One hot Sunday morning, I was hanging out with C-Note and some other squatters in the parking lot of J.T."s building, across the street from a basketball court. The men had set up an outdoor auto-repair shop-changing tires, pounding out dents, performing minor engine repairs. Their prices were low, and they had lined up enough business to keep them going all day. Cars were parked at every angle in the lot. The men moved to and fro, hauling equipment, swapping tools, and chattering happily at the prospect of so much work. Another squatter had set up a nearby stand to sell soda and juice out of a cooler. I bought a drink and sat down to watch the underground economy in full bloom.
J.T. drove up, accompanied by four of his senior officers. Three more cars pulled up behind them, and I recognized several other gang leaders, J.T."s counterparts who ran the other local Black Kings factions.
J.T. walked over to C-Note, who was peering into a car engine. J.T. didn"t notice me-I was sitting by a white van, partially hidden from view-but I could see and hear him just fine.
"C-Note!" J.T. yelled. "What the f.u.c.k are you doing?"
"What the f.u.c.k does it look like I"m doing, young man?" C-Note barked right back without looking up from his work. C-Note wasn"t usually quarrelsome, but he could be a hard-liner when it came to making his money.
"We have games running today," J.T. said. He meant the gang"s monthly basketball tournament. "You need to get this s.h.i.t out of here. Move the cars, get all this stuff off the court."
"Aw, s.h.i.t, you should"ve told me." C-Note threw an oily cloth to the ground. "What the f.u.c.k can I do? You see that the work ain"t finished."
J.T. laughed. He seemed surprised that someone would challenge him. "n.i.g.g.e.r, are you kidding me?! I don"t give a f.u.c.k about your work. Get these cars out of here." J.T. looked underneath the cars. "Oh, s.h.i.t! And you got oil all over the place. You better clean that up, too."
C-Note started waving his hands about and shouting at J.T. "You"re the only one who can make money, is that right? You own all this s.h.i.t, you own all this land? Bulls.h.i.t."
He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and kept muttering, "Bulls.h.i.t." The other squatters stopped working to see what would happen next. C-Note was drenched in sweat and angry, as if he might lose control.
J.T. looked down at his feet, then waved over his senior officers, who had been waiting by the car. A few of the other gang members also got out of their cars.
Once his henchmen were near, J.T. spoke again to C-Note: "I"m asking you one more time, n.i.g.g.e.r. You can either move this car or-"
"That"s some bulls.h.i.t, boy!" C-Note yelled. "I ain"t going anywhere. I been here for two hours, and I told you I ain"t finished working. So f.u.c.k you! f.u.c.k you! f.u.c.k you!" He turned to the other squatters. "This n.i.g.g.e.r do this every time," he said. "Every time. f.u.c.k him."
C-Note was still chattering when J.T. grabbed him by the neck. In an instant two of J.T."s officers also grabbed C-Note. The three of them dragged him toward a concrete wall that separated Robert Taylor from the tracks where a commuter train ran. C-Note kept shouting, but he didn"t physically resist. The other squatters turned to watch. The gang leaders nonchalantly took some sodas from the cooler without paying.
"You can"t do this to us!" C-Note shouted. "It ain"t fair."
J.T. pushed C-Note up against the concrete wall. The two officers, their muscular arms plastered with tattoos, pinned him in.
"I told you, n.i.g.g.e.r," J.T. said, his face barely an inch away from C-Note"s, "but you just don"t listen, do you?" He sounded exasperated, but there was also a sinister tone to his voice I"d never heard before. "Why are you making this harder?"
He started slapping C-Note on the side of the head, grunting with each slap, C-Note"s head flopping back and forth like a toy.
"f.u.c.k you!" C-Note shouted. He tried to turn to look J.T. in the eye, but J.T. was so close that C-Note b.u.t.ted the side of J.T."s head with his own. This only irked J.T. more. He c.o.c.ked his arm and pounded C-Note in the ribs. C-Note held his gut, coughing violently, and then J.T."s henchmen pushed him to the ground. They took turns kicking him, one in the back and the other in the stomach. When C-Note curled up, they kicked him in the legs. "You should"ve listened to the man, fool!" one of them shouted.
