4

THE VISIONARY AXIS OF POLITICAL IMAGINATION

Introduction

Throughout my time at the Altgeld Gardens and Phillip Murray Homes development in Chicago, many of the Black women I interviewed were engaged in a politics of homemaking.^* This politics devoted itself to creating a safe space within their homes where neighbors and friends could engage in public-spirited conversation. By creating a place where they could engage in such conversation away from state surveillance, Altgeld residents were able to provide one another with a political education that facilitated the development of political imagination and, subsequently, political power. In Altgeld Gardens, a respondent’s home demarcated the choices government bureaucracy (the CHA) distributed to the leaseholder. The aesthetics of public housing served as a sort of canary in a coal mine.

I visited most of my respondents in their homes, and as I discuss throughout this chapter, how they related to and spoke about their home told me a quite a bit. In particular, respondents who felt they had control over what happened within and around their home were frequently those who engaged in political work throughout their sociopolitical community. Unsurprisingly, the respondents who felt empowered and safe within their homes were frequently (but not always) confident they could convince CHA to attend to whatever maintenance needs they had. Respondents who felt powerless often had apartments that fell into disrepair, usually because they did not believe that CHA’s maintenance team would attend to their needs, no matter how severe the issue. In short, respondents who gave up hope, in themselves, their neighbors, their sociopolitical community, CHA, and Altgeld Gardens itself, often had apartments that reflected that reality. Sadly, as Sofia’s story (later in the chapter) makes clear, this frequently happened after multiple experiences of being disappointed or abandoned by CHA.

However, this should not be confused with broken windows theory.¹ Scholars of the broken windows theory mistakenly interpret the structural neglect of buildings and neighborhoods as an indicator that residents are apathetic about the state of their community.² What broken windows scholarship fundamentally misunderstand is that the benign neglect of the structures and spatial realities within low-income neighborhoods is not an indicator of how the residents feel about their homes, lives, and communities.³ The neglect of neighborhoods is actually an indicator of what the state, government bureaucracies, and street-level bureaucrats think poor Black people deserve.⁴ Respondents regularly reported that the benign neglect, which became a hallmark of Chicago public housing, reminded them each and every day how little the government cared for them. As a result, the aesthetics residents imagined for themselves within and outside of their homes became a powerful sociopolitical tool. Residents who were able to keep their block clean, or plant illegal rosebushes with thorns (to get back at maintenance people who repeatedly neglected a resident’s home), cultivated political imagination, and with it political power, in creative and subversive ways. Aesthetics came to represent a portion of the breadth and heft of the sociopolitical freedom residents imagined for themselves. Political imagination, as an aesthetic, physically manifested itself in the material appearance of public housing, which, in the context of individual row homes, was understood by residents as a representation of their relative control within their everyday life.⁵

Black feminist geographers and political scientists have made important interventions in our understanding of how the neighborhood and the home can shape the sociopolitical tools of Black women living in the United States. Black feminist geographer Katherine McKittrick argues that “geography is not, however, secure and unwavering: we produce space, we produce its meanings, and we work very hard to make geography what it is.”⁶ For McKittrick, geography is more than the material ground we walk on and experience, with its various nations, states, and continents. Instead, geography is a series of spatial realities constantly being interpreted and reimagined via social practices and geographic dominations. McKittrick argues that geography transforms the legacy of Black women’s oppression into a material reality.⁷

The Afro-diaspora must contend with the connection between Blackness and spatial dislocation as a mode of racial domination.⁸ When McKittrick asserts that “Black lives are necessarily geographic,” she is pointing to the decisions of multiple European nation-states to kidnap millions of Black Africans from their continental homes.⁹ The dislocation of Afro-diasporic people and the dismantling of Black sociopolitical communities seem to be foundational features of the structural architecture of white supremacy. Whether it is the transatlantic slave trade, the demolition of Seneca Village, or the destruction of Cabrini Greene, geography, white supremacy, racial capitalism, and the spatial dislocation of the Afro-diaspora seem to be intrinsically intertwined.¹⁰ For hundreds of years, the state has used its ability to overdetermine who lives where, and when, to manage their citizens and those citizens’ political power. In the United States, geographic dominance over marginalized populations has looked like racial and economic segregation, as well as state-sanctioned and extrasystemic violence.¹¹

How Political Imagination Informs the Development of the Political Possible-Self

In the first three chapters, I explained the thinking behind the political possible-self (PPS) and the Black feminist definitional criterion (BFDC) of politics and the political. I developed these ideas with the hope of aiding the recognition and accurate description of the sociopolitical lives of marginalized Black populations living in the United States. I hope the ideas developed in this text can be useful in the research of other marginalized groups. But ultimately, the concepts and frameworks developed in this book were created to support a holistic sociopolitical understanding of Black women who live below the poverty line. The BFDC of politics and the political, as well as the PPS, take a step closer to a better understanding of the extrasystemic politics, sociopolitical tools, sociopolitical communities, and Black enclave public spheres of Black women. However, this small step forward in the sociopolitical research of Black women living below the poverty line comes with the full awareness and recognition that the best research on this sociopolitical community can only come from writers and researchers who are poor Black women living in the United States. As an outsider to this sociopolitical community, I can only hope to be a respectful observer and make good on the confidence and encouragement given to me by the women who lived in Altgeld.

In the next two chapters, I discuss what the PPS looked like in the context of the Altgeld Gardens sociopolitical community. I use each of these cases, not as empirical evidence, but as conceptual studies that illustrate the theoretical frameworks I’ve developed in this book. Each chapter will focus on a particular axis of the PPS matrix. Chapter 4 focuses on the axis of political imagination and the roles pleasure, intellect, and alienation play in understanding the individual PPS. Chapter 5 discusses the belonging axis and explores in-depth the centrality of interpersonal relationships to individual sociopolitical development. I argue that political imagination absent interpersonal relationships connecting the individual to their residential sociopolitical community seemed to result in an individual politics disassociated from the public sphere. Among the women I interviewed at Altgeld Gardens, people who landed on the more visionary end of the PPS spectrum seemed to experience social isolation or alienation. However, the same respondents tended to have higher levels of creativity or intellect, which appeared to fuel an imaginative and at times even visionary internal political life. This disassociated internal political life seemed to deal almost exclusively in the realm of words, beauty, alienation, and ideas.

This particular group of respondents were people I, as an academic, felt a certain kinship with. After all, everyone at some point in their lives has retreated into the world of books, beauty, film, TV, games, or other art forms when the outside world became too much.¹² Scholars have shown that the intersection of poverty and trauma often results in significant psychosocial disconnection and alienation.¹³ Many respondents directly credited their total socioemotional disconnection from Altgeld Gardens as the thing that kept them alive and safe. It is not a strategy without merit.¹⁴ However, it is a strategy often absent political power in the political context of the United States (at least in 2011–2012, and now in 2024). As discussed in the Introduction via the BFDC, politics requires two or more people to cultivate community-based political power. When individuals think about politics but do not communicate those ideas, they are engaged in intellectual work, not political work. Ultimately, a disassociated internal politics seemingly correlated with the isolated and violent spatial realities of government-subsidized public housing is a major problem for democracy.

Resident Case Studies

As I mentioned in the Introduction, I use Chapter 4 to provide further insight into the political imagination axis of the PPS framework. To be more specific, all four cases presented in this chapter fall along an x axis that goes from alienated to visionary within the PPS matrix (as shown in Figure 4.1).

The political imagination axis represents the first step toward generating community-based political power. My data showed again and again that, without a belief in the possibility of successfully achieving whatever goal the respondent or their community had in mind, political power could not be attained. Respondents who had the capacity to believe in new possibilities within their substantive realities were frequently able to rally other residents to their cause.¹⁵ At Altgeld Gardens, this was most pronounced with the infamous and successful Gautreaux court case.¹⁶ Gautreaux started at the behest of Altgeld Gardens residents and forever changed Chicago public housing policy.¹⁷ The power of birthing new possibilities was also clear when Harriet Shaw, a longtime resident of Altgeld Gardens, gave birth to the environmental justice movement and U.S. understandings of environmental racism.¹⁸ It was Ms. Shaw’s ability to imagine a safer and cleaner Altgeld Gardens that inspired residents to join her organization, and ultimately, they successfully sued the CHA for exposing them to environmental toxins.¹⁹ My ethnographic and archival data are clear: residents with the capacity to imagine sociopolitical possibilities and teach other residents about those political possibilities via public-spirited conversation created, and then strengthened, long-lasting sociopolitical communities with political power. Black women’s ability to exercise political imagination has everything to do with their capacity to think of themselves as having power—power over themselves, power over what happens to their life (broadly conceived), and power and influence over the institutions who attempt to exert power over their lives. Knowing this, I am starting Chapter 4 with an acknowledgment that the four cases featured here are centrally concerned with Black women’s relationship to power. Because ultimately, power is inextricably critical to their ability to have and grow into greater political imagination.

Figure 4.1Political Possible-Self Matrix: Axis Overview

Alienated

When I interviewed Ceely in 2011, she was twenty-four years old. She originally signed up for CHA public housing in 2007. After a four-year wait and some negotiation, Ceely moved into a large three-bedroom apartment in Altgeld Gardens with her son in 2010, two and a half years before I interviewed her. Initially Ceely had reservations about moving to the development; Altgeld’s reputation was well known to her. When I asked her what it was like living in Altgeld Gardens, she said:

You know what, it’s really quiet out here. I was kind of skeptical about moving out here at first because, like, all the rumors I heard and how walking around used to be like to terrible out here. But when I moved out here, it’s just, it’s quiet. It’s like your own town.

Ceely described Altgeld Gardens as a “pretty cool” opportunity, a place where she could keep to herself. When she was allowed to view the apartment, Ceely decided she had the skills and wherewithal to manage what seemed like a relatively quiet block within Altgeld. However, she kept the warnings about Altgeld in the back of her mind. Ceely’s initial reticence was caused by what she described as “terrible rumors” about Altgeld. Within the sociopolitical community of her former residential neighborhood, Altgeld was known as a place where

a lot of drugs, a lot of drugs. . . . Your house get broke into. They used to tell me, like, when you move out there and if you buy a TV, don’t bring the box ’cuz soon as they see the box, they’re going to break in your house and steal the TV, you know, things like that.

Ceely’s primary goal was to finish school and buy her own home. As a result, she tried to remain out of sight while moving through the spatial realities of Altgeld Gardens.

C: No one bothers me. My neighbors are quiet. On my block is a lot of kids around here. I mean, I hear about other blocks, but it’s pretty cool.

A: What do you hear about other blocks?

C: Well, how they shooting all the time. I think like twice I heard gunshots, twice, the whole two years I stay here, I heard gunshots twice. A lot of people ask me, like while I’m on the bus and everything, they’re like, “I never saw you out there before. Do you like it?” and I’m like, “Yeah, I love it. It’s quiet,” and people are like, “What? It’s quiet? Where do you live?”

But in subtle ways, she expressed a reserved sort of enthusiasm about Altgeld, even when describing circumstances others might have found troubling. For example, in the above transcript, Ceely discussed Altgeld’s somewhat infamous reputation throughout Chicago, especially in a post–Cabrini Greene and Robert Taylor Homes world.^* However, she did not express worry over the shootings.²⁰ Instead, she was pleased she only heard gunshots twice during her two and a half years at Altgeld. I conducted this interview at Ceely’s home, two months (to the day) after four people were murdered and two were wounded in the Altgeld Gardens store, the Connect.²¹ The murders were a topic of conversation among several Altgeld residents I interviewed.

A Cabin in the Woods

But Ceely discussed her apartment at Altgeld Gardens within the context of her life experience. She only mentioned the 2011 murders in her interview once, very briefly at the end. Ceely did not seem moved by the two incidents where gunshots were audible from her apartment. She stressed throughout our conversation that her apartment was on a quiet block she enjoyed. This was most emphasized when I asked her what she liked about living in Altgeld.

A: What do you like about living in Altgeld?

