Off The Books PDF

Home at Work 61 encapsulated in the values that people may hold and offer to the researcher. Their household management strategies and their visions of future improvement are made in the context of living with other people who share similar circumstances. And by observing how they work to keep thei...

Home at Work 61 encapsulated in the values that people may hold and offer to the researcher. Their household management strategies and their visions of future improvement are made in the context of living with other people who share similar circumstances. And by observing how they work to keep their overall communities habitable, one can see in practice how their ethical designations of right and wrong, proper and unjust, began to take shape. Importantly, residents on Eunice’s block are connected in some way to the people who may be compromising public safety. Moreover, they may not have the luxury of offering a criticism about a perpetrator and leaving it at that. This means that one will see not only expressions of disgust or disdain, but potentially practical relationships in which different people must work alongside one another to keep some stability in and around the home. Thus, one must temper an assessment of their expressed values with an acknowledgment of the practical circumstances that forge social relationships among a diverse group of people. One must, in other words, take into consideration that there is a material foundation to the development of a moral framework. Because the underground economy plays such a key role in bringing resources into the home, household members are often caught between their desires to live a just life and their needs to make ends meet as best they can. Deciding what is right and wrong is made complicated because any household could potentially be turning to the shady side of the economic fence to put food on the table. Thus, instead of a value dichotomy, there may be shades of gray, such that residents tolerate some kinds of off-the-books work, but not others. They may empathize with some kinds of hustlers and shady entrepreneurs, but hold others in low regard. And these viewpoints may not be universally shared or kept consistent over time. Just as household circumstances shift and op- 62 Off the Books portunities to earn money (legitimately and off the books) can change, so too are views of permissible and questionable behavior likely to adjust. This does not mean that there is no moral core, only that moral righteousness in the form of absolute lines of demarcation between right and wrong are not possible—nor advisable if the point is to keep meeting the needs of the household. In 1999, Marlene, Eunice, Bird and the other residents on their street block had to confront Big Cat, the leader of the local gang in Maquis Park, the “Black Kings.” Big Cat’s gang had been increasing its activities in Homans Park, the nearby recreational space that Marlene and her neighbors allowed their children to use. Marlene and her neighbors were worried about the consequences for public safety. It was not simply that there were gang members milling about. There was an escalation in public underground activity, both by the gang and its drug-trafficking operations as well as by the many individual shady entrepreneurs who worked in the neighborhood selling clothes, fixing cars, offering sexual services, and so on. There were rumors that Big Cat had recruited some non-gang-affiliated merchants to the park, in hopes of offering them a space to ply their trade while, in return, imposing a street tax on their revenue. By doing so, Big Cat was claiming a say in the use of the park that for many years had also been the domain of Marlene and other residents who worked in “neighborhood watches” and block clubs, and for whom park access was important for family stability, not just personal gain. When Big Cat increased the levels of shady activity in Homans Park, this pitted residents’ own needs to maintain safety in their homes and streets against their own appreciation for the need for households to make ends meet by earning money off the books. It brought together two stakeholders, the gang and residents, who Home at Work 63 had differing interests and for whom a usable public space meant different things. The Homans Park incident captures the struggle over safety and security in poor communities. And it shows that underground jobs—from prostitution to child care to selling merchandise on the streets and in parks—are fundamental to the functioning of households and communities, and reveals why the debates over how their park should be run caused such strife. As in other densely populated urban areas, Maquis Park residents feel great attachment to their local park. Homans Park is small, a block square, and is the principal recreational site for those on Marlene’s street. The park is not directly adjacent to major thoroughfares in the community, where trucks and cars pass by sometimes at high speeds. In fact, two of the streets that pass by the park are dead ends, further limiting car traffic. Homans Park is tucked away, a few blocks to the south of the main thoroughfares, which gives the parents some relief that cars will not endanger their children. The park’s relative inaccessibility keeps away not only drivers, but also other residents of the city who are not likely to come into the area unless they live nearby. Indeed, the park’s modest offerings rarely attract the wider residential population. There is a swing set, but it is broken and has lain unrepaired for five years, despite numerous resident petitions and pleas to the alderman. There are a dozen benches, some bent out of shape and exposing dangerous steel edges. An unattractive, undulating concrete play area doubles as a handball and basketball court, depending on whether young or old are playing. And a large grassy patch is available for families to barbecue or throw a baseball; a winding asphalt path, littered with glass, refuse, and the occasional cardboard tent of a homeless person, encircles it. (More serious endeavors, like an organized baseball game or a family reunion, require families to walk several miles to Wash- 64 Off the Books ington Park, one of the city’s most beautiful recreational areas, which offers baseball diamonds, fully functioning basketball courts, a historic field house and swimming pool, and miles of ponds and pathways.) If one were to drive by Homans Park quickly, there would not be much to distinguish it from the other block-long stretches of weedy ground that litter the neighborhood. Its state of disrepair makes it almost as unsuitable for children as the nearby empty lots filled with broken glass and abandoned cars. The fact that residents are able to keep Homans Park available for recreation and leisure is no small feat, and it testifies to the dedication of local residents to fight for usable public