meeting, Ms. Bailey mentioned the “donations” that she regularly procured from the gang, to be applied to various tenants’ causes. J.T. had repeatedly told me that he had to keep Ms. Bailey happy-having his junior members carry out her orders, for instance, and paying her each month for the right to sell drugs in the lobby. But this was the first time I ever heard Ms. Bailey admit to this largesse. In fact, she discussed it with a measure of pride, highlighting her ability to put the gang’s ill-gotten gains to good use. Although none of the tenants said so, I also knew from J.T. that some of them received payoffs from the gang-in exchange for their silence or for allowing the gang to stash drugs, cash, or weapons in their apartments. For a poor family, it was hard to turn down the gang’s money.

“Why are we even talking about J.T.?” asked an older man. “Why don’t we just go to the police? Can you tell me what you get from taking their help-or their money?”

“You-all want this place clean,” Ms. Bailey said. “You want this place safe. You want this and that. And you want it right away. Well, the CHA ain’t doing nothing. So I have to find ways to take care of it.”

“But we can’t walk around safely,” the man said. “My car got the windows shot out last year.”

“Right,” Ms. Bailey countered. “That was last year, and sometimes that happens. But you see this place getting cleaned up. You see people getting rides to the store. Who do you think is doing that? Before you go yelling at J.T. and the rest of them, you better understand that they’re family, too. And they’re helping-which is more than I can say for you.”