C: It’s quiet and it’s away. It’s away from, like, everyone else. When you come out here, it’s like, it’s like you stay out of town. It’s like I’m Indiana, and it’s like, you know, over there is Calumet City or something. It’s like it’s so different.

A: Do you even feel like you’re a part of the city?

C: No, not until I hit 95th. And that’s when I say OK . . .

A: I’m back in Chicago. [Laughter.]

C: That’s the borderline.

A: What don’t you like about living in Altgeld?

C: Hmm, the workers out here, their attitudes.

A: People who work for CHA?

C: Yeah, people who work for CHA, the office people. Their attitudes aren’t terrible, but their attitudes are like, they act like they gave us this. They act like they pay our bill and . . . because I had a problem when I first moved out here. I did have a problem.

Ceely identified her biggest challenge as negotiating the sociopolitical dynamics within CHA. Throughout the interviews I collected, respondents reported that Black CHA street-level bureaucrats insisted on treating CHA residents as a nuisance at best and a scourge of the earth at worst. The secondary marginalization respondents experienced at the hands of Black CHA street-level bureaucrats took a number of different forms depending on the resident.^* Ceely’s particular challenge with the politics of the CHA bureaucracy was negotiating and advocating for her needs in CHA and welfare meetings. But in the midst of that, I was struck by the way Ceely talked about Altgeld, especially when I asked her what she liked about it. Take a look at this transcript segment again; the extremes of how Altgeld was described by everyone on the development are interesting. But even within the context of our interview, Ceely would at one moment describe Altgeld as a hyperviolent space she needed to hide from and then in the next try to liken Altgeld to a suburban development.

C: It’s quiet and it’s away. It’s away from, like, everyone else. When you come out here, it’s like, it’s like you stay out of town. It’s like I’m Indiana, and it’s like, you know, over there is Calumet City or something. It’s like it’s so different.

A: Do you even feel like you’re a part of the city?

C: No, not until I hit 95th. And that’s when I say OK . . .

A: I’m back in Chicago. [Laughter.]

Ceely talked about Altgeld almost like it was a cabin in the woods where she was solitarily working toward her goal. She seemed to appreciate Altgeld’s location on the very edge of Chicago’s South Side. When Ceely described Altgeld as “quiet and it’s away. It’s away from, like, everyone else,” her words immediately brought to mind the many artists and writers who’ve found their deepest solace and creative expression when they’ve run away from the world for a time. Lorraine Hansberry would go to upstate New York, James Baldwin went to the Middle East, Maya Angelou went to Ghana, and Malcolm X went to Mecca. But most of us never have the opportunity to break away from everything and anything to be able to think. However, there were important moments during our time together where the cracks of her idealized presentation of Altgeld Gardens showed through.

A: Do people in government care about the people who live in Altgeld Gardens?

C: I feel like what they . . . no and . . . really no, ’cuz I feel like they really just stuck us out here. To me, this is no man’s land. You don’t have no stores; you don’t have nothing out here. You have a clinic. The dentist is inside the clinic. You know, you got a library, a liquor store, of course. And if you want to go somewhere, you got to go all the way out. You got to go on Roseland or you have to go on River Oaks or something like that. So I think they just stuck us out here in the middle of no man’s land. Then it’s like, they send us letters about the water and chemicals. Then I heard a rumor, like, years ago that people was getting sick out here, you know. Yeah.

A: Can you trust the government?

C: No. No, I mean . . . I don’t know. That’s a good question. I say no because I’m the type of person, I don’t trust anyone.

A: Why is that?

C: I don’t know, ’cuz you know, I watch so much on television, I hear so many stories from people, and I see what a person would do to you. I’m like, oh no, I don’t trust nobody, no. I trust my family and stuff like that. But as far as other people outside us, no.

Ultimately, the truth was probably complicated. The desire of respondents to please the interviewer is a very real factor in any form of research. However, what was consistent about Ceely’s interview was her capacity to articulate reality and to repackage what she saw into a different form. Ceely was clear that her “cabin in the woods” was a dream created out of neoliberal nightmares.

Ceely was able to use her sociopolitical imagination to create the life she needed. She paid eighty-eight dollars a month for rent and paid no heat or gas. Living in Altgeld allowed her to go to school for her master’s and take care of her son. At the outset of this chapter, I argued that spatial dislocation has become a key identifying feature of the children of the Afro-diaspora. But people with vivid sociopolitical imaginations, people like Ceely, were able to transform the alienation neoliberalism handed to them via spatial dislocation. Ceely had the internal capacity to see Altgeld Gardens as a moment in time where she could finish her education. Seeing it as a temporary stopping place, she felt she had the capacity to escape Altgeld, CHA, and poverty as long she did not allow herself to become a part of the Altgeld sociopolitical community. Like many respondents, Ceely saw invisibility as being central to her capacity to escape Altgeld. For residents like Ceely, becoming part of Altgeld would create a weight they insisted would render them immobile.

An Alienated Sociopolitical Life

However, while she was alienated from the larger sociopolitical community of Altgeld Gardens, Ceely did have the sociopolitical tools to manage life there. When she encountered issues with an Altgeld Gardens street-level bureaucrat, she called downtown and advocated for herself. When I interviewed her in 2011, she was living in one of the largest three-bedrooms I saw within Altgeld Gardens throughout 2011–2012.

A: Why did you move here?

C: ’Cuz of my own place. [Chuckles.] You know when you get your own place, this is my own place, and everything was reasonable. My rent is like eighty-eight bucks, and I’m not paying gas and heat.

A: You are or you’re not?

C: No, I don’t have to. I don’t have to pay like no utilities at all. Like I’m saying, my rent was eighty-eight dollars. It’s my own.

A: How would you describe your attitude towards life in Altgeld?

C: I stay positive because I know I’m not going to be out here too long because a lot of people, when I do bump into people and I have a conversation with them, people been out here for years, you know, and they have that mentality like this is the best it get. You know, I had heard people say that before, you know, like this is where I live and this is where I stay; I’m from here. A lot of people [get wrapped up in] the Gardens, you know. Me, I don’t see myself staying out here long. I’m getting my master’s now, so once I’m done and find me a nice job, I’m going to be heading for the border for a house.

A: What are you getting your master’s in?

C: Business.

Throughout my interviews, there were consistent warnings about “people who get wrapped up in the Gardens” or “people who got caught up” while living in Altgeld Gardens. The ideas and warnings crammed into the short phrases could warrant a chapter in and of themselves, but scholars of Chicago gangs like Laurence Ralph are a good resource for a more through engagement with the social-spatial dynamics within Chicago neighborhoods that led to violent conflict among residents.²²

Many Altgeld respondents were worried about becoming absorbed in the various sociopolitical dramas and conflicts among residents, particularly because some conflicts ended in violence. The mixture of limited resources and limited opportunities to leave the development safely often led to a sense of unease among residents, particularly during hot summer months. Suffice it to say that in any public sphere, there may be countless sociopolitical communities. Within the public sphere of Chicago, Altgeld Gardens is a sociopolitical community, Hyde Park is a sociopolitical community, and University of Chicago is a sociopolitical community. Each sociopolitical community has their own vision of politics and a firm idea about which sociopolitical tools are accessible to them (and appropriate to use). With that in mind, every sociopolitical community attempts to find a way to advocate effectively for power and a way to disperse that power throughout its membership. Even spatial residential (political) communities (like your local neighborhood association or your teenager’s high school and its school board) are constantly negotiating and managing power.

Members of a sociopolitical community may vary in their level of commitment, interest, and engagement with the larger politics and sociopolitical tools of their political communities. My childhood friend Perry’s mother was not at all interested in the parent-teacher association at our middle school and tried her best not to “get caught up” in the politics of whose kid got any particular opportunity. My mother, on the other hand, was very interested in the PTA, the school board, the city council. You name it; if there was a system of power in Detroit, my parents wanted to understand it. Similarly, this very dynamic happened within Altgeld Gardens. Some residents (as you will see) were very caught up in Altgeld’s sociopolitical community. Other residents, like Ceely, could not care less about the sociopolitical community of Altgeld Gardens. As far as Ceely was concerned, the sociopolitical community of Altgeld Gardens held significantly more risk than reward.

Figure 4.2 illustrates Ceely’s approximate position within the PPS matrix. Because she described herself as having no friends, family (beyond her children and partner), or any other connection to Altgeld Gardens (or anywhere), she falls on the zero point of the belonging axis. When a respondent described themselves as belonging to no community, inside or outside of Altgeld, I placed them on the zero point of the belonging axis. Ceely also described herself as being completely disinterested in politics, whether neighborhood, city, state, or even national politics. Beyond focusing on the immediate safety of her family and their general well-being, she never articulated much hope, let alone a vision, for the future. As a result, I placed her on the zero point of the political imagination axis.

Figure 4.2Ceely’s Political Possible-Self

Ceely’s primary goal for her family was for them to have a small impact on their spatial-social environment so none of them would draw attention to themselves. Ceely thought that if they could avoid struggles for power, maybe the violence would not touch her or her child. When I asked her, “What kind of folks are the people that you have conversations with?” I was asking her to describe her social support system, or even a loose network, within Altgeld Gardens. But Ceely told me, “You know what? I don’t know anyone out here. I know the lady at the Laundromat. I see her, and she’s pretty nice. She’s like my mom age, probably around forties, but I really don’t communicate with anybody. I go in and I leave; I come back. I probably see, like, my neighbors next door, some teenagers. I wave at them, and I keep moving.” In this way, verbally at least, Ceely separated herself from the people who live in Altgeld, and she did so consistently throughout our interview.

A: Do you have any friends out here at Altgeld?

C: No, I don’t know anyone out here at all.

A: Are you married, dating, or in a relationship?

C: In a relationship with my son’s father. We been together since 2006.

A: I know you have your son. How old is he?

C: He’s two, yes.

A: What’s your experience like raising him here?

C: It’s no problem because he’s young. I don’t want him to grow up here.

A: Why is that?

C: ’Cuz he don’t need to stay in the Gardens when he get older. I want him in a house, nice community, nice school, you know, not here. Not here. I don’t like it that much.

Consistently, respondents with an alienated PPS emphasized a distinct separation between themselves (and their family) and everyone else in Altgeld. Ceely had enough sociopolitical imagination to navigate the bureaucracies of CHA when her family required it. But outside of advocating for her family, Ceely preferred to keep to herself. Even when I asked her if she had any friends in the neighborhood or anyone she ever spoke to, she said no. While Ceely reported volunteering at her former school (at a fundraiser for kids in her former community), she was not involved with any community activities at Altgeld.

A: Do you go to CHA meetings?

C: No. No, I never been to a CHA meeting.

A: Why not? You just not interested?

C: Yeah, I be like, whatever. My attitude with them be like, hey, whatever. I do what I’m supposed to do. I just don’t . . . I really . . . because CHA have a lot of stuff going on out here, for the people out here. That’s another thing why I like out here too. But I just never [have] time to participate in anything.

A: Yeah, it can be time consuming.

C: Yeah, it is, and I be like, I’m not wasting my time . . . but I’m probably not wasting my time. I think I should go, now that you brung it up, but no time.

A: Do you ever go to CAC, LAC, or any of that kind of stuff?

C: No. No, I don’t go to any of those. I be so busy at school and take care of my son. It’s like they be my main things, so when they do send out things like that and they be, like, trying to stress it out, like come out here, voice your opinion, and everything, I just don’t go.

Like other respondents with an alienated PPS, Ceely discussed a family member who was involved in politics (she reported that her father worked for an alderman) and said that as a result she would occasionally engage in his election campaigns. However, she had an on-again, off-again interest in traditional political news media; when I interviewed her in 2011, she had never voted. However, given her recent move to Altgeld Gardens, she was excited about voting for the first time on behalf of former president Barack Obama in 2012.