space. There are four major periods of activity in the park. In the mornings, children meet and greet one another, as the park is directly on the path to a local day-care center, elementary school, and a high school. The kids congregate again from 3 p.m. until 6 p.m., as they make their way home. In between, from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., the children are replaced by adult men and women— gamblers, cardplayers, gossipers, book readers, Bible thumpers, snoozers, and, on occasion, a local historian who seems to remember most of the residents and nearly all of the important events that have taken place in and around the park. Judging from the bottles of beer and cheap wine around the concrete square and in the lone trash can, the site is particularly amenable to public drinking. The local historian explained: You have two streets that almost dead-end, nowhere to go. You have the other streets that are filled with potholes, so there’s no need for people to be driving through here. Which means, ain’t no need for police to be around either. It is a very nice place to get your drink on, particularly in that early morning hour when Home at Work 65 you’re just getting up. Don’t have to worry about getting hit by a car if you stagger on the street. That’s very important to some of these cats. Although it is set off from the thoroughfares enough to limit car traffic, Homans Park is isolated enough to be well suited for gang activity. It is proximate to some of the busier streets so that customers can quickly come by and purchase drugs from the local gang. Indeed, because of the generally limited car and pedestrian traffic, those who come to the park expressly to purchase the gang’s crack and marijuana are easy to detect. Big Cat and his local gang depend on places such as Homans Park that are close to the main thoroughfares and that can attract customers. They meet customers there, and they conduct group meetings in the open basketball court. Given the lack of facilities in the area that welcome gang members, Homans Park has become for them a prized possession. For as long as residents can remember, the gang has tried to occupy the park day and night. There have always been arguments and fights between gangs and the nongang public for use of the site. For Big Cat, the park is not only a significant sales spot, but a historic symbol of the gang’s long-standing presence in Maquis Park. As he said, “I was initiated into the gang here, my brother was initiated here; I got shot here for the first time. This was the park that had the riots with the police in the seventies. It is part of who we are [as a gang]. We fight to keep it in the family.” Until the late nineties it was the second most profitable outdoor sales spot for Big Cat. Big Cat’s gang and other street gangs in the city had gone through several important changes by the time Marlene and her neighbors faced them in Homans Park. These changes are addressed in greater detail in Chapter 6. For now, it is worth noting 66 Off the Books simply that after the seventies, gangs became entrepreneurial actors. For much of the twentieth century, the gang was primarily a social network for marginalized or at-risk youth who were having troubles with school, who could not find work, and who otherwise gravitated toward like-minded peers. Yet most would leave the gang in their late teens and early twenties, as they found jobs and became bored with hanging out on street corners. To be sure, some gangs did traffic in narcotics, rob stores, and direct criminal activities. But this was not the rule. Only after the seventies did young people—teenagers and adults in their twenties and beyond—begin looking to the gang to make money; in part, this was an expected response, given unemployment rates for youth that hovered around 50 percent in Chicago’s ghettos. As gangs began moving into underground economies—drugs, larceny, extortion—they became “corporate” entities, organized to support the material as well as the social needs of young people. Throughout the gang’s history, from its petty delinquent period to its corporate stage, the wider community had to ward off the gang’s threats to safety and public access. As the gang became corporate, residents’ struggles shifted to reflect not only the gang’s changes but also the residents’ increasing reliance on the underground economy. All of this can be seen in the matters surrounding security and access in Homans Park. Eunice and Marlene have fought for many years to ensure a minimal level of safety in Homans Park. “Sometime in the late eighties,” Marlene recalls, their labors produced a quasi détente between the neighborhood’s two opposing factions: the residents and the gang. Negotiations between the two parties have resulted in a range of agreements, which work and then fail, and the terms are renegotiated. In general, Big Cat agreed to limitations on drug selling, such as preventing rank-and-file members from selling Home at Work 67 narcotics immediately before and after school as well as during planned activities, such as a family reunion. In exceptional cases, the gang leaders pay cash to Marlene (or her counterpart) in exchange for their help in reducing police presence (Marlene has considerable sway with the local beat officers, who respect her own agreements with the gang). Their agreements break down every six months or so, but the lines of communication have long been open and clear enough that Marlene, Eunice, or another neighbor might call the gang and rekindle negotiations. Their influence with the gang, however, does little to resolve the many other activities that have made Homans Park inhospitable for families. Local residents have still had to contend with inadequate policing, harassment and sexual abuse of young women, poor upkeep by the Department of Parks and Recreation, prostitution, episodic drive-by shootings by enemy gangs, non-gang-affiliated youth violence stemming from high school disputes, and a stream of homeless persons and squatters who sleep, defecate, and leave their refuse there. But around 1999, Marlene says, “everything changed.” The gang’s presence shifted, the relationships between residents and the gang also changed, the people in the park were no longer the same, and there were new annoyances that plagued local families. Marlene describes the situation before and after. “Used to be,” Marlene reflected, “the worst thing was Big Cat’s boys slanging [selling drugs] on the corner. Not good. But, okay, we could deal with it. Then, no one was buying the crack, remember? Big Cat changed things around, remember that? See, he started losing money and that’s when he, that’s when he, what’s the word I’m looking for? “Diversified?” I offered. 