The reason so many kids at the Robert Taylors went wrong, I guess, was because they was somehow dealing with fashion, with wanting fashion. If we’d stayed in school, we would have had more money to get more fashion later. But we didn’t learn that when we was growing up. We see them making money quicker with drugs, so why go to work? This is how I learned things. Why work for three weeks when you get that same amount in five or ten minutes just by selling drugs? So it looked good.
Or there was a group of girls who used to go hang out with the drug dealers. They’d trick off with them and get the cash and get their hair and nails done and an outfit. It’s not like standing on a corner for it and getting twenty or thirty dollars. It’s like for hundreds and thousands. It depends on how much the guy makes. You get your 5 or 10 percent. You wouldn’t be his regular woman; you just need some money, and you gotta look for. You get the money from the guys, get the nails and the hair done, nice little outfits and shoes. House looks a mess, no food, bills not paid, kids look a hot mess too. Terrible.
If I was in control, what I would do to change the life of our people in the ghetto is I wouldn’t give up on you. You see, that’s the problem. We give up too quick. First of all, I would have to think about it and map out what I would want to do. I would like to clean up our community. You can’t put no wall around the whole project, ’cause someone gonna find a way to get over it. Someone gonna leave half a motor and crawl over it. So I would start with the ones that want to do for themselves. And ask questions, ask about them, what they like, what they wanna do, how they wanna raise their kids, what kind of environment they want to live in. I’d go to the source to start making a solution. See what they talk about. See what they aiming for and what they do to set their goals, and see what they need to get to their goals.
I would start with the first group as the ones who know what they gonna do, and help them and see what kind of things I can do. There’s organizations now here. You can look in the phone book, in the papers. You can dial information; you can dial 311 and ask them about different things, so there’s a lot of connections I do have. There’s Section 8 if you don’t have no home. There’s a lot of things that you can do to help them. What I would do is put my connections that I have to help the ones who want to be helped, ’cause those who don’t wanna be helped, you’re just not gonna be able to reach them.
Our people who live in ghettos now all across the country, I know they’re not gonna live in a project all their life, ’cause they’re tearin’ them all down. This is going on right now. My building was torn down. I had just had my last child and come home from the hospital. They were tearin’ the building down; it was cold, frozen. There was ice on the door and I couldn’t open it. So they put me up right away in a hotel and told me they were gonna give us our emergency housing, which was Section 8.
I’m still leaning on Section 8 now, because some people said it’s the last three years. Well, I know it’s not three years ’cause I’ve had it four years now. That’s a big change right there, to live someplace that’s not a Robert Taylor in the ghetto. You can have a regular apartment for $800 a month rent, but I just pay a small portion ’cause Section 8 pays the majority of it. So it’s a lot of chances they are helping us with, and it’s on us to go get it.
There’s still drug dealers very subtly around the neighborhood I live in now, but no way like there was in the Robert Taylors. It’s more quiet. I live in the South Shore area. You don’t hear gunshots. You’re not scared and terrified to walk the neighborhood, walk the parks, Rainbow Beach. It’s better. You have some people who don’t want to leave the Robert Taylors; that’s why they’re still there. I understand 50 percent of them want to stay, because some of them have been there since the homes were first built in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s home to them; that’s all they know. But the other ones, like me, the 50 percent I was in, we left there; we got out of there.
I don’t miss the good old days of the Robert Taylors. I miss the cash, though. That’s the truth. I miss the cash. They had to clear all the drug dealers out of the area. I didn’t live a working life; I never had to work. That’s why I miss that cash. That’s fast cash; it’s hot cash from the drug dealer. But I hope all the guys who are still there don’t try getting it on now with the drugs. One of them is living in Statesville Prison, the father of one of my kids, and I don’t know how much time he has to do there.
The kids nowadays, they still look tough out there, but there’s not as many drugs, not like there used to be. Eventually, all the drug users are dead, or there’s someone don’t have no choice but to stop. Hip-hop don’t have anything to do with the drugs and alcohol. Them videos, them songs, probably do. I think they just put something together that makes them money. I watch the videos on BET, Channel 75. They have alcohol in the videos, and they have blunts, which is marijuana wrapped in cigar paper.