If Ceely were assessed for efficacy and cynicism using traditional political science measures, she would certainly be described as politically alienated, much in the same way as she is here. After all, it would be easy to just dismiss Ceely as completely alienated and leave it at that. However, I argue that respondents like Ceely are precisely the people who can teach political practitioners the most. What matters, when examining Ceely’s PPS, is not where she ultimately placed on the matrix but instead what scholars can learn while attempting to figure out her precise relationship to belonging and political imagination. As a political scientist, I know quite a bit about how to label an individual, a community, or even an entire population as having one political identity or another. However, I needed to explore more of how and why those political identities come to be.

Interviewing respondents like Ceely helped me to understand the sociopolitical realities of marginalized Black communities. Yes, collecting the total sum of people who are efficacious versus cynical is important work. But there is also significant value in interviewing and observing people within their real lives, their spatial contexts. Doing so can help us develop a firmer understanding of who people and their communities actually are, beyond the political labels we assign them. Considering how an individual thinks about and imagines power tells us a lot about their political imagination. Asking a respondent about how they understand their relationship to, or sense of belonging with, a particular sociopolitical community provides an opportunity to learn much about the individual person I am engaging with, as well as their entire community.

Fully developing Ceely’s narrative as a case study within this larger project was critical, whether or not she understood herself to have a fully formed political identity. Her story is not simply a point of comparison; it is a beacon of how much work there is to do. Her case forces us to seriously reckon with the reality of material, social, and political life for some Black women living in Chicago public housing. Further, it forces us to ask ourselves, Will we simply study these women’s stories? Or is there something to be done?

Less Alienated

After the initial research pilot, Nettie was one of the first Altgeld Gardens residents I interviewed. She was a thirty-year-old Black woman who lived in Altgeld Gardens for two and a half years. Notably, she was one of a handful of respondents whose child required special education services. Nettie’s son attended a public school close by (outside the Altgeld development). Although she had recently quit her job so she could care for him full-time, overall, Nettie felt that their transition over the last two and a half years had been smooth.

A: What is it like living in the Altgeld-Murray Homes? How would you describe your experience here?

N: So far, it’s been pretty good. I hear of, like, different incidents, like with violence, but for the most part I have a very positive experience living out here. I have nothing bad to report. Like, if something is wrong with my apartment, maintenance is pretty good with coming out and fixing things. And for the most part, it’s been very positive. Nothing bad so far, because I’ve been here [for two years], and for the most part everything has been pretty good. So I have nothing bad to report.

It is important to note the similarities and the differences between Nettie and Ceely on the PPS matrix. While Nettie had a more neutral relationship to the Altgeld sociopolitical community, Ceely was more alienated. However, they were similar in their relative nonchalance about the violence on the development. I interviewed Nettie a month before the shooting at the Connect.^* However, there were reports of violence throughout the development. Strikingly, Nettie said she was having a “very positive experience living” at Altgeld. Like Ceely, she was aware of the violence but only passingly referenced it in her interview.

You Get What You Pay For

A consistent theme throughout my interviews with women on the more alienated end of the spectrum was the belief they could not expect more in regard to the maintenance or spatial realities of the development. A consistent indicator of a more alienated respondent was the sense that they needed money to leave CHA if they wanted to feel 100 percent safe. The more alienated respondents accepted violence and absent building maintenance as immutable reality for those who “choose” to live in public housing. The violence, gunplay in broad daylight, buildings in disrepair all over the development, isolation from grocery or big-box stores, and environmental issues were chalked up as the price of living below the poverty line.

A: Who do you interact with the most [within the Altgeld Gardens development]?

N: My neighbors sometime. If I see them, I just say hello. Right next door and the door right after that, they’re mostly in their midthirties, I think.

A: What’s your relationship like with your neighbors?

N: Not that much. I just say hello, goodbye, but never like friendship or nothing. Just saying hello and seeing what’s going on in the neighborhood. But nothing like really close, but just saying hello, being friendly. And that’s it.

A: How come nothing close?

N: Because I’m, like, hardly around. My son is at school, and sometimes I’m at school helping out with his classroom or, like, looking for a job, ’cuz I quit my job in April, April of this year, so I could take care of my son full-time. Prior to that I was working at [a nonprofit], and I was working at [an association]. So, with my job and helping out with my son’s school, and that’s about it. I’m just like a real, like, you know, I’m not very social, so I just try to help out with my son’s school or with my job. But at home I just like peace and quiet. I don’t like all that drama and stuff.

Nettie repeated a popular sentiment within the interviews: she kept to herself because she did not want to get caught up “in the drama.” What this meant for each respondent varied slightly. But generally, it meant the respondent avoided any conflicts that could escalate to violence. It also generally implied that they did not want other Altgeld Gardens residents to know what kind of electronics, clothing, or shoes they had in their home. For Nettie, “no more drama” was a mantra she repeated over and over through her life, at every opportunity.

The Politics of Invisibility within a Sociopolitical Community

I walked away from Altgeld asking myself, What are the politics of invisibility?²³ Who has the freedom to speak, be loud, and be seen, without social repercussions or threats of physical harm?²⁴

As marginal group leaders pursue the goal of expanded access and integration, part of their strategy may become portraying their community as representing and adhering to values and norms as defined by dominant groups. It is difficult for these indigenous leaders, who gain part of their authority and legitimacy by conforming to dominant values, to continually and actively challenge these same norms and values as unfair criteria upon which to judge individual merit. Thus, by accepting the dominant discourse that defines what is good, normal, and acceptable, stratification among marginal group members is transformed into an indigenous process of marginalization targeting the most vulnerable in the group. This process [is what] I label secondary marginalization.²⁵

In Boundaries of Blackness, Cathy J. Cohen argues that secondary marginalization is not simply about the hierarchies within legacy organizations or the decision of who gets to contribute to public policy targeted at Black American communities (although local, state, and federal policy is critical).²⁶ The stakes are much larger than those concerns. According to Cohen, marginal group members “are forced, therefore, to demonstrate their normativity and legitimacy through the class privilege they acquire, through the attitudes and behavior they exhibit, and through the dominant institutions in which they operate.”²⁷ In the U.S. context, dominant mainstream Black communities are the ones who decide what the dominant values and norms are. Marginalized group members like Black women living in Chicago public housing are consistently targeted via government, bureaucratic, and residential violence because of the stigma around their sites of marginalization. Within the mainstream Black counterpublic in the United States, the battle is around which Black communities are able to adopt a politics of recognition and which Black communities must utilize a politics of invisibility.^*28 In Democracy Remixed, Cohen defines the politics of invisibility:

I believe that significant numbers of Black youth, at least prior to 2008, have used the limited agency available to them to stay under the radar. These young people have chosen a politics of invisibility disengaging from all forms of politics and trying to remain invisible to officials who possibly could provide assistance but were more likely to impose greater surveillance and regulations on their lives. They have focused and relied on their own social worlds instead. Of course, the danger of a politics of invisibility is that the voices of young black Americans, especially those who are most marginal—and whose voices are very critical in a representative system that is based on the articulation of wants and needs by the populace—are muted.²⁹

The politics of invisibility asks a simple question: Where is it safe to be seen and heard? For poor Black women living in the United States, their very presence elicits violence from the state, Black men, mainstream media, and academics who still make arguments about “welfare queens” of the “underclass.”³⁰ The humanity and political power of Black women is removed when their survival is tied to their successful self-erasure.³¹ The opposite and life-affirming political placement is within a politics of recognition.³² In Sister Citizen, Melissa Harris-Perry argues that Black women’s membership within sociopolitical communities is primarily a quest for recognition.³³ She goes on to note that binding the mainstream Black counterpublic with recognition ultimately allows that counterpublic to give birth to a political sense of well-being, which provides not only Black women but all human beings with access to discussions around the meaning of justice, order, and right doing.³⁴ Without acknowledgment as human beings with value, the challenge to become recognized—and furthermore, to become members of their sociopolitical community and the Black mainstream counterpublic, who can safely and effectively assert power—continually grows larger.³⁵ Unfortunately, Black women living below the poverty line in the United States rarely have access to the Black mainstream counterpublic or the larger U.S. public sphere.³⁶

However, it is important to note that Nettie and Ceely expressed no desire to access the mainstream Black counterpublic or the larger U.S. public sphere.³⁷ As far as Nettie and Ceely were concerned, success meant no one knowing they lived in Altgeld. For women with an alienated (Ceely) or more neutral (Nettie) PPS, their sociopolitical goals were inverted. They exchanged the possibility of political power and recognition within a bigger counterpublic for the perceived safety of invisibility.³⁸ Ultimately, the women of Altgeld raise a meaningful question: Is it safe to hold political power?

Figure 4.3 illustrates Nettie’s approximate placement on the PPS matrix. Like Ceely, Nettie did not have close relationships with anyone at Altgeld Gardens. However, she knew who her neighbors were. Nettie believed that having a passing familiarity with who lived on her block, and who did not, helped in her effort to keep her and her family safe. Nettie’s tenuous tie to the neighborhood sociopolitical community was not one of belonging, but it did seem to signal an acceptance of Altgeld as a place she had intentionally made her home. Therefore, I placed her on the matrix as having a low sense of belonging to Altgeld Gardens and a neutral sense of political imagination.

As I mentioned in Chapter 2 within the PPS text matrix (Table 2.1), people with this placement generally understand the potential benefits of political, social, and civic engagement. However, respondents like Nettie typically did not engage in many visible or public sociopolitical activities; in fact, according to her interview, it was pretty rare. Nettie did not participate in sociopolitical activities at Altgeld Gardens or within the CHA. However, she voted regularly, and she volunteered at her child’s school. Notably, she supported disability advocacy organizations in Illinois. While Ceely seemed completely alienated, Nettie had other spaces and places outside of Altgeld Gardens where she engaged in public-spirited conversation. She valued her occasional political work within a sociopolitical community that focused on neurodivergent children living in Illinois. Her political imagination was neutral in the sense that she did not have a significant amount of cynicism regarding government, politics, or sociopolitical life more broadly conceived, but she also did not express a strong sense of efficacy in any of the aforementioned categories.

Figure 4.3Nettie’s Political Possible-Self

In Chapter 2, I argued that respondents can move up and down the belonging and the political imagination axes as a result of socio-political-civic education of some sort or another. Nettie’s case study clarifies how that can happen along the axis of political imagination. Ceely knew no one within her community and did not seem to have many relationships outside of Altgeld. As a result, she had no access to resources or people who could help her develop the sociopolitical skills needed to navigate even basic welfare or CHA bureaucracy. Nettie was further along on the political imagination axis because of the sociopolitical education she received while volunteering at her child’s public school. Working with the special education program led to volunteering at a state disability advocacy organization. She accompanied this organization to Springfield, Illinois, so she could help the organization protest at the state capital. Along the way she learned quite a bit about civic and political advocacy. As a result, Nettie had hope for the future. She imagined her future self as someone who could eventually grasp at some form of power within a community context and advocate for herself and others. Throughout the ethnographic data I collected at Altgeld Gardens, I found that respondents were able to move around the PPS matrix as a result of increased sociopolitical relationships or increased socio-political-civic education.

Frequently, respondents accessed socio-political-civic education by building new relationships, often within their local sociopolitical community. Nettie’s familiarity with her neighbors was a meaningful difference from Ceely’s lack thereof. Nettie seemed to think a passing familiarity with who lived in Altgeld, and who did not, kept her safe. Ultimately, she wanted to be able to recognize if a stranger or a teenager from elsewhere in the development was standing in front of her walk-up.

A: How would you describe your attitude towards life in Altgeld?

N: It’s OK. Sometimes, like, you know, it’s like sometimes I want to get a job and stuff, but it just makes it so easy. [Laughs.] It seems like it’s so easy to just sit around, but for the most part, I like it. I like it. Yeah. But I still want to get a full-time job, but right now is just not the time. I’ve got to take care of my son. He has special needs. He has autism. So I think right now this is what I need to be doing. I need to take care of my son. But for the most part, I have no complaints about living out here so far. . . .

A: So, what do you think keeps you from being more involved with people here at Altgeld?