C-Note lay in a fetal position, struggling to catch his breath. J.T. rolled him over and punched him in the face one last time. "Dumb n.i.g.g.e.r!" he shouted, then walked back toward us, head down, flexing his hand as if he had hurt it on C-Note"s skull.
J.T. reached into the squatter"s cooler for a soda. That"s when he finally noticed me standing there. He frowned when our eyes met. He quickly moved away, going toward the high-rise, but his look gave me a chill. He was clearly surprised to see me, and he seemed a little peeved.
I had been hanging around J.T. and his gang for several months by now, and I"d never seen J.T. engage in violence. I felt like his scribe, tailing a powerful leader who liked to joke with the tenants and, when he needed to be a.s.sertive, did so quietly. I was naive, I suppose, but I had somehow persuaded myself that just because I hadn"t seen any violence, it didn"t exist. Now I had had seen a different side of his power, a far less polished presentation. seen a different side of his power, a far less polished presentation.
In the weeks afterward, I began to contemplate the possibility that I would see more beatings, perhaps even fatal incidents. I still felt exhilarated by my access to J.T."s gang, but I was also starting to feel shame. My conviction that I was merely a sociological observer, detached and objective, was starting to feel false. Was I really supposed to just stand by while someone was getting beat up? I was ashamed of my desire to get so close to the violence, so close to a culture that I knew other scholars had not managed to see.
In reality I probably had little power to stop anyone from getting abused by the gang. And for the first time in my life, I was doing work that I truly loved; I was excited by my success. Back at the university, my research was starting to attract attention from my professors, and I certainly didn"t want to let that go. I told Wilson about the young men I had met and their involvement with gangs. I kept things pretty abstract; I didn"t tell him every detail about what I saw. He seemed impressed, and I didn"t want to lose his support, so I figured that if I could forget about the shame, maybe it would simply go away.
As time pa.s.sed, I pretty much stopped talking about my research to friends and family. I just wrote down my notes and tried not to draw attention to myself, except to tell my advisers a few stories now and then.
When I went home to California on vacations or holidays and saw my parents, I told them relatively little about my work in the projects. My mother, who worked as a hospital records clerk, was already worried about my living so far from home, so I didn"t want to heighten her concern with stories of gang beatings. And I knew that my father would be upset if he learned that I hid things from my advisers. So I hid my fieldwork from him as well. Instead I just showed them my grades, which were good, and said the least I could get away with.
In retrospect the C-Note beating at least enabled me to view my relationship with J.T. more realistically. It made me appreciate just how deeply circ.u.mscribed my interactions with the Black Kings had been. What I had taken to be a fly-on-the-wall vantage point was in fact a highly edited view. It wasn"t that I was seeing a false side of the gang, but there was plainly a great deal I didn"t have access to. I knew that the gang made a lot of money in a lot of different ways- I had heard, for instance, that they extorted store owners-but I knew few details. All I saw was the flashy consumption: the jewelry, the cars, the parties.
And the gang obviously had an enormous impact on the wider community. It went well beyond telling residents they couldn"t hang out in the lobby. The C-Note beating made that clear. But if I was really going to write my dissertation on gang activity, I"d have to learn an awful lot more about how the gang affected everyone else in the community. The problem was figuring the way out from under J.T."s grip.
THREE.
Someone to Watch Over Me C-Note"s friends took him to the hospital, where he received treatment for bruised ribs and cuts on his face. He spent the next couple of months recuperating in the apartment of a friend who lived nearby. Eventually he moved back into Robert Taylor. The building was as much his home as J.T."s, and no one expected the beating to drive him away for good.
I wondered how J.T. would react the next time I saw him. Up to that point, he was always happy to have me follow him around, to have a personal biographer. "He"s writing about my life," he"d boast to his friends. "If you-all could read, you"d learn something." He had no real sense of what I would actually be writing-because, in truth, I didn"t know myself. Nor did I know if he"d be upset with me for having seen him beat up C-Note, or if perhaps he"d try to censor me.