68 Off the Books “Yes, you could say that,” she laughed. “He had a lot of new ideas for how to make money. The park was the first place, basically, where we all had to deal with the new thing going on.” “The new thing?” I asked. “Well, I guess a gang is always a gang, don’t nothing change about that. But the things a gang does are different. And he was doing some new things, which means we [the residents] had to react to what he was doing. It wasn’t like we could just talk to him and it would be safe; we had a new kind of relationship. We had to agree and disagree all over again.” Marlene’s language is telling. Rarely does she see the gang as the “enemy within.” As a longtime resident, perhaps her history of diplomacy with the gang has made local gang members appear less threatening; they are, after all, kids in the neighborhood whom she remembers as part of her own youth. But the gang’s natural, integral place in the neighborhood fabric is what created the challenge for her neighbors when the organization of underground activity in the neighborhood began to change, at least with respect to the gang and its involvement in the shady world. Maquis Park’s residents had been familiar with an entrepreneurial street gang whose efforts centered around a lucrative crack cocaine operation. With that economic base withering by the late nineties, Big Cat sought other investment and income opportunities, which took some people by surprise. He began to extort businesses, sex workers and pimps, gypsy cab drivers, homeless persons selling socks or offering to wipe windshields. Almost anyone whom he determined to be earning money illegally was susceptible. One evening, in a drunken stupor, he stumbled upon a card game in a local park and demanded that the winners give him 10 percent of their profits. “We were laughing,” said Bird, Home at Work 69 “but we all wondered what’s this boy been smoking? I mean if he starts asking old men playing cards for five bucks, who’s next?” In transforming Homans Park into an underground economic bazaar, Big Cat came directly into contact with Bird, Marlene, and their neighbors on the 1700 block of South Maryland Avenue. Big Cat turned his attention to both Homans Park and the immediately surrounding areas, which included abandoned buildings, empty lots, and alleyways. He started by consolidating his drug-dealing operations. Drug trafficking would no longer be restricted to a few hours per day, but could take place around the clock. In addition, he recruited other underground entrepreneurs to the park. He called the local gun traders and asked if they wanted a secure space in an abandoned building where they could meet customers and showcase their weapons. In general, he aimed to skim off the profits of other traders by providing them a relatively secure place to conduct their business and warding off competitors; in turn, he would charge them for protection services. Big Cat did not expect to make thousands of dollars at Homans Park. But the crack cocaine trade was declining. The gang leader feared that his organization would lose its stature and its ability to recruit young people, if he did not quickly find other sources of revenue. The Homans Park venture was an experiment in economic regulation that Big Cat hoped to replicate in other local public areas. As important as the money to be made, however, were the relationships the gang had with other community players.12 If Big Cat ran a small outfit—a dozen or so members who hung out on the corner—his need to work with residents and local organizations would not be so pressing. But in his own words, he was a “businessman” who depended to some degree on residents’ tolerance and, to a greater extent, on their purchasing 70 Off the Books power. And he had ambitions to rise to a more prominent position of power in Maquis Park. So the Homans Park initiative was about far more than increasing gang revenues; it was the start of Big Cat’s personal upward-mobility path. “I know it may not be easy to be a politician, or even get respect around here, but that’s what’s important to me. I grew up here, I know the ghetto, I know Maquis Park and I love my people.” “Are you kidding me?” I said, disbelievingly. “Your people. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your people are pretty upset at you for taking over this park. I’m not exactly seeing how they’re going to elect you to public office.” “It takes a while for people to come around.” “Come around?” I laughed. “Come around to what? What exactly do you want them to open their eyes and see?” “You think it’s all about me making money, don’t you?” he said, leaning over to me as if speaking to a child. “How do you think Marlene got the power she got? You know what she will charge you if you want her to call the police or find your stolen car? Lot more than I charge you. Everyone who’s got power around here got money. Legit, illegit, it don’t really matter. Now, I need to be able to control something, and here, I’m talking about helping people make money, helping them to feed their families. The park is the place where you can sell something, buy something, maybe find something you need, a television from Jimmy or a microwave. Maybe buy some shirts and socks. Maybe Marsha will suck your dick. Without having to worry about [the police], without having to worry about getting robbed by bringing your money to some nigger at night.” “You’re going to guarantee that police won’t bother you? That’s a tall order.” Home at Work 71 “You see any around here? You’ve been counting. How many police did you see in the last week patrol?” “Two cars,” I answered. “Now, you tell me whether I got something that people need or not!” Like Big Cat, Marlene Matteson also understood that a gang cannot run an economic operation without some consent from the local residents. Even if that consent takes the form of turning the other way when illegal activity takes place. As president of the 1700 South Maryland Avenue Block Club, Marlene had watched Big Cat alter the gang’s presence in the park from December 1999 to May 2000. Pimps brought their sex workers to an abandoned building near the park. Carliss, a car mechanic, moved his outdoor “Oil and Tire Change” operation to the alley next to the park’s basketball court. Two gun brokers came to a nearby abandoned building once a week to sell handguns and pistols. A few men sold stolen car stereos, guns, and other electronic equipment from the back of two beat-up beige vans that were always stationed at the park’s entrance. Mo-Town, the local hot dog vendor, and Charlie, who sold stolen cigarettes and beauty products, set up their respective carts at the edge of the park. And now the drug sales were, as Big Cat had promised, round the clock. All of this was secured by placement of Big Cat’s rank and file around the area: all were armed, they physically searched and harassed passersby, and they drank and smoked marijuana until the early morning hours with loud music blaring from their stereos. They also charged a fee to each entrepreneur based in and around