N: It’s just me because I’m not a very social person. I just like peace and quiet. I don’t like no drama, no conflict. I don’t like all that gossiping stuff. So I just keep to myself. If I want to find out about anything that’s going on in the world, I look on the internet or I look on TV. But for the most part, I mostly keep to myself because I like peace and quiet in my household. Like, it’s mostly quiet. I don’t have a lot of people running in and out.

A: So nobody bothers you?

N: No. Yeah, so that’s the way I prefer it because at the end of the day I don’t want all that conflict and drama. So I try to stay away. I be social when I can, like say hello to my neighbors. I try to look out and see who’s living around me. But for the most part, shoot, I stay to myself. Yeah.

Nettie structured her entire life, her work, and even her education around her son. With consistent help from her parents, Nettie spent most of her days making sure her son had what he needed. However, living in Altgeld meant that in addition to the labor required as a single parent with a neurodivergent child, she also had to negotiate parenting in one of the most dangerous public housing developments in Chicago. As a result, whenever he wanted to play on a local playground or go outside for an activity, Nettie would take her son outside of Altgeld and Riverdale proper.^*

Moving to Altgeld with One Foot out the Door

Many respondents believed keeping their children safe meant keeping them separate and apart from the spatial realities of Altgeld Gardens. The children who were born in Altgeld and understood its social rules and logics were frequently described by the mothers who were newer to Altgeld as a violent mob lacking all reason.

A: When you tell other people you live in Altgeld, how do they respond?

N: For the most part, they’re like, OK, I’m kind of vague; I don’t tell them exactly where I live. I just say I live close to Riverdale, you know. But for the most part, if I say I live in Altgeld Gardens, it’s really no bad response. I just always tell them I live I in CHA, and I just tell them it’s a good neighborhood. Like how it used to be, like it used to be really a violent neighborhood. But now, it’s not that bad. So a lot of people, they’re more receptive, and they’re willing to come to my house. So for the most part it’s not that bad, like when I tell them where I live.

A: So, none of the violence or anything, you don’t experience any of that?

N: No, because for the most part, like me and my son, whenever we have free time, we go downtown; we go to museums and stuff. We try to get outside the neighborhood. Like, we really don’t . . . I go to the Laundromat or to the store, like the little local store at 131st and Ellis, sometimes.

A: The Rosebud or the liquor store?

N: Yeah, the liquor store and Rosebud. I go there sometimes. But for the most part, we mostly out the neighborhood when we have free time. We mostly go outside the neighborhood.

Rosebud was a local grocery store directly outside the Altgeld Gardens development. Rosebud was a controversial topic on the development. They were known among Altgeld residents for price gouging because they were one of the only grocery stores within walking distance. Strangely enough, Rosebud did not accept WIC or SNAP. This obviously created a problem for residents, given that many of them received some form of welfare entitlement. As a result, a month after my interview with Nettie, there was a multiday protest at the Rosebud grocery.³⁹ It is unclear if the protestor demands were met, but residents did meet with the owner of the Rosebud store. Since Nettie did not communicate with many people on the development, she often missed opportunities for clothing, toy, or food giveaways, as well as job opportunities and educational grants. While Nettie tried to keep her ears to the ground, her politics of invisibility were not without consequences.

A: Do you go to CHA meetings? What are they like? What do you think of them? What are the people like?

N: No, not yet.

A: How come?

N: A lot of times they give us short notice. They don’t really tell us about things that are going on. Like, if I do see anything, it’s mostly at the Laundromat on that little bulletin board. So it’s like really short notice. They tell us at the very last minute, so that’s the only reason why I don’t go.

A: Do you ever go to CAC, LAC, or commissioners’ board meetings? Why? Why not?

N: No, not yet, but I do want to go.

A: Has Altgeld changed since you first arrived?

N: No. But a lot of people that I talk to, like sometimes, they always say how bad it used to be. But I never had that problem. Sometimes in the Laundromat you hear gossip about shootings or different violence, but I never see that along this block. So for the most part I haven’t had any bad experience out here.

Every once in a while, I would be listening to one of the women in the study, and I knew immediately they were saying something untrue. This always left me in an uncomfortable position, but I was clear from the beginning of the project that I would never “confront” someone I interviewed about a “lie.” After hundreds of years of training scientists to believe that positivist methods are what differentiates science from fiction, academics in the social sciences have become so consumed with collecting “objective facts” that they often miss the truth.

In Interpreting Racial Politics in the United States, Robert Schmidt rightly points out that objectivity is a myth. We often miss what we are looking for by obsessing over tiny details. There were important contrasts between what I found beautiful and what was beautiful to the residents. Similarly, there were differences between what I knew as the truth and where their truth lay.⁴⁰ What differentiated Nettie, as someone with less alienation and less visionary qualities, is that she was not alienated across every area of her life. While she did separate herself from the political community of Altgeld Gardens, Nettie participated in sociopolitical communities in other Chicago neighborhoods.

A: What kind of activities do you participate in? Are you involved in any groups, volunteer work, or organizations?

N: Well, sometimes, if I have the free time, I go to this website called Volunteer Corp, and they do, like, different volunteer opportunities. Like, they help out at the Food Pantry Inc., or they help out at the park. I like that because you don’t have to commit, like, a certain amount of time. Whenever they have that’s available, you can always volunteer. So I like volunteering through Volunteer Corp. I help out at my son’s school, and that’s about it.

A: Do you vote or participate in any political activities?

N: Yes, I do vote on a regular basis when they have the voting. The last time I participated in something political was . . . it was a couple of months ago because we actually went down to Springfield, and I talked to my state representative . . . oh, I forgot his name . . . I forgot his name! [Laughing.] Oh, damn, if I had that book . . . so we actually went down to Springfield, and we talked to, I forgot who the state representative was, but we talked to a senator, and we were talking about having him do more for the disabled community. Because my son is a special needs child, so that’s really important to me. Yeah. So, I just was asking him can he do more for the disabled people. He was really receptive. He was a really nice person. And so was the state representative. He was also very nice because he was telling me that his mom was actually doing home health care. So he was really receptive. Both of them were very nice people.

A: Do you see yourself doing any more of that political advocacy work in the future?

N: Yeah, it was very interesting because they just want the facts. They don’t want nothing objective. You just got to state the facts. Like this is what happened on this visit; this is what happened on that visit. So I just liked stating the facts. You don’t have no feelings involved, just, like, state what happened on each visit. So I enjoyed the work, yeah.

Throughout the interview, Nettie emphasized the relationships she had with sociopolitical communities in other parts of the city.

A: I noticed the “We call the police” on your window. What made you put that up?

N: Because I had it. I went to a CAPS meeting in my old neighborhood, so they were giving out the “We call the police,” so I have one in my front window and back window, and I have one on my side window. I just put it up in there, you know. But yeah, I will call the police if something’s bothering me.

A: Have you had to do that since you’ve been here?

N: No. I just try to let stuff go, like I don’t take things personally. You get what you pay for. It’s like reduced rent. Everything’s, you have the lights, gas, water. So for the most part, it’s kids that run across, but I don’t let that get to me. But if somebody’s trying to get into my house, yes, I will call the police!

A: Have you been to a CAPS meeting out here?

N: No, I haven’t, but there is a police station, I think, what street is it on? It’s, like, on 131st Street. So there is a police station out here, and they’re actively involved. It’s a lot of police out here. You can really see the police presence. So I feel safe for the most part.

A reoccurring sentiment across respondents newer to Altgeld Gardens came up again in Nettie’s and Ceely’s interviews: “you get what you pay for,” “we pay reduced rent,” with a kind of shrug and sigh. The idea is that if you are not wealthy, you cannot expect to live in a safe neighborhood. Nettie did not have any dreams for her community. Ultimately, she simply hoped to one day afford a two-bedroom house for her and her son, as well as a car. But unlike a more visionary PPS, Nettie’s neutral PPS resulted in a sociopolitical imagination focused on survival within the spatial realities of Altgeld Gardens.

Less Visionary

As I noted when discussing Nettie’s approximate placement on the PPS matrix, an individual can move up, down, across, or even diagonally, depending on the increase or decrease of their belonging or political imagination. This becomes clearer via Shug’s case study. Shug was significantly more connected to the sociopolitical community within Altgeld Gardens than Ceely or Nettie. She prided herself on being a community resource for residents at Altgeld, in terms of information, as well as basic household items. I interviewed Shug a little over a month after the Connect shooting. At the time, she was thirty-nine years old. Shug moved to Altgeld Gardens in 2008, and while she was a bit less isolated than Ceely, she had more political imagination than Nettie. Shug’s family was originally from the South. When her mother was sixteen years old, Shug’s father (twenty-two years old at the time) moved them both to Chicago. Both lacked a formal education, and her father was illiterate for most of his life. But despite these challenges, Shug reported that her father maintained his own business for most of his life. Shug was the eighth of their nine children and proudly referred to herself as “the smart one” in her family. She dropped out of high school in the twelfth grade, but twenty years later she completed her GED. Shug was a proud woman; after describing her educational journey, she told me, “Yes, I ain’t never been a dummy.” It was clear from the beginning of the interview that she had a lot of experience when it came to finding her way through the world.

A Less Alienated Life in Altgeld

Shug grew up in Chicago, but as an adult she moved to North Carolina with her younger brother. Unfortunately, Shug was forced to leave North Carolina because her younger brother became addicted to crack cocaine and living with him was untenable. She had three daughters, who were thirty-one, twenty-six, and sixteen. Shug and her sixteen-year-old daughter packed up their things, came back to Chicago, and moved in with her middle daughter (the twenty-six-year-old) across the street from her mother. Unbeknownst to her, Shug’s oldest daughter put her on the CHA waiting list. Months later, Shug fell out with her mother, and once again she needed a new place to call home. Fortunately, six months after her application was originally submitted, CHA called her in for an interview. When her CHA application was approved in late 2008, Shug moved to Altgeld Gardens.

A: What is it like living in the Altgeld-Murray Homes? How would you describe your experience here?

S: Different. I would describe my experience as being different from what I’m used to. I participate a lot with the children, as you see. All the children love me ’cuz it’s like I’m the mother over here, because I see a lot of children are lost out of here. And I’m not used to that. I’m not used to children running the household and parents trying to be their children friend instead of parent. So I see so much chaos between a mother and daughter or mother and son out here, and it’s different to me. I describe this as being different.

A: What do you like about living in Altgeld?

S: The rent. I can afford it. I like the fact that I can afford the rent for me and my fifteen-year-old. She’ll be sixteen tomorrow. And, ah, I like the housing. It’s just the people. Yeah, I like the housing. It’s not the apartments; it’s the people.

Shug, like many respondents, centered the low rent as the reason she lived in Altgeld Gardens. Quite honestly, the rent seemed to be the only thing she liked about Altgeld. Despite that, Shug was more open to interacting with her neighbors within Altgeld than Nettie and Ceely were. She paid close attention to the comings and goings of the neighbors who lived in close proximity to her home. She was particularly invested in getting to know some of the children within the development and supporting them in small ways here and there. Despite that, Shug made it clear throughout our interview that she did not consider herself to be in a sociopolitical community with her neighbors. She described her attention to who-was-who and who-lived-where as being a strategy she engaged in to support her and her family’s survival.

Less Community and Fewer Politics

Shug’s disconnect from her neighbors and the Altgeld sociopolitical community writ large was also reflected in her politics and sociopolitical tools. She understood herself to be a reluctant, if not marginal, member of the Altgeld sociopolitical community.

A: Do you vote or participate in any political activities?

S: Obama in there. I feel like if you ain’t a part of it, you a problem to it. You need to go . . . people died for me to get that right. I would not ever miss a vote.

A: Do you think this makes a difference?

S: Yes, I do. Yes, I do! And people that didn’t vote, I don’t want to hear anything about the government, their Social Security check, the food stamps; you should have voted!

A: Right. What kind of skills and knowledge are needed to participate in politics?

S: Common sense. Common sense and to be aware, know what you hear, don’t believe everything you hear or see. Basically, common sense.

A: Do you have those skills and knowledge?

S: Of course, yes.

A: How do you define politics? When I say the word “politics,” what do you think of?

S: Hmm, votes. I’m just being honest.