I didn"t return to Robert Taylor for a week, until J.T. called to invite me to a birthday party for his four-year-old daughter, Shuggie.She was one of two daughters that J.T. had with his girlfriend Joyce; the other girl, Bee-Bee, was two. J.T. and Joyce seemed pretty close. But then again J.T. also seemed close with Missie and their son, Jamel. As much as J.T. seemed to trust me and let me inside his world, he was fiercely protective of his private life. Except for benign occasions like a birthday party, he generally kept me away from his girlfriends and his children, and he often gave me blatantly contradictory information about his family life. I once tried asking why he was so evasive on that front, but he just shut me down with a hard look.
I was nervous as I rode the bus toward Robert Taylor, but my reunion with J.T. was anticlimactic. The party was so big, with dozens of friends and family members, that it was split between Ms. Mae"s apartment and another apartment upstairs where J.T."s cousin LaShona lived. Ms. Mae had cooked a ton of food, and there was a huge birthday cake. Everyone was having a good, loud time.
J.T. strode right over and shook my hand. "How you feel?" he asked-one of his standard greetings. He stared me down for a moment but said nothing more. Then he winked, handed me a beer, and walked away. I barely saw him the rest of the party. Ms. Mae introduced me to some of her friends-I was "Mr. Professor, J.T."s friend," which conferred immediate legitimacy upon me. I stayed a few hours, played some games with the kids, and then took the bus home.
J.T. and I resumed our normal relationship. Even though I couldn"t stop thinking about the C-Note beating, I kept my questions to myself. Until that incident I had seen gang members selling drugs, tenants taking drugs, and plenty of people engaged in small-time hustles to make money. While I was by no means comfortable watching a drug addict smoke crack, the C-Note affair gave me greater pause. He was an old man in poor health; he could hardly be expected to defend himself against men twice his size and half his age, men who also happened to carry guns.
What was I, an impartial observer-at least that"s how I thought of myself-supposed to do upon seeing something like this? I actually considered calling the police that day. After all, C-Note had been a.s.saulted. But I didn"t do anything. I am ashamed to say that I didn"t even confront J.T. about it until some six months later, and even then I did so tentatively.
The confrontation happened after I witnessed another incident with another squatter. One day I was standing outside the building"s entryway with J.T. and a few other BKs. J.T. had just finished his weekly walk-through of his high-rise. He was having a quick meeting with some prost.i.tutes who"d recently started working in the building, explaining the rules and taxes. The tenants, meanwhile, went about their business-hauling laundry, checking the mail, running errands.
A few of J.T."s junior members came out to tell him that one of the squatters in the building, a man known as Bra.s.s, refused to pay the gang"s squatting fee. They had brought Bra.s.s with them down to the lobby. I could see him through the entryway. He looked to be in his late forties, but it was hard to say. He had only a few teeth and seemed in pretty bad shape. I"d heard that Bra.s.s was a heroin addict with a reputation for beating up prost.i.tutes. He was also known for moving around from building to building. He wasn"t a regular squatter like C-Note, who was on familiar terms with all the tenants. Bra.s.s would anger the tenants in one building and then pack up and move along.
J.T. dispatched Price, one of his senior officers, to deal with Bra.s.s. Unlike C-Note, who offered only a little resistance, Bra.s.s decided to fight back. This was a big mistake. Price was generally not a patient man, and he seemed to enjoy administering a good beating. I could see Price punching Bra.s.s repeatedly in the face and stomach. J.T. didn"t flinch. Everyone, in fact-gang members and tenants alike- just stood and watched.
Bra.s.s started to crawl toward us, making his way outside to the building"s concrete entryway. Price looked exhausted from hitting Bra.s.s, and he took a break. That"s when some rank-and-file gang members took over, kicking and beating Bra.s.s mercilessly. Bra.s.s resisted throughout. He kept yelling "f.u.c.k you!" even as he was being beaten, until he seemed unconscious. A drool of blood spilled from his mouth.