the park. By the end of May, Marlene had readied herself to take on Big Cat, determined that the neighborhood children would be able to 72 Off the Books use the park over the coming summer. She weighed her options carefully. The nominal protector, the local police, had never provided enough help to make the park safe. Marlene had discovered early on that the official “community policing” meetings at which law enforcement officials invited residents to air their concerns, tended to favor those who had greater conventional social clout—which, in Maquis Park, meant homeowners who were in good standing with the local alderman. Marlene did have her own friends on the police force whom she could call, but she preferred to solicit their assistance for timely response to domestic violence incidents. She didn’t want to risk diminishing this capacity by asking police to put pressure on Big Cat. Marlene also had contacts with grassroots clergy, with whom she had worked with in the past on political campaigns and who had shown their effectiveness in mediation between local residents and the gang. However, it had been a few years since she had partnered with Pastor Wilkins, a leader in gang intervention, so she thought she would wait before enlisting his assistance. She knew of several ministers who had accepted gang donations in return for hosting funerals of slain gang members, but she was unsure exactly who benefited and whether they would support her or lean toward the source of their largesse. She knew of other block club leaders, staff at social service agencies, parole officers, and so on, whom she could call, but she did not know whether Big Cat had formed similar quasi-charitable relationships with them. She worried that they might not help her for fear of jeopardizing their own under-the-table revenue, not to mention their capacity to win concessions from the gang. Marlene’s situation that summer put into relief several aspects of social control within poor communities. And it showed how Home at Work 73 the underground economy alters residents’ capacities to work practically on issues that threaten their overall welfare. First, as a goal, public safety can mean different things. Most urbanites would probably conceive of safety in terms of the absence of criminality, at least those forms of deviant behavior that inhibit safe passage and that jeopardize the health and welfare of families.13 For Marlene and her neighbors, “absence” was not the primary criterion, either in terms of the nonexistence of perpetrators or the lack of shady activity. Absence was not even considered a possibility. Residents detested Carliss’s underground car repair service because of the oil slicks and dangerous metal parts he sometimes left behind, but they understood that this was his source of income. And for that matter, although many did not approve of sex work around the park, they similarly understood it to be a form of work, which like any other labor in the community was instrumental in supporting households. Witness two comments made that May, at an impromptu block club meeting Marlene convened to discuss the changing landscape of Homans Park. The first is by Arlene Danielle, a seventy-year-old grandmother; the second is by a forty-year-old man, Timothy Carter, who drives a school bus part-time: Why did [Big Cat] chose our park? And why ain’t we calling the police? I mean let the brother [Carliss] stay, shit, he fixed my car real good, but the boy [Big Cat] needs to go. I mean you can’t be charging people tax if they selling a box of candy or some socks. Good Lord. I mean I knew [Big Cat’s] mother; she would have never allowed him to do that. She would have said to get his boys out of there. That’s what we need to be doing, [we] can’t even go [to the park] no more. Like I said, don’t mind the young man sell- 74 Off the Books ing his dashikis or nothing like that. Heck, you know I feel safer when there’s more people there . . . But I can’t have drug dealing and we have to have some police, somebody. Why can’t we be doing what Big Cat is doing? I mean if he gets 10 percent from those bitches [prostitutes], why can’t we take that money and put it in our club? Now, I know you all ain’t going to be with me on this, but I’m just saying, we should be the ones who say what happens [in Homans Park] and who does what. I mean we live here, most of them gangbangers don’t even live here. Like Michael—I know his momma, they live on 78th and Ashland, boy just come around to make his money. Ain’t fair. Call the police, Marlene, shit, tell them I’ll control the place, ain’t like I got nothing else to do, the damn Board of Ed[ucation] ain’t giving me no hours. Here we see two basic visions of how to create public safety. The first is that residents may weigh delinquent activity that has an economic dimension differently than, say, crimes of passion like domestic violence and assault. This does not mean that all underground activity is tolerated. But if the activity generates income, any ethical dilemmas it creates must also be judged in terms of how the activity supports a household and even the wider community. Given that poverty and desperation drive much of the illegal economic activity and many households receive some kind of unreported income, the options for curbing such behavior may be limited. Complete eradication may not be a realistic option. It is unlikely that pimps, gang members, car mechanics, or hot dog vendors are going to stop selling their goods and services without either a new source of income, the threat of apprehension by law enforcement, or the fear of reprisal from an- Home at Work 75 other entrepreneur, like a gang, that has the capacity to inflict physical harm. Marlene and her neighbors felt that even if the local traders were threatened with police detection or gang beatings, they would probably just move their operations temporarily, only to return to Homans Park if the other location proved unsuitable. Consequently, requests to stop the activity had to be replaced by a second vision of diplomacy and intervention. Timothy’s suggestion became more and more popular during that month, namely, to intervene by creaming off some of the revenue that Big Cat received through the gang’s imposed tax on the underground entrepreneurs in the park. Timothy understood that he was effectively intending to replace the gang as an extorter of street merchants. He received little support from his neighbors, the majority of whom suggested that it would be immoral to take money directly from the street traders. But they did agree that it might be worth regulating underground activity themselves, thereby limiting their overall vulnerability to Big Cat and reducing the attraction of the Park for shady merchants. Marlene spoke to her neighbors about what regulation might mean. She put forth social control strategies that did not necessarily involve taking cash