Free Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh

about their family histories, Chicago politics, the behavior of the CHA and other city agencies, and life in the projects. As long as I didn’t get too nosy—say, by asking about their income or who was living in an apartment illegally—they talked my head off. Just as important, I found I didn’t have to hide my ignorance—which wasn’t hard, since I was quite naïve about politics and race in urban America. My naïveté about these basic issues actually seemed to endear me to them.
    In my brief exposure to J.T. and others in his building, I had already grown dismayed by the gap between their thoughtfulness and the denigrating portrayals of the poor I’d read in sociological studies. They were generally portrayed as hapless dupes with little awareness or foresight. The hospitality that Ms. Mae showed and the tenants’ willingness to teach me not only surprised me but left me feeling extraordinarily grateful. I began to think I would never be able to repay their generosity. I took some solace in the hope that if I produced good, objective academic research, it could lead to social policy improvements, which might then better their living conditions. But I also wondered how I might pay them back in a more direct fashion. Given that I was taking out student loans to get by, my options were fairly limited.
     
 
 
    Once J.T. saw how much I enjoyed accompanying him on his surveys of the buildings, he took me along regularly. But he often had other work to do, work he didn’t invite me to see. And he wasn’t ready yet to turn me loose in the buildings on my own, so I generally hung out around Ms. Mae’s apartment. I felt a bit like a child, always in need of a baby-sitter, but I could hardly complain about the access I’d been granted into a world that was so radically different from anything I’d ever seen.
    Ms. Mae introduced me to the many people who stopped by to visit. In their eyes I was just a student, a bit of an oddball to be sure; sometimes they jokingly called me “Mr. Professor,” as they’d heard J.T. say. Several of J.T.’s aunts and cousins also lived in the building, and they warmed to me as well. They all seemed fairly close, sharing food and helping one another with errands or hanging out together on the gallery during the hot summer days.
    Life on the gallery tended to be pretty lively. In the evenings families often set up a barbecue grill, pulling chairs or milk crates from their apartments to sit on. I probably could have made friends a lot more quickly if I hadn’t been a vegetarian.
    Little kids and teenage girls liked to tug my ponytail when I walked past. Others would chant “Gandhi” or “Julio” or “Ay-rab” in my direction. I was still enamored of the view of the city, and still nervous about the fencing that ran around the gallery.
    Whenever a child ran toward the railing, I’d instinctively jump up and grab him. Once, a little boy’s mother laughed at me. “Take it easy, Sudhir,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them. It’s not like the old days.” In “the old days,” I found out, some children did fall to their deaths off the Robert Taylor galleries, prompting the CHA to install a safety fence. But it was obvious that the first mistake had been building exterior hallways in windy, cold Chicago.
    After dinner parents sent their kids inside the apartments and brought out tables and chairs, cards and poker chips, food and drink. They turned the galleries into dance floors and gambling dens; it could become carnivalesque.
    I loved the nightlife on the galleries. And the tenants were generally in a good mood at night, willing to tell me about their lives if they weren’t too high or too busy trying to make money. It was gettingeasier for me to determine when people were high. They’d stagger a bit, as if they were drunk, but their eyes sank back in their heads, giving them a look that was both dreamy and sinister.
    It was hard to figure out the extent of