I continued to interview the women of Altgeld, and along the way it became clear to me they had their own interpretations and understandings of politics and the political. As time went on, I started to recognize that I could not simply apply my understanding of the world to the sociopolitical context of the respondents in the study. After all, at the time of the interviews, I was a twenty-five-year-old Black girl who grew up in middle-class Detroit, with a meaningful class difference and a contrasting set of spatial realities. I was raised in a sociopolitical context that understood politics and the political in terms of elections, campaigns, grassroots organizing, and social movement organizing. But Shug associated the word “politics” with voting and other systems beyond her reach. As my research went on, I realized residents at Altgeld and I did not have the same definition of politics in mind when we discussed who they knew themselves to be and how they understood their sociopolitical community.

A: Do you think you could make a difference by participating in politics?

S: I don’t know politics. I’m going to vote for Democrat; that’s all I want to do.

A: Why is that?

S: It seem like they make more sense to me, and it’s not all about money, you know. Most Republicans want to hang somebody. . . . But I feel like they just, man, I don’t know how they got all the power. I really don’t. I don’t know why they got all the power.

A consistent theme throughout the interviews was inconsistency. Respondents would waiver on how they politically self-described throughout the interviews.⁴¹ Early on in our interview, Shug self-identified as someone who knew, recognized, understood, and was capable of political participation. But later in the interview, she told me, “I don’t know politics.” Likely, as the interview progressed and I asked additional questions regarding “traditional politics,” some respondents lost a bit of self-confidence about presenting themselves as politically knowledgeable and capable. It might have also been a result of having to answer more-detailed sociopolitical questions. But it could have been a consequence of questions some respondents found difficult to answer—in particular, the questions I raised about power and whether respondents thought of themselves as people with power in the context of their community and beyond.

A: Who do you believe has the most power in this society?

S: White people! I mean, our kids have to struggle . . . ] All these people want to put this on Obama. This problem was here before Obama was even born! And I don’t like it! Let me calm down. See, you getting me upset. ’Cuz there ain’t nothing but common sense. You see straight through that.

A: Do they have any power over your life?

S: No, I fin to become insensitive to it. I make sure they don’t have no power over me.

A: Do you have power in this society?

S: I seem to think so, especially in my neighborhood. ’Cuz as you see, they always come to me. I mean, I like to tell people the truth. I don’t like to lie. You tell one lie, you got to tell a million more; you got to remember the lie you told. Just keep it simple. Keep it simple. And that’s how I am. Through experience. I wasn’t always like that. I was just like them. That’s why I tell them you don’t have to experience it; I experienced it for you. Hear the message.

A: What does it mean to have power?

S: I don’t really know. I’ve never had that kind of power. I don’t even think I would want it. I just want everybody to treat each other like they want to be treated. You know, treat me with respect; I’ll give it back to you.

Throughout her interview, Shug continued to be consistently inconsistent.⁴² At the beginning of the questions about power, she described herself as a person who intentionally developed a sort of immunity to the structural forces of whiteness. She went on to describe herself as a person with some power and some influence within the Altgeld neighborhood she lived in. But at the very next question, Shug described herself as someone who “never had that kind of power.” Ultimately, I think Shug saw a significant difference between the power she exerted in the context of her residential community and the structural forces that exerted power over the Altgeld Gardens community.⁴³

A: Do people in government care about the people who live in Altgeld Gardens?

S: It depends on who we talking about. Because to me, this was one thing, when I first moved out here, I had no other choice. Like I say, I was staying with family members. So to me I had no other choice. I needed my own roof over my head for me and my child. But when I got out here, I’m like, they just threw these people away out here. It’s no stores. I’m used to stores on every corner, whether it’s liquor stores, clothing stores, grocery stores. And there’s nothing out here. You have to have a vehicle out here. They in the store, they call Up-Top, by where we pay rent at the CYC [Chicago Youth Center] building. It rains inside the store! Have you ever been in it?

A: The liquor store?

S: Yes! It rains inside that store! Drug dealers hang out there. I don’t even go down there! . . . That store is more popular than that one ’cuz it’s on the main street! So if I got robbed there, I’m damn sure ain’t going down there!

A: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you believe you have any influence over what the government does?

S: No. Only if I . . . I’m more like a recruiting type person. You know, I like to try to get people to vote, get involved, you know . . . do something. Because if you’re not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution, one of the two. Real simple. So, whether you’re going to help us . . . at least we did our part trying to make something! Like that store up there, the prices so damn high it don’t make no sense. But that’s got people trapped out here! I mean, four pounds of chicken, eight dollars, come on!

During the interview, I asked Shug if she thought the “government” cared about the people living within Altgeld Gardens. What is notable about her response is that right away she said, “It depends on who we talking about,” meaning there are multiple possible answers to that question, depending on which aspect of the government we are discussing. Shug went on to note, “When I got out here, I’m like, they just threw these people away out here. It’s no stores. . . . They in the store, they call Up-Top, by where we pay rent at the CYC building. It rains inside the store!” By “they,” Shug was referencing the public housing authority. Immediately she equated the “government” with the CHA, the bureaucracy the federal HUD agency entrusted with the management of public housing within the city of Chicago.

The CHA owned the real estate within the Altgeld Gardens and Phillip Murray Homes development, including the buildings that housed the Up-Top liquor store and the CYC building. For Shug, the mismanagement and benign neglect of the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood and buildings made evident the lack of care the government had for everyone who lived within Altgeld’s borders. Ultimately, Shug and Nettie said, “they just threw us away out here . . . [and] that’s got people trapped out here.” Shug saw her lease within Altgeld Gardens as evidence of her lack of sociopolitical power over the structural forces of the government vis-à-vis the CHA.

In 2011, Altgeld Gardens was located near the southern border of the city of Chicago, and there was only one bus to service the entire development. Respondents estimated their average trip to a big-box store, where they could get basic necessities like toiletries, food, and school supplies, at approximately two hours each way if they did not have access to a car. Given that Altgeld was built on top of land that formerly served as a dumping ground for toxic waste and that it was surrounded by former factories, as well as a landfill, it’s easy to understand why respondents like Shug and Nettie likened themselves to mere things the City of Chicago chose to throw away. As a result, some respondents compared Altgeld to an open-air prison that was difficult to escape. These spatial realities clarified how the choices made by government bureaucracies like the CHA played a large role in the sociopolitical development of every citizen who lived within Altgeld for any significant amount of time.

Having said that, it is important to remember that the spatial realities of their residential neighborhood were not the only meaningful sociopolitical force in the lives of Altgeld residents. Residents with a sense of connection to the people within the Altgeld sociopolitical community used the safe spaces they created to engage in public-spirited conversation, where they could express their political cynicism while maintaining a sense of hope about the future. Their sense of belonging allowed those respondents to maintain a sense of sociopolitical capacity as they moved through their daily lives. Throughout the interview, Shug was very focused on her capacity to nurture her sociopolitical network. She also considered electoral politics to be a form of politics she had the capacity to use. In other words, political cynicism did not constrain Shug’s capacity to understand her own sphere of influence and the power she wielded within it.

Less Visionary, More Violence

Throughout the interview, Shug spoke frequently about her relationships within the Altgeld Gardens sociopolitical community. Like Nettie, Shug found a lot of value in maintaining a distance from other residents within the development. However, while Nettie’s PPS featured alienation and isolation from the residential neighborhood she lived in, Shug did have some relationships within Altgeld.

A: [Who] are your friends? What kind of things do you talk about? Do you have friends in Altgeld?

S: I have associates. I don’t trust these people. I mean, any time your house is not in order, how do I trust you? If the mother’s not caring about the child, the child not caring about the mother, what the hell are you going to care for me for? And I’m not related to you. No, I don’t trust these people. Now, the one that live here with the kids, Whitley, I pretty much trust her. And Frankie, over any of them.

A: So what kind of stuff do you guys talk about?

S: I try to tell them when I was their age how I had nice cars, nice house, everything. And that they can get it and don’t let no man use them. You can do better by yourself by putting it somewhere where rent is affordable, so if a man is living with you and he want to beat on you, put him out! . . . That’s my motto, and I just say it as it is. . . .

A: What makes you happy?

S: Seeing smiles on kids’ faces. And they know I got a Freeze Pop or something for them every day. The kids . . . it’s the kids. Kids make me happy. The adults . . . I don’t care about the adults. I ain’t going to lie. It’s the children. I want to save the children.

A number of respondents were reluctant to call anyone a friend. Instead, many used the language of “acquaintances” or “associates” to communicate a certain amount of socioemotional distance. But despite initially framing her relationships as dynamics that were without emotional closeness, Shug also described her world as focused on the children and the younger adults in the community. Her survival strategy involved creating a wide net of relationships.

Shug’s PPS was less alienated than Ceely’s or Nettie’s and less politically imaginative within the visionary PPS domain. More specifically, Shug’s PPS fell within the “neutral PPS” domain in the bottom political imagination section of the text matrix (see Table 2.1). As has already been noted, Shug had few sociopolitical tools and a range of shallow interpersonal relationships tying her to the Altgeld community. As discussed on pages 138–142, Shug had a solid understanding of the wider sociopolitical world. While her political point of view might have been cynical, it was firmly grounded in her lived experience. Shug’s political imagination still had room to grow, as did her overall political knowledge.

Figure 4.4Shug’s Political Possible-Self

However, Shug’s lack of substantive political belonging meant she often went without a sense of safety and protection while she walked through her neighborhood in Altgeld Gardens. However, while Shug, Nettie, and Ceely all decided to protect themselves using varying levels of invisibility, Shug found value in finding means to make herself useful to residents in Altgeld. Over time, Shug developed a side hustle by becoming a resource of household items, as well as advice, for her neighbors.

A: So what don’t you like about the people [who live in Altgeld]?

S: I don’t like all the drinking because then, you know, that’s when a lot of drama, chaos, neighbors fighting . . . see, I’m a neighborly person. If you tell me you collect cans, I’ll make sure you get every can come through mine. I even pick them up on the streets, like collecting plastic tops. That’s why I had a plastic top off the dishwashing liquid. You know, I’m a neighborly person, and I don’t see too much of that out here.

A: That totally makes sense. What has been your experience interacting with the people who work here? (For example, the management company, CHA, government offices, social welfare offices, et cetera. . . .)

S: Oh, my case manager, Ms. Richards, she’s nice. You know, I can talk to her. . . . So now I start participating at the CYC, like I go tomorrow and do poetry. And it’s called Altgeld Talks, and I done got involved in that. I been to the last four, and I’m going to every one of them ’cuz I’m trying to make a change out here.

A: So what do they do at Altgeld Talks?

S: . . . Ask what they can do to better the place. And I was telling them they need to enforce the rules, you know, when you have a teenage child, especially a son that’s disrespecting your household as well as everyone else, starting fights. They just beat this boy with a golf club; they need to evict him. They need to enforce the rules, evict him! If a mother cannot maintain her child, don’t let them contaminate the whole neighborhood! Get rid of them! Give her a warning about it, and if she can’t put him in somewhere to get help and stop being in denial, “Oh, not my child,” put him out!

Shug’s relationships within the community, like all of our relationships, were complex. While she found value in mentoring children and young adults, she spoke frequently about “kids gone wild” throughout the development. This was a consistent narrative throughout the interviews I collected: women spoke about children and teenagers who had no adult supervision and were agents of chaos. Ultimately, it was hard to tell how much of their fear of children and teenagers was warranted. After all, there were only three respondents who reported violent encounters with preteens, teenagers, and children. The rest of the respondents who reported being robbed, including Shug herself, were robbed by adult men. The frequency of violence perpetrated by adult men is notable given that the majority of leaseholders in Altgeld Gardens were adult Black women.

S: Oh, no, they was robbing the cable man, robbing us!

A: So they broke into your home?

S: No, I got robbed up there by the store. The first year I moved out here. Then they called this the “blind side.” They robbed a cable man, the pizza man, the tenants.

A: Why did they call it the blind side?