Then he began flailing about on the ground in convulsion, his spindly arms flapping like wings. By now his body lay just a few feet from us. I g roaned, a nd J .T. pulled me away. Still no one came to help Bra.s.s; it was as if we were all fishermen watching a fish die a slow death on the floor of a boat.
I leaned on J.T."s car, quivering from the shock. He took hold of me firmly and tried to calm me down. "It"s just the way it is around here," he whispered, a discernible tone of sympathy in his voice. "Sometimes you have to beat a n.i.g.g.e.r to teach him a lesson. Don"t worry, you"ll get used to it after a while."
I thought, No, I don"t want to get used to it. No, I don"t want to get used to it. If I did, what kind of person would that make me? I wanted to ask J.T. to stop the beating and take Bra.s.s to the hospital, but my ears were ringing, and I couldn"t even focus on what he was telling me. My eyes were fixed on Bra.s.s, and I felt like throwing up. If I did, what kind of person would that make me? I wanted to ask J.T. to stop the beating and take Bra.s.s to the hospital, but my ears were ringing, and I couldn"t even focus on what he was telling me. My eyes were fixed on Bra.s.s, and I felt like throwing up.
Then J.T. grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me away so I couldn"t watch. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see that a few tenants finally came over to help Bra.s.s, while the gang membersjust stood over him doing nothing. J.T. held me up, as if to comfort me. I tried instead to support my weight on his car.
That"s when C-Note slipped into my thoughts.
"I understand that Bra.s.s didn"t pay you the money he owed, but you guys beat up C-Note and he wasn"t doing anything," I said impatiently. "I just don"t get it."
"C-Note was challenging my authority," J.T. answered calmly. "I had told him months before he couldn"t do his work out there, and he told me he understood. He went back on his word, and I had to do what I had to do."
I pushed a little harder. "Couldn"t you just punish them with a tax?"
"Everyone wants to kill the leader, so you got to get them first." This was one of J.T."s trademark sayings. "I had n.i.g.g.e.rs watching me," he said. "I had to do what I had to do."
I recalled that on the day C-Note challenged him, J.T. had driven up to the building with a few Black Kings leaders from other neighborhoods. J.T. was constantly worried-practically to the point of paranoia, it seemed to me-that his own members and fellow leaders wanted to dethrone him and claim his territory. So he may have felt he couldn"t afford to have his authority challenged in their presence, even by a senior citizen whose legs probably couldn"t buy him one lap around a high-school track. Still, J.T."s explanation seemed so alien to me that I felt I was watching a scene from The G.o.dfather. The G.o.dfather.
By now it was nearly a year since I"d started hanging out with J.T."s gang. It was 1990, which was roughly the peak of the crack epidemic in Chicago and other big U.S. cities. Black and Latino gangs including the Kings, the Cobras, the Disciples, the Vice Lords, the MCs (Mickey Cobras), and even the Stones, which had been temporarily dismantled a few years earlier, were capitalizing on a huge demand for crack and making a lot of money.
In the old days, a teenager with an appet.i.te for trouble might have gotten involved in vandalism or shoplifting; now he was more likely to be involved in the drug trade. And the neighbor who might have yelled at that misbehaving teenager in the old days was less likely to do so, since that kid might well be carrying a gun.
Politicians, academics, and law-enforcement officials all offered policy solutions, to little avail. The liberal-minded deployed their traditional strategies-getting young people back into school and finding them entry-level jobs-but few gang members were willing to trade in their status and the prospect of big money for menial work. Conservatives attacked the crack epidemic by supporting ma.s.s arrests and hefty prison sentences. This certainly took some dealers off the streets, but there was always a surplus of willing and eager replacements.
The national mood had grown increasingly desperate-and punitive. Prosecutors won the right to treat gangs as organized criminal groups, which produced longer prison sentences. Judges gave the police permission to conduct warrantless searches and to round up suspected gang members who were hanging out in public s.p.a.ces. In schools, mayors ruled out the wearing of bandannas and other clothing that might signal gang affiliation. With each day"s newspaper bringing a fresh story about gang violence, these efforts met little political resistance, even if they weren"t all that effective.