receipts from the street traders, but that might instead be organized around restrictions on use of the park at certain times— much like the historic agreements over times of drug sales that had been in place with the gang. She suggested that some of the people in the block club who were making clothes or selling homemade food might even benefit from the customers now congregating in the area. The block club agreed to accept some kinds of underground activity in the park, at least provisionally until they could find another place for some of the traders. They recognized the need for people to earn income. Timothy ex- 76 Off the Books plained the consensus opinion to me after another block club meeting: “We just went over all the kinds of things happening in the park and we made a strategy for what we could accept, you know what we could live with and what we don’t want in our park.” “What you could live with?” I said. “I don’t understand, it’s your park, why do you have to live with anything you don’t want? Just call [Police] Commander Calabria, he’ll understand.” “Commander ain’t going to do shit. I don’t care if he’s new around here. Ain’t nobody done shit in the past, ain’t nobody doing shit tomorrow. Like I was saying: nobody can sell nothing when the kids is in school and there ain’t no selling on weekends. Well, maybe lemonade, but no pimping or nothing like that. And we want all the pimps and whores and drug dealers gone. We’ll have to deal with people selling shirts and shit like that, I mean that’s cool. Carliss can stay there, but we’re going to make sure he cleans up after he fixes the cars. And he can’t fix the cars in the park, just next to it. I mean he has a whole parking lot across the street.” “Where are you going to put the whores?” “Marlon [the pimp] has to take his women at least a block away, away from the kids. Plenty of places over there. And Big Cat, well, that nigger can’t be selling drugs here no more, no way.” “Hmm,” I said. “Never going to happen. Nice try though.” “Fuck that, it’ll happen.” “Are you kidding me?” I interrupted. “Big Cat is never giving up money, not now, not with summer coming around, not that kind of tall money that we’re talking about.” “Well, maybe not, but we’ve got a few months to make his life hell, and that’s what Marlene is going to do. By that time, we’ll fig- Home at Work 77 ure out someplace else he can go. Pastor Wilkins is going to help us, too, so that’ll be a big help.” “Oh, really? That’s something new. You’re going back to the church?” “Ain’t never left the church, my man. Remember and don’t take this the wrong way. But you don’t live here. We always had a good relationship with the church, we all go to church, we never strayed. We may not be doing things in public, but Pastor said he’ll talk with Big Cat, help us. He did it before, he’ll do it again. He’ll get some of these people out of here.” The block club members grappled with one another to determine an adequate level of economic activity in the park. Because summer was around the corner and kids would be playing outside at all hours, they had to make the park safe soon. Only then could they contemplate more permanent solutions. But their available means of response did not give them cause for optimism. They initially supported mobilizing en masse and attending the “community policing” meetings organized by the local district commander, at which residents could speak about their concerns. They thought that a large group of protesting residents might bring about nightly patrols, which would scare off the gang and the other shady entrepreneurs. And a few of them actually met with several officers and explained their work and their need for police assistance. They hoped to convince the local police officers to station a car during the afternoon, when children tended to gather. Paralleling these efforts, they sought help from several social service agencies that ran recreational programs for children; they believed that a small arts-and-crafts service or other summer school program might help dissuade the shady entrepreneurs intent on distributing their wares in 78 Off the Books Homans Park. Their work did not yield much fruit: the police failed to provide any meaningful protection, either in the way of intervention or increased patrols in the park, and no social service agency would invest the resources to begin a new program for kids on such short notice. As a consequence, Marlene and her neighbors did not place much hope in law enforcement’s capacity to provide aid, either now or in the future. After her two-hour meeting with neighbors, Marlene explained their collective decision to consider other, non-law-enforcement options: We all figured out what was going to happen. Police would come three or four nights, then later it would go down to one or two nights, then we never see them again and we’re going to have to deal with it after that. So, why not just deal with it ourselves right now? That’s when we said we can’t be wasting our time with the police. At least not at the meetings. We all have people we know who are officers, we can call them if we need to, if things really get bad. Marlene’s assessment of their prospects of receiving help from the police was based on years of protesting and fighting for better law enforcement services. Along with her neighbors, she had grown frustrated that the typical response would likely be a brief, almost token increase in officers assigned to the park, followed by a return to the status quo. In the short term, a few nights of police patrols were viewed as grossly insufficient; additionally, the residents on the block could not see how police could provide longer-term assistance without an overall commitment by law enforcement officials to ensuring their safety—which they felt would take a long time to bring about. So, while they still would Home at Work 79 consider pressuring the local commander to ask for support, they decided to consider other strategies. Why the need to think in terms of short and long term? In urban black communities that suffer police neglect and that have historically been alienated from the police, one finds little faith among the populous that officers intend to provide meaningful preventative enforcement, such as walking the streets, meeting with residents and store owners, and developing trust through outreach and effective communication. Chicago’s Southside neighborhoods are a prime example. Residents routinely protest for better policing. They request greater police presence around parks and abandoned areas as well as on children’s routes to schools. Such requests may result in modest and temporary increases in local police presence, but there is widespread opinion, based on decades of experience, that this will not last longer than a few days or weeks. So, few rest their hopes on the police for long-term guarantees of security. Having said