S: Because, you know, we’re the new site, and everyone over there pretty much lived out here, and they remodeled, and they brought them back. People like us, you know, we never lived out here. You know, we from Indiana or West Side, you know, Naperville. So, they called this the blind side because the police station and all that is across this big field out here.

A: Oh, so they can’t see you.

S: Exactly. We have no help over here.

A: So you were walking from the store here . . .

S: Yes. And he had pulled a gun on me and cut my hand.

A: Oh, wow.

S: Yeah, ’cuz I threw my hand up, and he had a knife. I was like, you can have it; it’s not . . . me and my baby just moved out here. So he just pushed me on.

The spatial realities of Altgeld Gardens meant some blocks were considered safer than others. Respondents noted that the blocks with CHA bureaucratic buildings tended to be safer. The Altgeld block that held the library was situated toward the front of the development and seemed to have fewer violent encounters, given that there were few places to hide, a number of security cameras, and a higher police presence. However, the Altgeld Gardens and Phillip Murray Homes development was large and incredibly easy to become lost in. A large number of one-way streets, the identical edifices of walk-up apartments, and the circular block structure meant I spent many days completely disoriented when trying to find a new respondent’s apartment.

On the other hand, many of the development elders who grew up in Altgeld were placed near the back of the development. Given that there was nothing else in the back of the development besides athletic fields and parks, the elders were rarely bothered by gang clashes or robberies. At least one elder reported that she always left her doors and windows unlocked because the young people other respondents feared were incredibly protective of the seniors who dedicated their lives to the Altgeld community.

Shug, however, lived in what respondents called the “blind side.” The blind side was made up of a few blocks that could not be seen from the front of the development, the police station, or the CHA buildings. According to respondents, it also had the largest number of new residents, many of whom were former residents of demolished CHA high-rises from across the city. This meant some gang members from the West Side and North Side of Chicago were suddenly living in South Side gang territory, which created an uptick of violence. Ultimately, the rate of violence in Altgeld Gardens reached 200 percent higher than the rest of the city combined. The structures of the built environment, a privatized neoliberal management structure, and decades of benign neglect created spatial pocket environments that varied in the violence or safety they created for residents.⁴⁴

During our interview, Shug discussed violence and drug use as a pervasive force throughout the development. Shug was ardently clear; she would pack up and leave Altgeld the day her finances allowed it. Since leaving wasn’t possible during the time I was visiting the Altgeld community, part of what helped Shug stay safe was her wide sociopolitical network across the community.

A: Do you go to CHA meetings?

S: Yeah, those are the meetings they setting up now.

A: What do you think of them?

S: I pretty much think that it’s like they say one thing but do another. But now they say they getting on board. They fin to start enforcing these rules and things like that, ’cuz pretty much . . . then the lady [a CHA employee] explained it to me. She said, “I understand where you coming from, but we can’t just put them out.” It’s a procedure, you know; they have to take them to court. So they say they fin to start enforcing it. Because there ain’t no sense in putting the cameras up here and telling people what they can and cannot do and then when their children break into houses or beating somebody, or even shooting somebody! They’re still here! Get rid of them! You didn’t put them out; they put theyself out. They are the rules. And that’s how I feel about it.

A: Do you ever go to CAC, LAC, or commissioners board meetings?

S: Yeah, this is basically all the same, what I’m talking about, the meetings that we started going to. And I been recruiting this and telling them to get involved ’cuz it’s about trying to save the children.

A: And the people that organize and run those things, what are they like?

S: Well, I only met Ms. Khadijah James and Ms. Maxine Shaw, and the Muslim guys, yeah, they very nice. They’re very nice; they very nice. I haven’t seen my case manager at one, but Ms. Maxine Shaw and Ms. Khadijah James and them, they very nice. They always make me do poetry.

Shug’s network of support allowed her to keep tabs on what was going on within the Altgeld development. Going to the Central Advisory Council, LAC, and commissioners board meetings allowed her to keep tabs on what was happening within Altgeld and in the larger CHA. Through talking to her neighbors, CHA staff, and the young people she mentored, Shug sometimes received a heads-up before policy changes were made, or fights broke out, in the development. As abolitionist and Black feminist Mariame Kaba often says, “We keep us safe.” Shug understood that better than most. It was through her wide sociopolitical network that she was able to start performing her poetry as a form of activism. Shug was able to communicate her wider vision and the fullness of her political imagination via her art and poetry. Through this form of art making and performance, Shug found larger meaning in her life.

The Creativity of Political Imagination

Pleasure and intellect are key expressions of political imagination. Central to the push for structural change is the labor to imagine what change could look like. As several scholars within Black studies have shown, important political work has been done amid the aesthetics of artists, activists, and organizers.⁴⁵ When I use “aesthetics” as a political term, I am referencing what my respondents see as beautiful. In the article “Beyond Mysterium Tremendum,” Omar McRoberts explains this view of the aesthetic:

[The aesthetic approach to the study of religious experience] presumes that people who choose to practice religion find the more mundane aspects of that practice beautiful; it then sets out to understand experientially the stylistic aspects of religious experience.⁴⁶

Public housing residents who spend their time painting their walls, planting thorny roses, or mowing their lawn “find the more mundane aspects of that practice beautiful,” and in that beauty they find pleasure. However, I argue that aesthetic choices, and the circumstances facilitating those choices, are connected to residents’ self-perceived political power. As McRoberts notes, whether aesthetic choices are important or beautiful to me as a scholar is beyond the point.⁴⁷ The home is central to our lives. The women I interviewed found beauty, pleasure, and a personal sense of power in the daily mundane aspects of housekeeping many might otherwise dismiss or fail to take notice of.⁴⁸ Zenzele Isoke’s work beautifully articulates the vision embedded within the politics of homemaking:

Homemaking, as an affective form of resistance, involves more than just being attentive to and providing care to individuals. It also requires building an enduring affective relationship to the physical environment. It is the imaginative political work that transforms the built environment of the city into a home: a place of belonging, a place of remembrance, and a place of resistance. Homemaking, then encompasses black women’s efforts to build the will to resist the alienating and dehumanizing practices and ideologies that continue to ghettoize and minoritize black people.⁴⁹

Isoke’s research explains sociopolitical tools like the stylistic aspects of home and community upkeep. The respondents I interviewed placed a strong emphasis on creating spaces that were beautiful, not only for themselves but for their neighbors and loved ones. The desire to make their neighborhood beautiful motivated their ongoing effort to transform Altgeld Gardens into a home space capable of nurturing their sociopolitical community. By creating beauty and pleasure, my respondents found meaningful sociopolitical tools.

An ethnographer of religion can reasonably, if humbly, try to relate to believers who find aspects of ritual or doctrine beautiful or sublime, even though that ethnographer is not directly concerned with the transcendent realms to which those religious expressions ultimately refer. We can try to appreciate or get “it,” at least try to write about what “it” is, then speculate about the social significance of “its” appeal to believers.⁵⁰

Like McRoberts, as a participant observer of a community unlike my own, I can humbly relate to residents who find lawns, walls, kitchens, a clean room, an old fishbowl, or a new bed beautiful in a way I may not initially be concerned with.⁵¹ I can try to appreciate the meaning-making practice happening with the object, or set of objects, at the center of the individuals’ appreciation. By connecting to their appreciation, I can attempt to make the connection between the moment and its larger sociopolitical significance. The creation of a “home” is a project in creating beauty and pleasure, as well as sociopolitical community. It is an attempt on the part of the individual to connect to a place that would otherwise be empty, dull, and neglected. By turning attention to residents who created beauty and pleasure within their homes, the observer can witness the moment aesthetics become a material representation of self-imagined sociopolitical tools.

Visionary

The politics of the aesthetics surrounding each home within Altgeld Gardens plays a significant role in my analysis of the last respondent case I examine in this chapter. Throughout her interview, Sofia frequently discussed feeling as if the blocks throughout Altgeld Gardens were tumultuous and completely out of her control.⁵² However, consistent with Zenzele Isoke’s conceptualization of the politics of homemaking, Sofia’s home functioned as a refuge and a community resource.⁵³ She was a woman whose PPS fell in the domain of the visionary PPS. Sofia spent a number of years in school, as well as in the Altgeld Gardens community, and as a result she had a tremendous political imagination. Sofia knew a number of people within the Altgeld development, although interestingly, she indicated that she tried to keep herself at a distance from other Altgeld residents. Like Nettie, Sofia was among the first handful of respondents I interviewed at Altgeld in 2011. When I met Sofia, she was thirty-four years old and had been living in the Altgeld Gardens and Phillip Murray Homes off and on for most of her life. Most recently, she had moved back to Altgeld Gardens in 2009 after her daughter was born. In total, Sofia had three children, including a three-year-old daughter and a twelve-year-old son. She also had a fifteen-year-old daughter who had moved in with Sofia’s mother after running away from home. Sofia converted to the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 2004, and her faith was an important part of her life.^*54 Significantly, Sofia referenced her own religiosity, as well as the ostracization she experienced as a NOI Muslim living in Altgeld, at length throughout the interview. All things considered, the previous fifteen years or so had been hard on Sofia, and she struggled with depression regularly. To add insult to injury, like other respondents who spent their childhood living in the Altgeld development, Sofia described an intense nostalgia for the Altgeld of her past, a place she described as beautiful and community centered.

A: That totally makes sense. When you tell other people you live in Altgeld, how do they respond?

S: Whoo, girl! Yeah. Everyone, like, “That’s the worst project ever!” And it has gotten worse. Like I told a lot of people, back in the eighties it was beautiful. I loved where I lived. I never had a problem with living in Altgeld Gardens. But this now, these last couple of years, I’ve never seen so much madness in my life. And they going to hell faster than you can say boo. I hate it there. It’s not a place to raise your babies.

This nostalgia for the “old Altgeld” was a consistent sentiment among respondents who had been living in Altgeld for twenty or more years. Another resident used similar language to describe Altgeld’s previous incarnations. Ms. Barbara was seventy-seven years old when I interviewed her in 2012. Ms. Barbara moved to Altgeld Gardens with her mother when she was fourteen years old, before the Phillip Murray Homes had been built. When the Plan for Transformation policy started offering longtime residents a Section 8 waiver so they could rent market-rate apartments, Ms. Barbara took the offer.⁵⁵ She remained close to her lifelong friends who still lived in Altgeld. So much so, Ms. Barbara rented an apartment close by and asked to do our interview in the apartment of one of her Altgeld friends.

A: What was it like living in the Altgeld [Gardens and Phillip] Murray Homes? How would you describe your experience here?

B: Oh, it was beautiful when I was out here. My mother moved out here when I was fourteen? Yeah, I was fourteen, and it was gorgeous out here. Murray . . . wasn’t out here then. It was my oldest brother; he was in construction, and he helped build those Murray Homes. But when we first moved out here, it was just Altgeld.

A: OK, so it was a lot smaller then?

B: Same size that it is now except for the little bit they put up where the Murray Homes are. It hasn’t changed that much. It pushed some of the space, you know, some of the, like over there across the highway, there, that used to be all swamp. That’s the way it was before they put the Murray Homes up.⁵⁶

A: OK. Can you describe the community here?

B: Well, when I was coming up, it was beautiful. I can’t say too much about it now because I don’t live over here. I know people from over here, all that haven’t passed, but majority of my friends that I grew up with, they’ve passed on. So I can’t really say too much about anything. And I just moved from over here, let’s see, three years ago? Yeah, three years ago. I lived in, in fact I was raised in Block 2. And then from there when I was grown, married, I was in Block 3. Then I moved over, then they transferred when they started remodeling, rehabbing these apartments, they transferred me over to Block 8.

A: So what made you decide to leave?

B: Because they don’t have washing machines. See, I’m old, and I can’t be, they just put those Laundromats up about a year and a half ago. Ain’t even been two years. And I’m not going to come out of my house to go do laundry. So that’s the only thing I have against this project. Other than that, I’d be right out here now.

A: What is [your new] place like?

