Venkatesh, Sudhir . "Gang Leader For a Day." New York: Penguin Books, 2008.

OVERVIEW 

In the late-1980s, at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in urban America, life in housing projects was very isolated from life in the rural and suburban areas of the country—and even from other parts of the cities. One had the feeling that politicians and media analysts who discussed the situation really had no idea what was going on in the projects, and the people who lived there could not easily find a voice on the national stage. 

But surely, one imagines, there must have been some person at some time, perhaps an adventurous researcher or journalist, who managed to cross the line and could explain life from both parties' perspectives. It turns out that such rare people did in fact exist, and one of them was University of Chicago graduate student in sociology Sudhir Venkatesh, now a professor at Columbia University. By a fortunate coincidence, Venkatesh also happens to be an exceedingly good writer and a shrewd observer, in addition to being an adventurous researcher. This combination makes for one of the most engaging and informative accounts you’ll ever find of urban poverty and the sources of violence in late-20th century America. 

Venkatesh knew the safe boundaries set by his university, but as a sociological student his subject matter lay beyond those limits. So, rather naively, he wandered into gang territory and surprisingly, perhaps mostly out of curiosity, he was at first tentatively received. As he gets to know the gang and other members of the community, relationships and communication grow until finally he is actually left responsible as “gang leader for a day.” Most of the theory and content of his analysis take the form of the factual observations he made along the way, and these are poignant and well-chosen. He describes the scenes of meetings with the tenants' agency, gang planning sessions, shootouts, parties and other minutiae of project life. He has an excellent ability to recapture the tone, content and characterization of conversations, and the pacing and drama of the more exciting conflicts would be commendable for any novelist. 

Venkatesh researched the community life of one building in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes between 1989 and 1998, focusing on the influence of the local crack gang and other power structures within the community. He also documents the quality of the living conditions and economic opportunities in the community, both of which were poor. 

The Chicago Housing Authority lacks the resources to adequately maintain the projects, so the buildings are continually in disrepair and are maintained largely by the tenants themselves at their own discretion. Many apartments are used as crack dens, many are vacant and unlivable, and public places like stairwells often become public lavatories. Ambulances and other emergency services often refuse to come to the projects, so they cannot be relied upon. The rare times that police enter the projects are usually for corrupt reasons: they often rob the gang, for example, as it is easier than arresting and prosecuting them. There is one police officer who grew up in the community, but he lacks the resources to serve as anything more than a liaison to the legal authorities. Economic opportunities are all but nil: 90% of residents report welfare as their only income, and most goods and services are provided by the black market.

The overt motivation for the existence of a crack gang is economic: there are very few ways for a young man in the projects to earn money, and earning money is the gang's goal. Even so, entry-level drug dealers make very little money, often less than minimum wage. Like an entry-level salesman in any other industry, their position is tenuous but there is opportunity for advancement for those who are talented. The earnings of a middle-manger are comparable to those of a middle-manager in a legal company: they own nice cars and can consume conspicuously, but must still be careful to spend within their limits. Executives, in turn, have the real wealth: the gang that Venkatesh observes is a large, multi-state affair called the Black Kings, and its upper leaders are shadowy figures who throw lavish parties every week at their houses in the suburbs.

Working conditions in the crack industry are much less comfortable than those in the legal economy, so other incentives are needed for youth to be interested. These additional incentives are political: Venkatesh describes the gang as a practically feudal power structure. The gang has filled the power vacuum vacated by police and other authorities in the projects--the young gang members are practically the only adult males who are not drug addicts--and they distribute this power down through their hierarchy. A youth with no social or economic prospects who is growing up in the projects can eventually become both respected and powerful by joining the gang. Certainly they are the only powerful men that the youth will see. After a promotion, he would have a steady income and be able to carry a gun, and the sight of such wealth and power in his elders is certainly enticing. A youth in the projects often finds himself without any story to their lives: joining the gang gives them goals, aspirations, excitement, enemies to fight and battles to win--it is far and away the most meaningful option available. 

Violence for the gang mirrors the violence of any feudal structure. The lower-ranking members are young and reckless: they get into fights with rivals at school which often turn deadly. The middle-ranking members have to enforce discipline: they are the only authority, and they have no judicial system to rely on. They enforce the law through intimidation and examples, and their discipline is exactly as excessive as you would expect from young gang members. The gang executives, in turn, plan large-scale warfare and fear assassination just like medieval kings. 

Other power structures complement and conflict with the gang. In the absence of a regular economy and infrastructure, these groups are largely unique to the projects. Goods and services are provided by a diverse, entrepreneurial black market, offering everything from auto repair to candy to prostitution. This economy is regulated--and often repressed--by the gang: they mediate disputes and provide protection from external threats, but the gang's power is arbitrary as no one can reasonably challenge it. 