If you want to teach your kids different from you, why have that environment around them and your home first of all? That’s where a lot of kids learnt a lot of stuff from in the Robert Taylors. They looked up to the drug dealers as mentors ’cause their parents weren’t around. That was around 1993 and 1994; them was them days.
I can’t say 100 percent that my kids are gonna get through their teenage years without getting pregnant. But I can say 100 percent that they’re gonna finish school and they’re gonna make it. If my daughter came home pregnant, I wouldn’t say, okay, we’re gonna get an abortion. I feel that no matter how old they are, that’s their choice, ’cause it’s their body and their life. They can go and get an abortion for the first time and not walk back out of there alive. So I don’t take any chances.
I would just talk to my daughters and ask them how they feel about it; ask, do you want it? Whatever they would want with the pregnancy, I will go along with. I would be upset and hurt and mad, ’cause I know what I’ve been through. But I think it’ll be different, because they have me on their side now. I didn’t have my mom or no one. I had the streets to go to. I had my aunties, but they had their own life; they couldn’t be there 100 percent with me. And I had two younger sisters I was taking care of.
There’s so many apartments where I live now, and they’re beautiful, like the neighborhood, the neighbors, the stores. Part of it’s all black and then it’s mixed. It’s all cultures over here. There’s Jamaicans over here, there’s Indians; there’s a lot of different people. And it depends on us if we want to keep the neighborhood clean. It’s way, way different, and I like it more.
THE MASSENBERGS
Finding Their Way
Carolyn and Patrice Massenberg, mother and daughter, have lived in the Robert Taylor Homes since the 1970s. Their building is one of the few remaining high-rises in the development, once a beacon of hope for African Americans aspiring to a better life, and now a frequently cited symbol of despair.
Carolyn
I moved to the Robert Taylor Homes with my three children in the late 1970s. Like so many other black households, there was no male figure to speak of. My children were thrust into the middle of all this negative activity with no one to watch over them but me. I think they resented me a little for moving here. I wasn’t working at the time.
These buildings need to come down. They hold way too much sorrow for a lot of people, including myself. My oldest grandson was killed six years ago by a gunshot wound to the head. He was seventeen years old. Violence is everywhere, but it’s congested in the projects. There are people on top of one another. Drugs have turned a lot of good people I knew into someone you don’t even want in your house anymore, one of the reasons being they take items, money, and so on. They get so they don’t care about their children— whether they eat, have clothing, or just being there for them. These kids are left to raise themselves and are at the mercy of the situation. It’s unthinkable unless you’ve heard it before.
It’s not all people that use drugs. And a lot of people on drugs still manage to take care of home and family, hold a job, and lots more. I’m not condoning, just saying there are two sides to a coin.
Don’t get me wrong. Not the whole twenty-four years at the Robert Taylor Homes have been bad. We’ve had some good times, and I’ve met a lot of good people that I’ve come to love and respect, young and old. It’s not what you do all the time, but more so how you do it.
I know Robert Taylor is one place I won’t miss, with having to walk up the stairs all the time because of problem elevators, not to mention all the police brutality and corruption running amuck. Everybody knows it’s happening and no one does anything about it. After all, we’re just black folks living in the lower development projects. We deserve what we get, right?
Patrice
I see a change for the worse at the Robert Taylor Homes since the 1970s. When I was seven, people were worried, but they wasn’t worried as much about their child being in the playground, right in front of their own building, as they are today. Anything can happen. Right now somebody might be down there shooting—gangs shooting gangs, the police shooting gangs, gangs shooting police. It’s like the police and the gangs are at war here, and we’re caught in the cross fire.
I’ve kept my kids from getting involved in drugs and gangs by keeping them close to me. They may go downstairs, if I let them go outside. I tell them to come upstairs and check with me maybe every hour or every hour and a half. That way I know they’re not across 47th Street. I know they’re not down on 51st Street selling drugs and hanging with the wrong people.