B: It’s nice. It’s quiet. It’s nice, but see, they furnish you the washer and dryer. I had my own washer and dryer. I had to get rid of it. Had to get rid of my ceiling fan. Housing just made you get rid of everything.

A: OK, so stuff you’d had your whole life?

B: Yeah. Stuff that’s hard to get a hold to. It’s no easy thing to work and accumulate washers and dryers and ceiling fans and this, that, and the other. Then you had to get rid of all this stuff.

Ms. Barbara moved out of Altgeld permanently after being moved around the development by CHA and then being asked to throw away a number of major appliances she had spent a lifetime saving up for. But it is important to note that, had Ms. Barbara not been on the wrong end of new policy changes via the Plan for Transformation, she would have spent the rest of her life at Altgeld. After all, she moved close by so she could remain close to her family and friends. This was a dynamic borne out in many of the Moving to Opportunity studies (the program that offered Section 8 waivers to public housing residents willing to give their public housing apartments back to CHA).⁵⁷ Instead of moving to the wealthier segregated neighborhoods Section 8 proponents encouraged, many public housing residents decided to stay in neighborhoods nearby, or at least very similar to, those of their old public housing development.⁵⁸ A lot of this was due to the desire to stay close to family and friendship networks.⁵⁹ But it was also due to the discrimination and prejudice many former CHA residents experienced when attempting to move to wealthier segregated neighborhoods.⁶⁰ Ms. Barbara’s case was not unique. Many former CHA residents desired to re-create their homes near the communities they had developed over the course of generations.

Octavia is another respondent who had pronounced nostalgia for the beauty of the Altgeld Gardens she grew up in. Octavia was a fifty-five-year-old woman who, at the time of our interview, had lived in Altgeld for forty-six years. She originally moved to Altgeld Gardens with her mother when she was a young girl.

A: What is it like living in the Altgeld-Murray Homes? How would you describe your experience here?

O: Well, when I first moved out here, it was, it was OK, because I was young, you know, because when I first moved out here I was like nine years old, and it was so beautiful when I first moved out here. I mean, the people was nice. You know, it’s still all right to me. You know, some people might say the neighborhood got rough, which it did because of the years that you didn’t go up out here. But since I been out here half my life, they don’t too much bother me. . . .

A: OK. Do people in government care about the people who live in Altgeld Gardens?

O: Me myself, I don’t think so because if they did, Altgeld wouldn’t be like it is.

A: In what way?

O: OK, I put it like this: OK, if they had any say-so about what’s going on in Altgeld, they would try to help. Because in Altgeld it’s a lot of homeless people out here. And these empty apartments, if they came . . . they haven’t really actually fixed up, they could put some homeless people in there. You know, ’cuz it’s not just all these homeless people don’t have skills. A lot of these homeless people got skills. They can put them to work and help them fix up some of these apartments. That way it won’t be so many abandoned apartments.

One thing that still strikes me whenever I go back through the interviews and field notes I collected during my time at Altgeld is the sheer range of language used to describe the same neighborhood. Within one interview, respondents like Sofia would tell me how beautiful Altgeld used to be, how much she used to love living there.⁶¹ Shortly thereafter, she would be telling me how deeply she hated Altgeld and how desperate she was to get out. Similar issues came up in my interviews with Octavia and Ms. Barbara. During our conversations, they both described how happy they were to move to Altgeld Gardens with their mothers forty, fifty years ago. Yet both had significant sadness about what Altgeld had become. Ms. Barbara ultimately decided she could no longer make her lifelong home work for her. In 2011, Octavia was still trying to make Altgeld work.

Respondents made clear connections between the government and the conditions they suffered through in Altgeld Gardens.⁶² This makes sense, given that public goods, like public housing, can shape and inform the set of politics and political identities residents feel are available to them. Michael Lipsky argued that government bureaucrats (whom he refers to as “street-level bureaucrats”) are often the first, and sometimes the only, meaningful interaction with the state over the course of an individual’s lifetime. He argued, “Citizens directly experience government through [street-level bureaucrats], and their actions are the policies provided by government in important respects.”⁶³ He goes on to say that while in an ideal world people would feel comfortable lobbying government bureaucracies for whatever they need, they are often socialized to adopt a set of behaviors more acceptable or palatable to street-level bureaucrats, like the individuals who work at the CHA. Unfortunately, as Lipsky points out, sometimes no matter what they do, marginalized communities fail in their attempts to receive support from the state. In Arresting Citizenship, Amy Lerman and Vesla Weaver argued that interactions with government institutions not only provide political socialization but also systematically constrain and alienate the politics of marginalized communities:

Recipients of these and other social benefits come to view their contacts with the state as “a microcosm of government,” generalizing their experience within the program to the broader nature and goals of the political system. Lessons learned through contact with social programs are lessons learned about government writ large, as contact with one part of government forms a “bridge” to perceptions of other aspects of the state. . . . Interactions with the state influence individuals’ perceptions of their own political standing, membership, and efficacy. Institutions allow us to observe how the state treats and responds to people “like us.”

I suggest that residents’ lifelong experience navigating public housing, public housing bureaucrats, and the infrastructure of the development itself shapes their politics.⁶⁴ For example, hypothetically, public housing residents could be pushed into a more radical extrasystemic politics because their experience within CHA teaches them that “following the rules,” being polite, and being nonviolent does not work when you are trying to get the state to fulfill your urgent material needs. The B.F.D.C. illustrates how, if used en masse, extrasystemic sociopolitical tools (like a rent strike) could create quite a bit of collective political power. Other residents could become completely politically and socially alienated (like Ceely) as a direct result of their experience living in public housing and decide they do not want to have anything to do with anyone, government included.

When I asked Octavia if she thought “people in government care about the people who live in Altgeld Gardens,” without skipping a beat she told me, emphatically, no. After all, for Octavia, if the government cared about the people living in Altgeld, the CHA would not have allowed the abandoned-building problem across the development to have become so bad. Furthermore, for all the talk throughout popular public housing and welfare policy about “putting people to work,” construction and maintenance jobs never seemed to go to people who were unhoused or living in public housing.⁶⁵ Respondents like Sofia also had tremendous cynicism about government. She was skeptical at best when considering whether the street-level bureaucrats working for CHA cared about Altgeld residents.⁶⁶

A: What has been your experience interacting with the people who work there? (For example, the management company, CHA, government offices, social welfare offices, caseworkers, et cetera.)

S: As far as management and maintenance, arrogant . . . so arrogant. So just, “I’m better than you; you’re nothing.” Everybody out there don’t want to be out there [living in public housing] for the rest of their lives, you know, so don’t treat me as though I [do]. . . . Treat me as though I have some form of education, which I do. We all hit a rough spot in life, and unfortunately, sometimes we got to digress before we can progress, you understand what I’m saying? . . . So, the management team . . . tend to just, like, degrade you at times. Like for instance, I wanted to beautify my block. . . . So I retilled my land, my yard, and I wanted grass seeds . . . so after a while they figured we’re not going to give her any more grass seed; she did have enough. I said, well, let me put up a fence. That way . . . I’m on a corner, so you know how corners are. So I said, let me put up a fence, that way I could be able to try, you know what I’m saying? I’m the only one trying. I get out; I clean up my neighborhood. They done fired almost all the maintenance workers, don’t want to hire anybody, so they have one guy, maybe two, but I think one guy manning all the blocks right now.

However, in spite of all her challenges, Sofia worked hard to make her home in Altgeld beautiful. As she mentioned above, Sofia was constantly fighting a losing battle to keep the exterior of her home attractive. She told me her row-house apartment was on the corner of her block. As a result, there was high traffic, and children, police, maintenance workers, and numerous others were constantly cutting across her lawn so they could arrive at their destination faster. CHA would not allow her to put up a fence around her lawn. So every time Sofia laid down grass seed, it was quickly kicked back up and rendered useless.

Sofia talked frequently about the pride she had as a former homeowner, and she expressed a sense of shame about her inability to keep her Altgeld lawn up to her standards. Although technically the lawn was not her responsibility, Sofia had all but given up hope in the maintenance staff hired by CHA.

S: Yes! [They] don’t want to hire anyone [CHA does not want to hire additional maintenance staff]. It’s just, it’s horrible. So I got to clean up my own yard, which I have no problem with that. . . . My issue is help me to help myself. Let me put up a fence! What’s the problem with me putting up a fence? I’m trying to beautify. They [CHA bureaucrats] was snooty, snotty. . . . So if you would have came to my home, you would have seen that the inside is beautiful, beautiful. Keep my [home] inside clean, immaculate, but the outside [of my home], it doesn’t reflect what I got going on in. And it’s depressing. It’s depressing. So I’m at the point of my life, I’m just ready to just go because I don’t see myself prospering there [Altgeld Gardens], because they make it hard for you to prosper there.

S: Very soon. I see myself getting out of Altgeld Gardens before I fall by the wayside or one of my children fall by the wayside.

S: When you got so much negativity and energy pulling you down and nothing lifting you up, you lose hope. You lose hope. I lost hope in me. I lost hope in me.

Throughout her interview, Sofia told several stories about the way CHA bureaucrats mistreated residents.⁶⁷ In this particular vignette, she was telling me about the way CHA bureaucrats looked down on her. Sofia frequently mentioned that CHA bureaucrats assumed that she had no education, that she was lazy and wanted to stay in public housing. It was clear Sofia had absorbed all the negative sentiments spread throughout the larger public sphere, and political culture, about Black women who live below the poverty line.⁶⁸ Being seen as someone who was “clean” and took care of her home was of the utmost importance to her. When she said, “So if you would have came to my home, you would have seen that the inside is beautiful, beautiful. Keep my [home] inside clean, immaculate, but the outside [of my home], it doesn’t reflect what I got going on,” Sofia was telling me that the exterior of her Altgeld row home did not reflect who she was. “It doesn’t reflect” what she actually had “going on.” Sofia and innumerable other residents did not make such an effort to clean up their blocks and beautify their homes simply for their own sake. It was also a means of reclaiming their own aesthetic power and fighting back against a CHA that insisted they live surrounded by abandoned buildings deteriorating by the day.⁶⁹

By creating beauty in their homes and providing resources for others, respondents like Sofia exerted a subversive political power, meant to heal their own heart and the hearts of others throughout their community.⁷⁰

A: What do you like to do for yourself?

S: Pray. Study. I like to close up and pray and study. That gives me so much peace. I love praying and studying. I found my peace in praying and studying. I don’t have any hobbies anymore. Like I say, my hobbies is doing for others. That’s my hobby, doing for others. What can I go out to do today to help somebody else? But as far as me, I get my blessings in praying and studying. That’s where I find peace. I like to sew, and I like to cook. I love to cook, to cook for others, feed others, cookies, homemade cakes, everything, just cook. When I feel depressed, I cook, you know, to feed people.

The profound sense of strength and imagination behind Sofia’s vision for herself, her family, and her community jumped out at me during our interview. Although she frequently spoke about the isolation and depression she had been plagued with since returning to her community, Sofia also frequently discussed her desire to be of service to the community she grew up in. While Altgeld often enraged her, it was also the neighborhood and political community her mother had raised her in. Shame was lurking beneath my conversations with Sofia and many other respondents. The stigma and disdain the respondents experienced as a result of being Black women, living in public housing, receiving welfare, and living below the poverty line was tremendous.⁷¹ Respondents frequently reported cruel and judgmental treatment.⁷² As in Shug’s interview, the fear of Black children born and raised in Altgeld Gardens rang throughout Sofia’s interview. As Susan J. Popkin noted, there is a particular stigma applied to Black children who grow up in Chicago public housing.⁷³

There was a strand of anti-Blackness weaving its way through Sofia’s interview, despite her Black nationalist roots. Although she was clear in her critique of CHA street-level bureaucrats (especially Black bureaucrats) who were consistent sources of class-based anti-Blackness, Sofia simultaneously directed similar class-based anti-Blackness and misogyny at the very community she prided herself on being a part of.

A: Use whatever language makes you feel most comfortable.