The only power that the gang may actually fear is the local tenants' agency, a building-level organization that represents the interests of the women who make up the majority of project residents. In the building that Venkatesh studies, this agency consists of a formidable middle-aged woman named Ms. Bailey, who is a master of community power-brokering. Over the years she has developed considerable influence in the projects: any time a tenant has a need (which is frequent), they go to Ms. Bailey, and she is usually resourceful enough to solve it. If there is problem with utilities, with the decaying building, with the gang or anyone else, Ms. Bailey can find a solution. She routinely engineers donations from local businesses, often in exchange for cases of alcohol, donated in turn from a local liquor store. In this way she provides warm clothing, food and other goods to tenants. With these services as her power base, she can even challenge the gang for authority, as the gang is dependent on the community's support in order to continue using the building as its base of operations. 

Both the gang and Ms. Bailey portray themselves as working for the benefit of the community, but Venkatesh is equally skeptical of them both. While their positions of power provide them ample opportunity to indulge any charitable tendencies they may have--and both often take these opportunities--Venkatesh soon came to the conclusion that their primary motive was self-advancement. The projects provide little opportunity to earn respect, but Ms. Bailey and the gang leaders have both found loopholes in their disadvantaged situation. When push comes to shove, both parties will save their own skins rather than sacrifice themselves for the good of others. They help others when it is in their self-interest to do so: in this sense they are no different than any other representative political body. But the moment that Venkatesh raises his voice to criticize these authorities to the reader, he realizes that he himself is hardly better than them. His primary motive in researching the projects is his own self-advancement: to write a good thesis, to write a best-selling non-fiction book, to get a job as a professor. He certainly hopes that the community will benefit from his study, but he is not prepared to make serious sacrifices if their interests interfere with his own.

Even so, Venkatesh does find example of self-sacrifice among the less-powerful members of the community. In particular, one woman expends an inordinate amount of effort to try to find adequate housing for her neighbors before the projects are demolished. Another neighbor is convinced that she is deriving some profit from her service (as would only be expected in the projects' economy), and tries to sabotage her efforts in order to get a share of the non-existent income.

Much of the book is told in narrative format, and it is an extremely well-told narrative. The book has a very satisfying story arc: it grows in intensity as Venkatesh learns more and more about the community, culminating in the oddly bittersweet mass exodus of tenants when the projects are torn down; the tearing down of the projects coincide with the end of his study. Venkatesh's story yields about as much drama as could be possible in a sociological study: it is as much the story of outsider learning the ropes of an alien society as it is an academic investigation. These two driving forces of the book, the academic observation and the personal story, mesh quite well with each other. The story is engaging because Venkatesh is such a good observer: when his vantage point becomes stale he ups the ante and moves deeper into the community, making for better analysis as well as a better story. And the analysis is interesting because Venkatesh is a sincere and insightful narrator: his subjects come across as deeply and subtly human, with good intentions and weaknesses that they themselves seem hardly aware of. Venkatesh is skeptical of their self-image but sympathetic towards their situation: the result is an engaging story and an extremely informative picture of life in a desperately poor part of America. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Do you consider this account of a middle-class outsider developing such relationships as to produce, with his subjects’ knowledge, such a sociological study—and to be given temporary responsibility for the gang—to be realistic? How do you respond to this story, and would you like to read the book itself?
2. Given the entrenchment of the projects' power structures, how would you go about providing resources to the community or preventing violence? What do you think would happen if you were to get rid of the gangs? 
3.  How different is the tearing down of an inner city project or neighborhood more radical than if a suburban town were removed? What do you think of the decision to tear down the projects? Do you think that the community could have been salvaged, or was it better to start over?

IMPLICATIONS 

1. If a middle-class graduate student could, in a relatively short time, develop such trusting relationships, so can youth workers and ministers. 
2. Keep in mind that this book is a study of highly organized gangs in large-scale housing projects at the peak of the crack industry. This is a different environment than exists in most cities today. The situation the book describes could be seen as the extreme end of urban youth violence: most situations tend in this direction but do not go as far. General life styles of this book are present in any major city today. 
3. Inner-city residents have an underground economy, banking, loaning, and insurance system all their own. When a neighborhood is dismantled, all these assets can disappear; whereas middle-class suburbanites can pack up and take their credit cards and insurance policies to any new location. Urban renewal has often been called by Black leaders: “Negro removal.”

Peter Bass (with Dean Borgman) cCYS