Gang Leader For A Day Summary

For this online assignment, I have decided to talk about Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day, chapter 4. This chapter spoke out the most to me in this book. So far in the last three chapters, we have learned that how Sudhir is a graduate student doing a research on the daily lives of poor black lives in Chicago. In this chapter we see Sudhir interacting with the group leader of the gang Black Kings in Robert Taylor. At first JT the group leader or the boss comes off very strong on Sudhir, laughing on his face about the questioner he has prepared to ask the gang members or the people living in that building, he is suggested by JT that he should get to know people first. Not only that Sudhir is not accepted in the area first because of his

JT invites Sudhir to be part of the group and see their day-to-day lives he is asked to spend day and night with them, getting to know the rules they go by and how they solve problems. Sudhir is told by JT that no police has ever come to this side of town to take care of their problems, so therefore they have to take care of their problems themselves, making the rules and punishments. Sudhir on other hand is very respectful of JT’s rules and doesn’t get involved in their matters. One of the other things that are very surprising in this chapter is that JT asks Sudhir to be the leader for a day, where he faces problems such as encounters dealing with drug dealers, thieves, and making unforeseeable decisions. He is even presented a situation where Billy and Otis because Billy never paid Otis but Otis never gave all the money he owed Billy. Otis pocketed the rest of the money that he claimed Billy owed him. Sudhir thought it over and came to the conclusion that Billy never did pay Otis, but at the same time, Otis never denied stealing the owed money. This leads Sudhir to conclude that Otis stole the money and should be the one to be

Whereas for these gangs they think that it’s their responsibility to provide for these people but in return they expect these people to join their gang. Therefore people and mostly teenagers join the gang. One of the other things that I’ll be putting in context is that since these gangs have leaders to answer to they must be doing something right to be running their society. It’s a big thing for people from the society going to gang leaders for help rather than the government. It also shows that these gangs are doing everything they can to provide for their people even if that gives them a bad name or puts their life in danger. They seem to the ones caring more about their people rather than the