Everybody has someone in their family who’s been tempted. If they say they haven’t, they’re lying. It’s not something that we hold our head high and be proud about, but it’s something that happens. It’s life. As a parent, you’ve got to be strong yourself, first of all, and second of all, the child has to be strong. You’ve got to be willing to be strong. It don’t make no difference how old they are. If they’re not willing to be strong, and if doing drugs is the life they’ve chosen for themselves, sometimes you’re not able to do anything but let them go. You’ve got to let them go.
Clark Clemons is an officer in the Cook County Jail. Most of the inmates, he told me, are either black or Hispanic. “A lot of these kids were brought up in poverty. Their dreams are a guy with a big car and a lot of gold hanging around his neck. That’s the only dream . . . If you’re a user and all of your violent history, all of your negative history, is coming from using drugs, then we ought to try to solve that drug problem and we might not have an inmate.”
I’ve been working here between thirteen and fifteen years. It’s difficult, but I know the violence in the street. I know how it is in the street, and I know how it is in jail. I could use that phrase “somebody has to do it.” But I still believe there’s hope. Working here has made me more conscious of the youth of today. It’s made me more conscious of what’s really going on. And me personally, it has taken me to a more spiritual sense of dealing with the youths. I know some of the circumstances that put some of these guys in here were really dreadful. I’m not saying that it’s an excuse, but their situation outside is not much better than the situation inside.
For example, a young lady that’s been raped at home feels she has nowhere to go and wants to run away. She runs away. A dope dealer says, I’ll take care of you, and provides her with clothes, food, and housing. And then before she realizes it, she’s in another world with people she thinks care for her but don’t. And when she’s asked, how did you deal with five years in the streets, she’ll say, my situation here is better than it was at home. And then you look at her situation and you say, there should have been somebody there between her and the streets. But her mother didn’t speak up, or her father molested her, or something like this happened, and what do you do? They run away. They start taking dope; they start being prostitutes or whatever happens. Life is dealing them a raw hand all the way down. So there’s a program here called My Sister’s Keeper. They get those battered mothers, those who have been on drugs or have been suffering from abuse, and they try to start them out fresh with a job and an apartment when they get out. The majority go back to the old neighborhood, back with the same friends, back under the same conditions. Those are the ones who’ll come back.
The percentage of the prisoners that we see again and again at the jail I would say is an embarrassing 40 to 60 percent, because of the environment they go back to. When they get out, it’s not the end; they’re not free. They’re handicapped to a certain degree by dealing with the same parents or going back to the same neighborhood or back to the same drug dealers. Finding a job is not easy when you have a background like five times in prison, on robbery or drug abuse. Who’s gonna hire you? They’re scared to hire them when they’re back out in the street. So they can’t get a job, and eventually, if there’s not a program there to help them get established all over again, they will end up doing the same thing they did that brought them to jail in the first place.
Most of the population in the jail is black and Hispanic. Well, you know that breakdown. If you started on an even keel, it would be great, but we know everybody’s not starting on an even keel. A lot of these kids were brought up in poverty. Their dreams are a guy with a big car and a lot of gold hanging around his neck. That’s the only dream. You can count the people who are living well and can afford to send their kids to college. Those that are on aid, they don’t have a shot.
Guys are in here for all sorts of things. Burglary to narcotics, murder. You name it. They’re all in here. All of them
seem
like nice guys, and there are some that are. One guy will tell you, I had three hundred tickets and fifty warrants and never answered one, never went to court. I was minding my own business and they stopped me for a traffic violation and found out I had all of these tickets. Now I’m in jail. Another will tell you, I was just standing on the corner minding my own business and they picked me up for no reason at all. I was in a car with a friend of mine; I had no idea he was in narcotics. And I’m arrested. You hear every story that you can imagine you’d hear: I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what I’m doing here, really. I don’t know why I’m here. You have no idea? No idea.
