Metal chairs are arranged tightly in four rows of six. The shades are pulled down, but not far enough to hide the grids covering the outside of the windows of Ogden Courts, a public housing development on the near west side. A stack of manila folders, a pad of yellow legal paper, and a phone sit on the table facing the chairs. A meeting is about to begin.
And the committee makes sure: The rules say members who opt for drugs or gangs are out. If members come to meetings with their baseball hats turned to one side or earrings in their ears–gangs use such symbols to establish turf–they are asked to change their dress or leave.
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Instead, the kids in the Youth Committee spend their time on one or more of the three activity groups they’ve organized. The Graffiti Busters are in charge of painting over graffitied walls. The VIP Patrol pick up garbage in the hallways and escort visitors to apartments–unless those people are drunk or drugged out. They also help elderly residents with shopping, carry their groceries and hold elevators for them, and keep an eye out for residents they know are sick. The Flower Team maintains a garden in front of the development. Pretty soon, says Bolden, the kids would rather clean up the halls or pick weeds out of the garden than be idle around the building.
“Now stand up and give your name and your address,” he says to 11-year-old Marge Brooks. “Calm down. Relax. Are you a Graffiti Buster? Are you going to be in the Youth Choir when it starts up?”
Led by one boy who said he wanted to be freed from the nightly shooting matches that go on outside his windows, members of the committee rose and as a group told the gang-bangers to leave. Bolden then told them they could stay if they kept quiet.
“The committee is making the kids come together to form groups instead of enemies,” says Karen Chandler, who has two kids in the committee.
Ogden Courts, like many developments, has its own resident management–the Ogden Courts Women’s Organization, an all-women’s group until this year–as well as its own tenant patrol. While they sometimes work with the adult groups, the kids in the VIP Youth Committee have their own responsibilities. Though the presence of the kid patrols probably discourages would-be perpetrators, Bolden says, preventing crime and breaking up fights are the adults’ jobs, not the kids’.
