Gang member hopes Obama’s message of change can be his own
By Amy Tennery
To K.B., a 22-year-old member of the Bloods in Harlem, every marijuana sale presents an opportunity to get out the vote. While swapping money for drugs, K.B. espouses the virtues of Barack Obama.
K.B. is one of the more unusual volunteers in Obama’s efforts to win the White House. He has been in and out of prison over the last seven years, retaining a brand of street credibility few political activists enjoy. As a parolee, K.B. is ineligible to vote, but he campaigns with a veteran voter’s zeal, attaching himself to one of the only positive role models he’s ever had. He argues his background grants him access to a niche community: younger Harlem residents who don’t trust the political process. Like Obama, K.B. campaigns for change — change in his own life.
Until a month ago, K.B. had little interest in national politics. But when he met Chet Whye, president of Harlem 4 Obama, a political action group unaffiliated with the candidate’s official campaign, K.B. found home. Standing on the sidewalk, the two began a conversation about politics and how K.B. could become a part of the campaign, they both said.
Instantly, Whye — a political titan in Harlem — was drawn to K.B.’s charisma and enthusiasm. K.B. reminded him of the young Bloods and Crips he counseled while living in Denver — kids who, though on the wrong track, were essentially good, Whye said. Despite K.B.’s troubled past, Whye introduced him to other members of his group — all the while unaware that K.B. was making money the only way he says he can: selling drugs. Even more troublesome, K.B. was promoting Obama at the same time.
Once inside Whye’s organization, K.B. tackled complicated data spreadsheets and learned the ins-and-outs of voter registration laws. He canvassed residents that other volunteers avoided or couldn’t reach. His efforts earned him real respect, Whye said.
“For him, everything about this campaign is different,” Whye said. “When he went into the Obama campaign, he was being treated differently. People didn’t talk down to him; people didn’t talk around him.”
At the vice presidential debate party at Harlem 4 Obama headquarters, Whye wrapped his arm around K.B.’s shoulder and beamed a father’s smile. K.B. discussed debate strategy, and said that although he disliked Sarah Palin’s politics, he felt she deserved respect, pointing out that all women do. He said he’d face down any gang member hurting a woman. His smile was warm, and when this reporter asked him for an interview, he looked at his shoes and chuckled quietly.
In a neighborhood suspicious of political agendas, Whye said born-and-bred volunteers like K.B. are essential to success.
“There is no cavalry coming over the hill for us,” Whye said. “When you have a community mission everybody can speak, everybody can share. We can walk down the street and say hello to each other because we work together.”
K.B. and Whye believe that too many volunteers speak a vernacular that can be insulting to a young Harlem kid. Other volunteers use too broad a vocabulary, they say, but K.B. hits the perfect compromise — talking to Harlem kids without talking down to them.
“He’s very effective with a contingency of young black men who think that it doesn’t matter to support a candidate because the people they like usually lose,” Whye adds.
Growing up in Harlem, K.B. said the impulse to join a gang — to have a group on which he could rely — was strong. By the time he was 15, K.B. had joined the Bloods. That same year, he was convicted of shooting a man and he spent three years in prison. Just months after his release he was incarcerated again, he said, after police caught him with a firearm during vocational school spring break.
K.B. enrolled in nursing school, he said. He dreamed of becoming rich and successful, of having a kid and settling down. But his second stint in prison dashed all that. With each incarceration K.B. started back at the bottom. Employers, he found, didn’t want to hire a kid with a criminal record. A new career and life — the elusive change he sought — were increasingly difficult to attain. And so he took the one well-paying job that was easily available to him: selling marijuana on the street.
Despite his mild-mannered speech, K.B. admits he’s easily riled. He got into a scuffle during the African American Day Parade in September and spent the day in jail. The last birthday he celebrated outside of prison was when he was 15.
K.B. sees Harlem 4 Obama as both a political movement and a safe haven from his demons.
“It’s not easy for me to do right,” K.B. said. “The company I keep — and I hate clichés, but it’s true — [it] determines my longevity.”
K.B. says Obama embodies all the decisions that K.B. wishes he himself had made.
“The Bloods, they try to justify everything they do,” K.B. said almost wistfully, about the company he’s kept for the last seven years and still isn’t ready to quit. “They quote all these rules that they don’t abide by when times get rough. They’re all ‘brotherly love.’ But at the end of the day, it’s love between your brothers.”
He parses Obama’s mass appeal with veteran skill.
“With market symbols — you know how you think of certain things when you see McDonald’s?” K.B. said. “I know to think good things when I see Obama.”
And so, he spends hours a week strolling along Harlem’s avenues, preaching Obama’s message of change and urging Harlem’s youth – including its gang members — to follow Obama and do right.
He mingles campaigning with dealing, he told this reporter, using his access as a trusted member of the street to influence others’ opinions.
On Wednesday when this reporter asked Whye about K.B.’s drug sales, the mentor exploded in rage.
“I did not know!” Whye yelled. “We will not tolerate that here. We will not tolerate any destructive activity.”
Whye said he plans to fire his protégé when he next sees him. Both he and K.B. have refused to discuss what happened next.
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