this, the character of the public safety problems—often rooted in shady activities that bring resources into the household—make it difficult for police to respond effectively. Even Marlene and her neighbors are quick to point out that a restructured police profile, built on a regular, more engaged relationship with the community, may still not be sufficient to deal with those issues that have a material component, particularly given that there are so many people who depend on underground income. Thus, residents must adopt a logic in which social control strategies are linked to the longevity of their impact, as well as to the substantive nature of the problem. Even though the police are only one resource and their perceived contribution to public safety may be limited, they are still residents’ first point of call for 80 Off the Books much of the violent crime and property-based crime in the area. For rapes, assaults, robberies, and homicides, Marlene and her neighbors do not think twice before calling the police. However, they might have to make more than one phone call, particularly when there are underground economic issues at play, and when the activities involve public safety, property-based crimes such as car theft and shoplifting, contractual disputes over street trading, and generic nuisance and loitering problems. So while the short-term goal is to restore security and order— to which the police can haltingly contribute—over time, maintaining safety requires a sustained capacity to influence both the actor and the activity in a particular space. It may mean more than kicking the gang member off the street corner, finding the shoplifter, or removing the sex worker from the park. It may entail preventing the gang member (or prostitute) from returning, or working with the gang leader (or pimp) to help him find an alternate sales spot. It may mean developing relations with people who can retrieve stolen goods. In other words, the longer-term interest is in part preventative. Residents understand that underground traders move about the community and may return to their immediate locale; because police do not often have intimate connections with these actors, residents may need to enlist the involvement of those who do. There were still people living on Marlene’s block who felt that all moneymaking in the park was unacceptable. But this was a small minority compared to those who believed that underground activities differed in terms of their associated dangers. Some behaviors (drug sales, gun trading, prostitution) carried greater hazards than others (food sales, hairstyling), and the dangerous ones required outright expulsion from the park. Even among such moderate voices, there was not unanimity regarding Home at Work 81 distinctions—while some would not tolerate prostitution, for example, others felt that it was an individual choice and not necessarily a public hazard. Nevertheless, proponents tended to adopt what Timothy called the “realist” position: people in the community were going to continue making money illegally, and the block club needed to take this fact into account. Nearly everyone agreed that it was not irresponsible to look for others beside the police who could help provide for the welfare of families; however, small minority felt that any usurpation of public safety functions from the police constituted a dangerous position in the long run. It was the view toward the long term that animated residents’ discussions. They were understandably nervous about what might happen after the summer, when the agreements with Big Cat expired. Nevertheless, three months felt like a long time to many of Marlene’s neighbors. They adopted a strategy for local social control that mirrored household management. That is, apart from their activism in political campaigns, they rarely thought about solutions to local problems that might yield benefits beyond a few months. They spoke often of the lack of trust in basic institutions, like the mayoral administration, police, elected officials, and social service agencies, that might enable them to think about longer-term initiatives. (Indeed, at times it appeared that they were less angry about a social transgression than about the lack of a timely response by agencies in the wider city.) Just as people came in and out of their house based on personal problems as well uncontrollable circumstances, so too did neighborhood life wax and wane in ways that did not always point to a source of immediate blame. Recognizing this, residents acted as if it were fanciful to think about a solution to the Homans Park issue that would be effective beyond the summer. One should en- 82 Off the Books joy the park now, because it may not even be there in a few months. Marlene, attempting to assuage Arlene’s concerns about making a “deal with the Devil,” made the point that the future was fragile, even illusory. “Look, as far as we know,” Marlene said, [Mayor] Daley might just tear the damn thing [Homans Park] down, like he did with the school and the pool. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. And don’t start believing that you know what’s coming down the road. We have a park, right now. That’s all we know. So, let’s use the damn thing.” Notwithstanding their differing opinions on strategy, the members of the 1700 South Maryland Avenue Block Club were far more cohesive than divisive that spring when the need arose to recover access to the park. Bird’s concerns over the fate of her children were no different from Carrie’s, though the former was a prostitute and the latter worked as a salesperson in a technology firm. Both wanted safe public spaces. Moreover, both knew that their need to act collectively, one of the only sources of strength that they possessed, outweighed their differing moral views. Carrie said, “I don’t approve of what Bird does, but I do approve of her being a good mother and watching out for her kids and mine. I can’t change the world, at least not by myself, and I guess I realized that after moving in, I can’t change my own neighborhood by myself either.” What the block club seemed to provide was a relatively safe, informal space to air shared fears and discover the possibilities of working alongside one another. In private, the neighbors expressed their disdain for Bird’s involvement in sex work, and they spoke critically of those on her block who harbored guns and drugs for the gang. Eunice expressed the prevailing attitude when she said, “What you do in your household, that’s up to you. What you do outside your door, Home at Work 83 that involves me. Knowing the difference is what makes a good neighbor.” During that spring, when they needed to fight Big Cat, Carrie, Eunice, and their like-minded neighbors did not often speak to me about the difficulties involved in working with persons who they felt had disreputable work habits. Yet it was easy to tell that