From J.T."s perspective the real crisis was that all these measures conspired to make it harder to earn as much money as he would have liked.
Because crack was sold on street corners, with profits dependent on high volume and quick turnover, J.T. had to monitor a round-the-clockeconomic operation. He loved the challenge of running a business and making money. From all indications his transition to the Robert Taylor Homes was an unqualified success. This had won the attention of his superiors, a group of several dozen people in prison and on the streets known collectively as the Black Kings" board of directors. They had begun inviting J.T. to high-level meetings to discuss the big picture of their enterprise. Pleased with his managerial prowess and attention to detail, they rewarded J.T. with extra responsibilities. He had just been asked, for instance, to help the gang with its foray into Chicago politics.
"Even the gang needs friends with connections," J.T. told me. "And we"re getting more successful, so we need more friends."
"I don"t see why a gang wants to deal with politicians," I said. "I don"t see what they get out of it. It seems they"d have a greater chance of getting caught if they started hanging out with politicos, no?"
He reminded me that his Black Kings gang was just one of about two hundred BK gangs around the city that were making money selling crack. With that much money, the citywide BK leadership needed to think about investing and laundering.
"Let"s say, Sudhir, that you"re making only a hundred bucks," he explained. "You probably don"t have a lot of real headaches. You don"t need to worry about n.i.g.g.e.rs stealing it from you. You don"t need to worry that when you go into a store, they"ll ask you where you got the money. But let"s say you got a thousand bucks. Well, you can"t really carry it around, and you"re a street n.i.g.g.e.r so you don"t have a bank account. You need to keep it somewhere. So you start to have things to think about.
"Now let"s say it"s ten thousand. Okay, now you got n.i.g.g.e.rs who are watching you buy a few things: a new TV, a new car. They say, "Oh, Sudhir, he"s got a new necklace. And he"s a student. He don"t work? So where"d he get the money? Maybe he has cash in his house." So now you have more things to worry about.
"Now let"s say it"s a hundred thousand. You want to buy a car, but the car dealer has to report to the government when people pay for a car with thirty thousand dollars in cash. So what are you going to do? You may have to pay him a thousand bucks to keep his mouth shut. Then maybe you need to hire security, "cause there"s always some n.i.g.g.e.r that"s going to take the chance and rob you. That"s another few thousand, and you got to trust the security you hired, "cause they know where you keep the money.
"Now let"s say you got five hundred thousand or a million. Or more. That"s what these n.i.g.g.e.rs above me are worrying about. They need to find ways to clean the money. Maybe they hide it in a friend"s business. Maybe they tell their sisters to open up bank accounts. Or they get their church to take a donation. They have to constantly be thinking about the money: keeping it safe, investing it, protecting themselves from other n.i.g.g.e.rs."
"But I still don"t understand why you need to deal with politicians."
"Well, see, an alderman can take the heat off of us," J.T. said with a smile. "An alderman can keep the police away. He can make sure residents don"t get too p.i.s.sed off at us. Let"s say we need to meet in the park. The alderman makes sure the cops don"t come. And the only thing they want from us is a donation-ten thousand dollars gets you an alderman for a year. Like I keep telling you, our organization is about helping our community, so we"re trying to get involved in what"s happening."
J.T."s monologue surprised me on two fronts. Although I"d heard about corrupt aldermen in the old days-denying building permits to political enemies, for instance, or protecting a gang"s gambling racket-I had a hard time believing that J.T. could buy off a politician as easily as he described. Even more surprising was J.T."s claim about "helping our community." Was this a joke, I wondered, or did he really believe that selling drugs and bribing politicians would somehow help a down-and-out neighborhood pick itself up?
Besides the Black Kings" relationships with various aldermen, J.T. told me, the gang also worked with several community-based organizations, or CBOs. These groups, many of them created with federal funding during the 1960s, worked to bring jobs and housing to the neighborhood, tried to keep kids off the street with recreation programs, and, in places like the South Side, even enacted truces between warring gangs.