S: Well, we taught not to use “nigger,” but . . . I want, want, want, want, want, want. And because you ain’t going to give it to me, I’m going to go to somebody else and, yeah, I’m going to do it in your face, so what is what is; live with it. And it’s like my neighbor told me . . . my neighbor told me . . . she said she was getting $474 a month too. And that’s the most hustling girl I ever seen. She pregnant right now, so she can’t hustle as much as she want to. I’ve never seen the character of women . . . when a woman tell you I will kill, destroy, I don’t care what I got to do as long as I get a couple of extra more hundred dollars in my pocket, I’m going to do it. If I got to sleep with this man, this man, prime example . . . starting dating. I hadn’t dated in over two years when I moved back to Chicago. I was celibate for over two years, and I started dating, and the guy I started dating, he got in with God, of course, because that was the only way he could have got in. My neighbor, not knowing that my neighbor was talking to him too.

While Sofia admitted the impossibility of $474 per month covering all the bills, rent, food, clothing, and other expenses for a multiperson household, she still seemed to feel an immense sense of disdain for a number of people throughout her community. When she caught her ex-boyfriend sleeping with a young woman who lived next door, Sofia accused the woman of sex work, despite it being an honorable form of work, particularly when you consider the many structural barriers that prohibited Altgeld Garden residents from long-term employment.^*74

My point is simple. In short, people are complicated, as are their sociopolitical worldviews. While most if not all of the respondents I interviewed could clearly articulate the class-based anti-Blackness they frequently experienced as a result of living in Altgeld and receiving various forms of welfare, that did not stop many of them from holding their own anti-Black animus toward certain neighbors. Usually, respondent anti-Black hostility was directed at the people lacking housing who lived full-time in the abandoned buildings throughout Altgeld. But it was also occasionally directed at Altgeld residents with severe drug addictions who, for the time being, had successfully hidden their addictions from the CHA. Ultimately, the sheer force of anti-Blackness within, among, and directed at Black communities living in public housing is an ever-growing storm of harm.

A: What kind of activities do you participate in? Are you involved in any groups or organizations?

S: I used to. I was so, Frontrunner, PTA, LAC, this and that. All you could think of . . . community this and community that. Tutoring, mentoring. I lost the drive and the thrive to do anything in my community. I lost it.

A: Why did that happen?

S: When I tell you I’m so depressed right now . . . but I know God got me regardless. I know God got me. . . .

A: Do you think you ever will participate in any activities at Altgeld Gardens again?

S: I see myself leaving very soon. . . . Like I said, a bullet just came through my house Saturday night. I see myself moving very soon, and I’m making provisions to make that happen.

A: So that was just cross fire?

S: It was cross fire, but two more inches and just because of a cross fire, my son could have been dead. It came through his bedroom window. The shrapnel of the bullet wrapped in the same cover that he was in; the actual bullet ricocheted through my house into my daughter’s bedroom. It’s time to go.

A: That’s terrible. Yeah. Do you vote or participate in any political activities?

S: I do vote. Like I said, the last couple of years I haven’t did anything. I was actually thinking about running for mayor for Indiana. I was, when I tell you I was deep in the community, had meetings with the mayor, had cleanup meetings, doing tutoring, mentoring, PTA president, just doing so much, working doing grant writing because I grant write . . . when I came to Chicago I had a thrill, and I had a thrive, and I went full force, and it’s like this door shut, this door shut, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I just, you know, you lose that thrive.

It made sense that Sofia struggled with anxiety and depression. Despite her capacity for profound sociopolitical imagination, which birthed incredible visions for the future, she also dealt with shame, abandonment, and a pervasive sense of being surrounded by danger. Sofia’s home and her family carried meaning for her and over her life.⁷⁵ However, she was unable to protect her home and family from the violent spatial context of Altgeld.⁷⁶ A shooting broke out in front of Sofia’s home the night before our interview, and we rescheduled our interview as a result. While we were eventually able to reschedule our interview (we met at a workforce training program Sofia was participating in), the memory of the shooting stayed with her for weeks.

Notably, when I asked Sofia about her political participation, one of the initial things to come to her mind was the bullet from the drive-by shooting that ricocheted into her children’s bedrooms. It was clear to Sofia that, whatever power voting and other sociopolitical activities on the development were able to generate, it was not enough to protect her family from Altgeld’s violence.

As I mentioned earlier, Sofia’s PPS fell approximately on the far right end of the PPS matrix, within the visionary domain and just on the edge of the liberatory domain. Her placement there was in large part due to her immense sociopolitical imagination. Sofia described herself as immensely creative. She liked handcrafting, cooking, and providing advice to her Altgeld neighbors. She had a number of ideas on how the daily lived experience of residents at Altgeld could be changed. She described herself as adept at writing grants and navigating the complex bureaucracies wrapped around welfare and public housing resources. It made sense to place Sofia on the far end of the political imagination spectrum. As someone who grew up living within the Altgeld development, Sofia knew quite a few people, some of whom she remained in contact with. She was not placed squarely within the liberatory domain because she had been limiting her relationship to the wider Altgeld sociopolitical community for quite some time when I interviewed her. Years of negative relational experiences on the development had led her to believe her only chance at achieving her dreams was to leave Altgeld as soon as she could. Her feelings toward other Altgeld residents meant she rarely participated in community or sociopolitical activities held on the development. This resulted in a PPS that was highly efficacious and highly cynical.

I found that many respondents who either were alienated from the Altgeld Gardens sociopolitical community or had wide but shallow relationships throughout Altgeld Gardens tended to vacillate throughout the interview about the true extent of their sociopolitical capacity. But there was also a rage burning beneath everything else.

Figure 4.5Sofia’s Political Possible-Self

A: Do you have friends at Altgeld?

S: Not anymore. I mean, there’s people . . . I don’t have no friends. I have associates. I socialize. Even my best friend from when I was in high school, me and her don’t even get along, because I don’t do what she do anymore. . . . Once in a blue moon, my uncle will come by whatever. . . . But literally I’m out there by myself. I’m out there by myself. . . . But I don’t socialize. I stay to myself. I stay home most the time . . . I hate it there. I’ve never hated it there before. I used to love the Gardens. That’s all I knew.

S: But it’s time to go. I hate it there. Hate it.

There was a deep sense of hurt and betrayal throughout Sofia’s interview. While she felt that CHA had done the right thing by allowing her to come back to Altgeld, she was clear that the government had abandoned her and everyone like her. Regardless, after a lifetime in public housing, Sofia knew quite a bit about how to find leverage within and around government bureaucracies. Her knowledge and expertise likely grew out of the cynicism she felt after watching the organized government abandonment of her community.⁷⁷ Ultimately, the complexity of Sofia’s PPS went far beyond static definitions of alienation and efficacy. Her sociopolitical self-awareness was an ever-varying and malleable thing.

Conclusion

The sociopolitical tools communities access and use are not simple preferential choices.⁷⁸ Instead as Hanchard makes clear, the sociopolitical tools used by sociopolitical communities have everything to do with who they are, where they are, and what financial capital they have.⁷⁹

Resistance is often cast in terms of cultural practices, “weapons of the weak” (Scott, 1985), as if these were the sole modes of engagement with dominant social groups. Yet this response to oppression, I have argued, contains within it both the prospect of resistance as well as the logic of domination. How people resist, the “weapons” chosen, tell us as much about the nature and conditions of social and political struggle as specific acts of resistance themselves.⁸⁰

When communities or groups are physically dislocated, the state illustrates its capacity to isolate entire communities from their friends, family, and social supports.^*81 In this way, “geography [is] a racial-sexual terrain.”⁸² In other words, geography becomes the space in which domination is exerted over marginalized Black people. In turn, geographies create limitations on, as well as unique opportunities for, marginalized communities seeking to exert their sociopolitical power.⁸³

All political practitioners must be concerned with the sociodemographic features of the people who live within neighborhood sociopolitical communities, but we should also be concerned with the environmental, aesthetic, maintenance, and spatial realities of neighborhoods as well. To fully understand the sociopolitical identities of marginalized communities, scholars will need to clarify the ways that ecological, spatial, and geographic factors in turn shape the sociopolitical tools of residents.⁸⁴ In short, what neighborhoods look and feel like matters for democracy.⁸⁵

* “The Politics of Homemaking” is a theoretical concept developed by Zenzele Isoke (“Politics of Homemaking”). Isoke defines the politics of homemaking:

Homemaking, as an affective form of resistance, involves more than just being attentive to and providing care to individuals. It also requires building an enduring affective relationship to the physical environment. It is the imaginative political work that transforms the built environment of the city into a home: a place of belonging, a place of remembrance, and a place of resistance. Homemaking, then encompasses black women’s efforts to build the will to resist the alienating and dehumanizing practices and ideologies that continue to ghettoize and minoritize black people in Newark’s Central Ward. It involves making people—or bodies—care about space. (Isoke, “Politics of Homemaking,” 119)

* Cabrini Greene and Robert Taylor are two former CHA high-rise public housing projects. Both high-rises had reputations for violence throughout Chicago. Amidst tremendous controversy, they were demolished during the Plan for Transformation. Because of this forced spatial dislocation, CHA residents spoke frequently about gangs whose members were scattered across Chicago in the aftermath of the Plan for Transformation. In the early 2000s, a Chicago gang’s power was traditionally delineated along geographical boundaries. Gang members who formerly lived in Cabrini Greene and Robert Taylor (among migrants from other forced CHA dislocations at other CHA high-rise demolitions) were living far and wide across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Some respondents speculated that the recent murder at Altgeld Gardens was a result of a conflict between rival organizations trying to manage the spatial dislocation of their members across the “territories” of Chicago-based gangs (Goetz, New Deal Ruins).

* Cathy J. Cohen defines secondary marginalization as the oppression and exclusion experienced by people with multiple sites of marginalization. Specifically, when marginalized identity groups stigmatize more marginal group members. In other words, secondary marginalization is usually referring to the oppressive experiences of people with multiple sites of high-stigma identity. In this manuscript, I describe Black communities living below the poverty line as marginalized Black communities. Secondarily marginalized populations, like Black women living in Chicago public housing, are consistently targeted via government, bureaucratic, and residential violence because of the stigma attached to their intersecting sites of marginalization.

* For more (brief) details, please see page 118.

* When I use the phrase “mainstream Black counterpublic,” I am using Catherine R. Squires’s definition of the Black counterpublic. In “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” Squires argues that there are multiple Black public spheres: “I propose we speak of multiple Black publics. Thus, a Black public is an emergent collective composed of people who (a) engage in common discourses and negotiations of what it means to be Black, and (b) pursue particularly defined Black interests. This definition, although still wedded to the idea that there is a Black social group, does allow for heterogeneous Black publics to emerge, and also for people who do not identify as Black, but are concerned with similar issues, to be involved in a coalition with Black people” (Squires, 454). Squires goes on to define the “counterpublic” as the Black public “which can engage in debate with wider publics to test ideas and perhaps utilize traditional social movement tactics (boycotts, civil disobedience)” (Squires, 448). For the purposes of this book, the “mainstream Black counterpublic” refers to the Black middle-class counterpublic focused on respectability politics. As Frederick C. Harris and Cathy J. Cohen show in their work, this “mainstream Black counterpublic” dominates the Black American political agenda in the United States (F. Harris, “Rise of Respectability Politics”; Cohen, Boundaries of Blackness).

* Riverdale is the name of the closest neighborhood to Altgeld on Chicago’s South Side.

* In his book Islam and the Blackamerican, Sherman Jackson describes the NOI as a Black American “proto-Islamic” group created in the 1930s, whose founders “were not so much interpreting Islam as they were appropriating it” (Jackson, 43–47).

* See Chapter 4, the end of the subsection “Less Community and Fewer Politics.”

* Here I am referring to the CHA’s Plan for Transformation policy. This policy led to the demolition of most high-rise public housing buildings in Chicago. Some residents were moved to new neighborhoods, townships, or suburbs, during the Move to Opportunity CHA policy. This policy demolished public housing and moved some residents to the suburbs. For more information on the Plan for Transformation and the Move for Opportunity, please see Chapter 4.