it still took considerable energy and patience for them to reach out to those who flouted their own moral boundaries. One indication that their collaborations were not the preferred mode of neighborliness was that there was little discussion about lasting approaches to gang intervention and public safety beyond the summer period. There were few concrete long-term proposals put forward at the block club meetings. The sense of relief at having halted Big Cat’s entrepreneurial advance was no small victory. Marlene and her neighbors often said that they wanted to enjoy a few days in the park that spring before taking on the more difficult challenge of finding a permanent solution to the newest underground bazaar in their community. There was also a bad taste left in residents’ mouths after they started talking with one together about strategies to produce safety in Maquis Park. Those who supported underground activity in the park—as long as the block club could regulate the trading—found themselves at odds with their neighbors who wanted to make no such moral concessions. In general, Marlene’s neighbors would privately empathize with the secretive and illegal actions that households must take to survive. Discussing these publicly, however, meant acknowledging their support for such questionable practices in full view of their neighbors. As summer neared, Marlene and her neighbors admitted that a distance was growing among them as a result of their differing 84 Off the Books opinions about the appropriateness of shady behavior. Having to acknowledge a need for hidden income supplementation—indeed, some individuals voluntarily admitted their own involvement in shady trading—produced some collective discomfort. Many told Marlene that they preferred not to meet with one another, unless it was for purely social gatherings intended to provide food and recreation for their children. So discussions of shady trading and gang mediation now took place in private conversations with Marlene, rather than in public group settings. Marlene and others on her block debated acting on their own, without the police. A representative faction—likely Marlene and Bird—would confront Big Cat and work out a solution. They believed this could be a feasible short-term strategy, but knew it could backfire in the long run. Bird explained: You never do these things without somebody, somebody like a church or a cop, somebody else who is legitimate. Well, not legitimate, that’s not the word I’m looking for, but you know, like an organization that is part of the community, who you can call and who can be on your side. Especially, when things go wrong, and they always do when you working with these niggers [in the gang]. Bird understood that her neighbors must work with people who often have greater familiarity with shady matters. Families must be able to call on people who have the capacity to deal with perpetrators, not just one time, but over the course of weeks and months as problems recur. A police officer may scare the gang leader into leaving a public area for a few weeks, but residents need someone who can monitor the leader’s whereabouts, maintain open communication with him, and otherwise be retained over time both to prevent problems and to respond quickly once Home at Work 85 they occur. This means locating people who have the trust of those they watch over. Indeed, without some support from an intermediary, residents seeking assistance can quite easily be rebuffed, neglected, or even physically harmed by merchants who are protecting their source of income. All the more reason that long-term safety involves protecting oneself from future retaliation as well as securing immediate comfort. When underground economies are concerned, occasionally the right person to provide such protection may herself be benefiting from shady activity. There are several kinds of persons who may function as intermediaries. In Maquis Park, the options are typically clergy, social service staff (such as outreach workers, school counselors), select law enforcement and parole officers, precinct captains, store owners, and residents like Marlene who are active in social clubs, political organizations, and neighborhood associations. Essential characteristics include one or more of the following: the broker can influence police behavior outside of formal channels; she can retrieve stolen property; she is embedded herself in an underground trade; she receives indirect revenue from a trader, like hush money from a pimp or a “finder’s fee” from a loan shark; and she can influence the delivery of city services (street cleaning, speedy permit processing, and so on) through connections with the alderman or her staff. For the Homans Park matter, Marlene needed an intermediary who had secured the trust of Big Cat, who had positive relations with the police officers assigned to the park, and who understood what safety might mean in the context of people reliant on hidden economic activity. The natural choice was Pastor Wilkins at the Maquis Park Prayer and Revival Center. Wilkins had been working to reduce street gang violence and had two decades’ ex- 86 Off the Books perience with conflict resolution over underground economic issues. Much of his work with the local gang had occurred in the late eighties and early nineties, before Big Cat assumed leadership, but he worked with Big Cat and other gang members on a 1993–1995 campaign in which the Southside gangs had sponsored a candidate for elected office. And perhaps most importantly, Wilkins grasped the stakes, both for neighbors and the gang: he had observed the gang’s rise as an economic actor, its fall downward, and its most recent attempt to change direction. Excited about his first meeting with Marlene and some of her neighbors, Wilkins told me that the Homans Park issue presented an opportunity to return to grassroots “missionizing and organizing” that he had done a few years back with more fervor: “We are, all of us in the clergy, at the whim of our Lord. Who has asked us to be in service of our flock. To lead, guide, and of course, to heal. Big Cat is not a bad young man. I’ve been around his type for forty years. Somewhat led astray by temptation, a little bit guilty, wants to be there for the community. Like many of us. So, yes, I think that this is a real opportunity to heal the wounds between the young people and those like Eunice and Marlene who have kids and who want what all of us want: safety and a good place to live.” “And what about the drug dealing, the illegal activity?” I asked. “How do you deal with that.” “Well, young man,” he said pensively. “I’m a realist and I’m a man of faith. Let’s take one thing at a time. Let’s get the people together in a room, figure out how to get them to talk to one another. People have to eat, they have to do what all of us do: work, save, be there for their family. But they can’t be making