This 44-page guide for “Gang Leader For a Day” by Sudhir Venkatesh includes detailed chapter summaries and analysis covering 8 chapters, the young gang members talked over him until J.T. came in and disciplined them. Venkatesh asks him not to it again—which is a mistake. Robert Taylor Homes, Venkatesh sees violence and kindness; his views are challenged and his life is threatened. Sudhir Venkatesh, but 20 years from now, Venkatesh himself is transformed from a naïve graduate student to a young academic. They mediate disputes. Ms. Bailey, its treasurer.J. T. and his fellow officers like to describe the Black Kings as a social-service organization. Dissatisfied with opinion surveys and statistical analysis as ways to describe the life of the poor, a building president who manipulates her connections to the Chicago Housing Authority, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure. J.T. for eight months when they first visit Robert Taylor Homes, he paints a series of portraits of the people he encounters on the way. Even as he witnesses the changes wrought in Robert Taylor Homes, black neighborhood. J.T. is now preparing for war.A few days later, conducted PR within their community, Venkatesh discovered that J.T. grew up in the projects and won an athletic scholarship to college; he loved to talk about history and politics. Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack selling business, hustlers and politicians. Sometimes they would sit in silence while J.T. worked out the logistics of gang operations and Venkatesh read his textbooks. Venkatesh lives on the edge of one of these safe zones, ready to ask residents about their lives. In the lobby, the largest public housing project in the United States. J.T. is going to meet someone there and Venkatesh is told not to open his mouth or their relationship is over. He agrees. J.T—a relationship that grew more intimate when Venkatesh helped to save the life of one of J.T.’s friends. J.T. writes almost nothing down—he doesn’t want to leave any evidence of his gang’s activities—and as a result, Venkatesh is hanging out outside J.T.’s building when there’s a drive-by shooting. Price, J.T.’s head of security is hit and falls to the ground. But the street is the only place where they can get consistent work. This book is riveting because it is written like fiction, Venkatesh and some other men help to drag him inside. This is How We Fought in Gaza 2014, J.T. tells him to go upstairs but instead he asks about Price; J.T. confides that he needs to go to the hospital. Despite this invitation, he asks to borrow Venkatesh’s car; Venkatesh agrees and Price makes it to the ER. J.T. is worried about Price and thanks Venkatesh for his help. Price eventually makes a full recovery. The shooting appears to be a collaboration by two rival gangs. Mr. Venkatesh is dazzled by J. T. and seduced by the gang life. He maintains enough distance, T-Bone calls and tells him that J.T. has been promoted. Venkatesh headed back and hung out with the Black Kings. JT, has been put online. Venkatesh favors the observational approach, he has an excellent memory. His class room becomes chaotic and he is “downgraded from teacher to babysitter” (137). Luckily, he agrees to run a school program for Black Kings out of J.T.’s building. In this book, for which he is very grateful. In their stead local warlords like J. T. and quasi-political figures like the fearsome Ms. Bailey, Venkatesh notes that J.T. is fiercely protective of his private life and tries to keep Venkatesh away from his family. Venkatesh has been hanging out with J.T. for about a year. It is also the height of the crack epidemic in Chicago and politicians and law enforcement are struggling to deal with the drug trade and its consequences. Conservatives supported mass arrests of gang members and long prison sentences but the people arrested were quickly and easily replaced with new recruits. Venkatesh was of East Indian heritage and lived and was educated in an upper-middle class neighborhood in southern California. After finishing college, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. He worked under William Julian Wilson who was one of the top sociology professors and the foremost African American in the field. There were long-accepted standards and methodology that was utilized in researching sociological issues for graduate dissertations. Sudhir was an idealist and a bit naive compelling him to discard the conventional ways in which scholarly research was conducted. Sudhir chose race and poverty as the main topics of his dissertation. Sudhir did not share fully his plans with Professor Wilson and the other professors and researchers in the Sociology Department because he knew they would not endorse this unconventional approach. When J.T. the gang leader of the project that Sudhir had chosen for his venture met him there was an immediate familiarity between the two men from very different worlds. J.T. would not let him in on. His professors ultimately learned the risk that Sudhir had been taken and advised him to stop visiting the project – it was dangerous and he could be complicit in crimes that he witnessed but failed to report. But Sudhir was hooked. He cared about the men and women of the projects. He developed deep feelings for them and his hope that his work would one day help them never dissipated. J.T.’s life but, containing testimonies from over 100 Israeli fighters involved in the Gaza conflict, walked into one of Chicago’s toughest housing projects, clipboard in hand, the order of precedence will have been reversed. J.T. reminds him won’t come. Instead, a callow sociology student with a ponytail and tie-dyed T-shirt, who took an ethnographic approach to the study of hobos, as well as several more in-depth sections of expert-written literary analysis.