Toward the end of the 1980s, several CBOs tried instilling civic consciousness in the gangs themselves. They hired outreach workers (most of whom were former gangsters) to persuade young gang members to reject the thug life and choose a more productive path. These reformers held life-skills workshops that addressed such issues as "how to act when you go downtown" or "what to do when a lady yells at you for drinking beer in the park." They also preached the gospel of voting, arguing that a vote represented the first step toward reentry into the social mainstream. J.T. and some other gang leaders not only required their young members to attend these workshops but also made them partic.i.p.ate in voter-registration drives. Their motives were by no means purely altruistic or educational: they knew that if their rank-and-file members had good relationships with local residents, the locals were less likely to call the police and disrupt the drug trade.
J.T."s ambitions ran even higher. What he wanted, he told me, was to return the gang to its glory days of the 1960s, when South Side gangs worked together with residents to agitate for improvements in their neighborhoods. But he seemed to conveniently ignore a big difference: Gangs back then didn"t traffic in drugs, extort money from businesses, and terrorize the neighborhood with violence. They were not innocent kids, to be sure. But their worst transgressions tended to be street fighting or intimidating pa.s.sersby. Because J.T."s gang was was involved in drugs and extortion (and more), I was skeptical that he could enjoy much more support from the local residents than he currently had. involved in drugs and extortion (and more), I was skeptical that he could enjoy much more support from the local residents than he currently had.
One cold November night, J.T. invited me to a meeting at a small storefront Baptist church. An ex-gangster named Lenny Duster would be teaching young people about the rights, responsibilities, and power of voting. The next election, while a full year away, would place in office a great many state legislators as well as city aldermen.
Lenny ran a small organization called Pride, which helped mediate gang wars. About a hundred young Black Kings attended the meeting, held in a small room at the rear of the church. They were quiet and respectful, although they had the look of teenagers who"d been told that attendance was mandatory.
Lenny was about six foot four, built lean and muscular. He was about forty years old, with streaks of blond hair, and he walked with a limp. "You-all need to see where the power is!" Lenny shouted to the a.s.sembly, striding about like a Caesar. "J.T. went to college, I earned a degree in prison. You-all are dropping out of school, and you"re ignorant. You can"t read, you can"t think, you can"t understand where the power comes from. It don"t come from that gun you got-it comes from what"s in your head. And it comes from the vote. You can change the world if you get the n.i.g.g.e.rs that are coming down on you out of power. Think about it: No more police stopping you, no more abandoned buildings. You control your destiny!"
He talked to the young men about how to "work" responsibly. It was understood among gang members that "work" meant selling drugs-a tragic irony in that they referred to working in the legitimate economy as "getting a job," not "work."
"You-all are outside, so you need to respect who else is around you," he said. "If you"re in a park working, leave the ladies alone. Don"t be working around the children. That just gets the mamas mad. If you see kids playing, take a break and then get back to work. Remember, what you do says a lot about the Black Kings. You have to watch your image, take pride in yourself.
"You are not just foot soldiers in the Black Kings," he continued. "You are foot soldiers in the community. community. You will register to vote today, but then you must all go out and register the people in your buildings. And when elections come around, we"ll tell you who to vote for and you"ll tell them. That"s an important duty you have when you belong to this organization." You will register to vote today, but then you must all go out and register the people in your buildings. And when elections come around, we"ll tell you who to vote for and you"ll tell them. That"s an important duty you have when you belong to this organization."
For my cla.s.ses at the U of C, I"d been reading about the history of the Chicago political machine, whose leaders-white and black alike-were famous for practicing the dark arts of ballot stuffing, bribery, and yes, predelivered voting blocs. Like his predecessors, Lenny did give these young men a partial understanding of the right to vote, and why it was important, but it seemed that the main point of the meetings was to tell them how to be cogs in a political machine. He held up a small placard with the names of candidates whom the gang was supporting for alderman and state legislator. There was no discussion of a platform, no list of vital issues. Just an insistence that the young men round up tenants in the projects and tell them how to vote.
When Lenny finished, J.T. told his young members they could leave. I sat for a while with J.T. and Lenny. Lenny looked drained. As he drank a c.o.ke, he said he"d been speaking to at least four or five groups every day.