life miserable for each other. And the park for me is just a symbol. It’s a Home at Work 87 symbol of being responsive to the needs of everyone. And who knows, maybe if Big Cat can see things from the parents’ perspective, he’ll change. I mean, he is also a parent. Let’s not forget that. He’s got kids.” “You said this was something you had been doing all your life. What exactly is it that you do?” “It’s a little bit of missionizing and organizing. Spreading the word to the people, letting God speak through you and then using the Good Lord to bring people together. When all these so-called ‘gangbangers’ was brought together a few years back—remember, when we almost got one of our own leaders in [aldermanic] office? It was the so-called criminals, the drug dealers, that were out there marching for change. They called me crazy. Why? Why can’t it happen again? That’s what I’m seeking to accomplish.” As the summer of 2000 approached and Pastor Wilkins formally agreed to come on board and help Marlene’s neighbors, there was cautious optimism among households on the block. Pastor Wilkins was a familiar figure, in no small part to his decades of service to the community and his help with households. But no one underestimated how resistant Big Cat and his gang might be, especially when there was money at stake. Most just hoped that the ensuing negotiations would not make things worse than they already were. The struggles of the residents on the 1700 block of South Maryland Avenue are day-to-day, and success in maintaining public safety depends on a group of committed stakeholders willing to confront problems head on, quickly and effectively. But Maquis Park is a poor community, which means that the style of maintaining social order has constraints that likely do not exist in 88 Off the Books wealthier communities. How they act in a collectively efficacious manner is rooted in attributes particular to poor, African American communities.14 To begin with, law enforcement’s involvement in matters of public safety cannot be relied upon, so relative to other kinds of communities, the residents’ own initiatives play a larger role than the police in keeping law and order. Maquis Park’s residents do not necessarily prefer to act on their own, but while they fight to procure effective support from law enforcement, they cannot sit back and wait for safety-related problems to take care of themselves. This means acting on their own, perhaps more often than they want to. The costs and benefits of working on their own would begin to surface after the summer of 2000, as Big Cat and his gang made even more attempts to supplement their illegal revenue in the community. The park, as some residents feared, was just the gang’s first assault on usable public spaces in the neighborhood. There were signs that Big Cat’s outfit was interested in finding other such places to congregate and anchor their drug trafficking. Moreover, rumors were circulating that Big Cat was expanding his shady interests in the community by finding stores to extort and self-made entrepreneurs (like Eunice) to tax. People feared not only gang reprisal but also that their own underground attempts to support their households would soon be threatened. And they would have to find efficacious ways to stave off the gang, maintain social order, and ensure that their own livelihoods were not threatened. Just as the women of Maquis Park must make difficult decisions about accepting illegally obtained money to support their households, they are also faced with a complex scenario when it comes to underground economic activity in and around their streets, sidewalks, and public areas. In this regard, they are not Home at Work 89 alone; in American inner cities, women are a bridge between private and public spaces.15 That poverty is feminized does not mean that men are not poor. Rather, women have historically been the recipients of public benefits (such as welfare, health care, food stamps) for their families. In the absence of responsible male involvement in the home, and given the difficulties they face in trying to enter the labor force, they have taken the lead in domestic and local affairs, including assuming the burden of child rearing and volunteering for the many clubs, associations, and organizations that deal with neighborhood matters. In suburban and middle- and upper-income communities, the boundaries between the home and the outside world can be maintained intact. Police service is better, there are fewer people per capita in and around the home, sanitation and street cleaning tend to be performed regularly, households are not crowded together, and therefore people do not infringe on each other as much. The home can be a stable refuge. In Maquis Park, in contrast, private space is at a premium, if not a luxury. Relatives and friends who cannot afford rent are always coming in and out of a crowded home, there may be more people and cars on the street, and property-based crimes, as well as rape and various forms of assault, compromise the safety of public space. This means that female heads of households are busy attending to the welfare of their households. They are also at the front lines of public safety maintenance. For all these reasons, it is not surprising that women in Maquis Park move between the home and the wider community, or that they are at the forefront of dealing with the negative consequences that underground economic activity can have on quality of life. It is that particular struggle for African American women that bell hooks calls “homeplace resistance.”16 There are different forms of shady activity that weigh upon the 90 Off the Books minds of Maquis Park residents. A steady stream of peddlers and independent contractors, like car mechanics and gypsy cab drivers, loiter in public space seeking customers. Their presence effectively turns recreational spaces, alleys, and other thoroughfares into workplaces. Some of this work, such as automotive repair, can be hazardous for children and passersby. There are also myriad illegal activities, ranging from gun trading to drug trafficking to sex work, that can become violent and make it difficult for parents to take their children safely about the neighborhood. An abandoned building can provide storage for stolen equipment, a public park is an advantageous spot for narcotics sales, and the couches that litter alleyways are makeshift bedrooms for local prostitutes. Eunice, Marlene, Bird, and their immediate neighbors on South Maryland Avenue are not exceptional in terms of their need to cope with neighborhood-based underground activity. Their struggles exemplify how women in poor communities assume the mantle of community safety. And importantly, their work with one another illustrates the not-uncommon ways in which individuals of different backgrounds, tastes, and preferences must come together to realize common interests.