Sixty or 70 percent of the people who are here are guilty of something. It might not have been today or yesterday; they just got caught today or yesterday. They’ll say, well, yesterday I did that and I did this, but today I didn’t do nothing, and you got me. There ought to be a law. They’ll tell you that in a minute.
Prisoners on the new come in with those who are returning from court. The buses bring them in from morning court and they dump them here. And then we have an evening court that dumps them. They come in from buses and from the coaches, on the new, and down a tunnel into the jail. And then they’re put in holding cells. This is the scary part when a guy comes in on the new. The holding cell is a very unstable area, depending on the type of crime that’s committed on the outside and whether it’s their first time in. In an hour or two, all of the holding cells are full to the ground. These are people who just committed crimes yesterday, last night, night before last, in all the surrounding townships, and the buses bring them to Cook County. Some have seen a judge already; some haven’t. Some are sent to jail from the courthouses; some are brought off the street and got a date to meet the judge.
A new prisoner hears that noise in the holding cells; he hears that cursing; he hears guys who have been here before. It’s a little fearful coming into a place like this for the first time. And when you see it, it kind of hits you. You’re frightened to be here in the first place and are wonderin’, what’s gonna happen to me? The ones who haven’t been here before don’t know what to expect of the other inmates, and they hear stories before they get in jail.
You’ll hear from conversation those who have been here before, and you hear a different conversation of those who just came in on the new. Those who are returning are a little loud because some have received verdicts of guilty and they know they’re going downstate to prison. We put them on buses and ship them to the prisons Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Some might be convicted of violent crimes or murder and don’t know any way out, so their temperament might be real up. When you’ve been charged with everything, I’m frustrated, I’ve been sentenced to death, what are you gonna do? I don’t know how I’m gonna act. I don’t think I needed to be here. I think the sentences were unfair, you know. Sometimes people just are so frustrated they beat up each other.
We try to do everything we can to protect the inmates in here. We’re not gonna allow any murders to be committed here in the holding cells, that’s for sure. It’s a very unstable situation when the new are coming in and those who went to court are returning. We have rules and regulations to try to have them go through a process, to calm them down and give the feeling that we’re here to help them get processed and nothing else. They would rather be in prison than to be in this jail, because we stick to the rules and regulations. Once you settle down and make a jail your home and you meet other friends, you can communicate better with them and control certain actions. When you’re on the new and you don’t have that kind of awareness of who the other people are, everybody’s on their own.
Prisoners are taken from the holding cell and see one of the officers here; get processed in. They get fingerprinted. They get their picture taken and go into the computers. They get an ID number. They turn in personal property and are strip-searched for drugs, weapons, money. People rob each other, ’cause you’ve still got your money with you that you had on the outside. If you don’t let anybody know you’ve got it, you get by and you get a chance to turn in your property. If you are a flasher or they find out you have money, someone will try to steal it from you in jail. It’s not unusual. Start an argument and a fight and go in your pockets. That’s a common thing there that we have to break up, until the inmates’ property is checked and they feel a little bit safer at that point. We ask that those who have a large amount of money on them let us know when they come in here and we’ll try to separate them and take their property before anything can happen. But a lot of them want to hide it. And then someone else finds it.
We ask the prisoners for personal information—name, address, next of kin, and gang allegiance—and we try to do what we call an evaluation of what they did and how they did it. We don’t put an inmate here on a traffic violation with a murderer. We try to keep traffic violations classified, domestic violence classified, theft classified. The divisions are kind of like a county, a neighborhood. We classify prisoners by age, gender, and type of crime. When they process in the jail and we do a classification of them, we send them to divisions that will fit their crime. Maximum is where you get a good shot at what the prison is. A little more serious than minimum or medium. The people in maximum have done something more serious, like murder, rape, domestic. These are the prisoners you have to watch. You can’t let them socialize as much as the others ’cause they’re a little bit more violent. Minimum security is no murderers but maybe accidents. You kill a guy with your guy speeding. Maybe you kill a guy and you were drunk, but you wasn’t a violent person trying to rob him or that kind of stuff. There are all such a ways that people get killed.