Lenny was careful to explain that his fees came from personal donations from gang members or their leaders. He wanted to distinguish these monies from the profits the gang made from selling drugs. In theory, I understood that Lenny was trying to convince me that he didn"t accept drug money, but I found the distinction almost meaningless. Moreover, the gang leaders had a lot of incentive to pay Lenny to keep their gangs from fighting one another. After all, it was hard to conduct commerce in the midst of a gang war. Younger gang members, however, often wanted to stir things up, mostly to distinguish themselves as fighters. That"s why some gang leaders even paid Lenny to discipline their own members. "Disciplination is an art form," Lenny said. "One thing I like is to hang a n.i.g.g.e.r upside down over the freeway as the cars come. Ain"t never had a n.i.g.g.e.r misbehave after I try that one." is an art form," Lenny said. "One thing I like is to hang a n.i.g.g.e.r upside down over the freeway as the cars come. Ain"t never had a n.i.g.g.e.r misbehave after I try that one."
J.T. and Lenny talked in nostalgic terms about the gang"s recent political engagement. Lenny proudly recalled his own days as a Black King back in the 1970s, describing how he helped get out the vote for "the Eye-talians and Jews" who ran his community. He then described, with equal pride, how the gangs "kicked the Eye-talian and Jewish mafia" out of his ward. Lenny even managed to spin the black takeover of the heroin trade as a boon to the community: it gave local black men jobs, albeit illegal ones, that had previously gone to white men. Lenny also boasted that black drug dealers never sold to children, whereas the previous dealers had exercised no such moral restraint. With all his bombast, he sounded like an older version of J.T.
I asked Lenny about his talk that night, how he could simultaneously preach the virtues of voting and the most responsible way to deal drugs. He said he favored a "nonjudgmental approach" with the gang members. "I tell them, "Whatever you do, try to do it without p.i.s.sing people off. Make everything a community thing." "
About two weeks later, I got to witness this "community thing" in action. I followed four young Black Kings as they went door-to-door in J.T."s building to register voters.
Shorty-Lee, a twenty-one-year-old gang member, was the head of the delegation. For about an hour, I trailed him on his route. Most of his knocks went unanswered. The few tenants who did sign their names looked as if they just wanted to make the gang members leave as quickly as possible.
At one apartment on the twelfth floor, a middle-aged woman answered the door. She was wearing an ap.r.o.n and wiping her wet hands on a dish towel; she looked surprised to see Shorty-Lee and the others. Door-to-door solicitation hadn"t been practiced in the projects for a long time. "We"re here to sign you up to vote," Shorty-Lee said.
"Young man, I am am registered," the woman said calmly. registered," the woman said calmly.
"No, we didn"t say register register!" Shorty-Lee shouted. "We said sign up. sign up. I don"t care if you"re registered." I don"t care if you"re registered."
"But that"s what I"m saying." The woman eyed Shorty-Lee curiously. "I already signed up. I"m going to vote in the next primary."
Shorty-Lee was puzzled. He looked over to the three other BKs. They were toting spiral-bound notebooks in which they "signed up" potential voters. But it seemed that neither Lenny nor J.T. had told them that there was an actual registration form and that registrars had to be licensed.
"Look, you need to sign right here," Shorty-Lee said, grabbing one of the notebooks. He was clearly not expecting even this minor level of resistance. "And then we"ll tell you who you"re going to vote for when the time comes."
"Who I"m going to vote for!" The woman"s voice grew sharp. She approached the screen door to take a better look. As she glanced at me, she waved-I recognized her from several parties at J.T."s mother"s apartment. Then she turned back to Shorty-Lee. "You can"t tell me who to vote for," she said. "And I don"t think that"s legal anyway."
"Black Kings say who you need to vote for," Shorty-Lee countered, but he was growing tentative. He turned to his fellow gang members. "Ain"t that right? Ain"t that what we"re supposed to do?" The others shrugged.
"Young man," the woman continued, "have you you ever voted?" ever voted?"