Prisoners on the new or coming back see the medical department, get an X ray for TB and get checked for HIV, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Some come in with their own ailments. They get more interviews if they need special placement. Whatever you got here, you’re treated every day for that ailment as long as you’re here. And we try not to put prisoners that are HIV positive with other prisoners.
Like anywhere else, sexual contact can happen. We are glad to say it’s down to a minimum here in the jail, but you’re still in a jail, three people in a room together overnight, and you don’t know everything that’s happening. That’s for sure. And the way they do things in jail is different from in the street. You either pressure or threaten. And if you are threatened, what can you do? If someone makes a complaint about another prisoner, you go through the necessary procedures to see who, what, when, and how, and that person may be charged with another crime while he’s in jail. He may be separated from that person, put in a hold in a different part of the jail. You just go through the procedures, investigate just like you would do on the outside. And if he’s found guilty, you charge him with sexual harassment.
Not many prisoners bring sexual harassment charges, ’cause there would be consequences. If a person wanted to do something to you and you were bunking with him every day, really there’s nothing to prevent him from doing it. You can respond after it’s done, but you don’t know people’s thoughts, when they’re gonna take action on something. It’ll either happen and you calm it down or separate them, or you lock them up in different parts of the jail, but you can’t prevent everything from happening in a jail. Sooner or later everything happens. Nothing you can do about it. That’s life.
Ones who have their court dates when they come in here have been given a mittimus paper with their name and charges and the bond amount. It tells us to hold the prisoner until his next court date and see that he shows up in court in front of the judge and nothing should happen to him while he’s here. At that time, his case will be discussed and he will be presented with a lawyer. If he doesn’t have one, then one will be appointed to him, and he’ll have a chance to see what the charges are against him and what his lawyer decides to do at that time. If the lawyer decides to continue the case till he reads up more on the charges, the prisoner is brought back here and that court date will continue. Depending on the extent of the case and evidence, it could be continued for two, three, four, five years. And he’d be here the whole time. The longer it’s continued and he’s not sentenced, he’ll be here. The average stay in the jail is normally up to two years. But we’re in a difficult time now where cases in the courts are slowed down to a minimum, and we’ve had prisoners stay here as long as eight years. We’ve had some go to court and their time was considered served in the jail before they went to the prison. Case continued, case continued, new lawyer, new evidence, whatever it is to continue your case through the years and keep them here. And more than 250 a day are arriving while he’s here.
You wonder what kind of system will hold somebody for four or five years before they sentence him, but then you look at the cases. Look at the reason they were continued. They have night court, holiday court, to try to take the weight, try to expedite the cases. It works in some cases; in some cases it doesn’t. In the meantime, we’re still taking in a hundred thousand a year on the new. So you can see how quick the jail can get overcrowded.
Right now, due to the overcrowding, there’s three to a cell. It’s only supposed to be two, but there’s three in there now. There’s not much room. So it is a breeze to get them to leave the cells at night and stretch their legs. The three people are confined in a cell for fifteen hours a day. They’re unsupervised in the sense that no one’s watching them, but we make tours around the cell doors and we look through the holes to make sure everybody’s okay and talking all right. It’s a steady monitoring of them when they’re in the cell. The officers walk around every cell, looking in, asking questions. If anyone’s sleeping and can’t be woke up, then the officers go in and shake them, make sure they’re all right, and then they go around.
You can go from one to the other and you can tell by some rooms, by the pinups on the walls, they’re not interested in the spiritual side. Whatever helps them to pass the day there, I guess. The library tries to provide them with books and magazines, and they’re not supposed to cut the pages out but they do. We clean house every so often. If the pinups were in a wing where they were breaking the rules, or where somebody was sexually abused or something like that, none of it would exist. But if the guys are handling themselves in a normal way and there are pinup pictures all around, we might as well cut them some slack.