By Tori Marlan
With her 11-month-old son propped on her hip, a TV news camera illuminating her face, and the chorus of veteran activists behind her, Byrd, a 24-year-old computer-science student who’d felt intimidated by Pirodan when she previously confronted him, wonders if perhaps the tables have turned. The show of force is stronger than she’d expected: blacks, whites, Latinos, a silver-haired woman aided by a walker, a smattering of children, and a man in a business suit are among those rallying to her cause.
Pirodan stops fighting to be heard. He speaks directly into reporters’ microphones, accusing Byrd and Anderson of living like pigs and stealing from the apartment. The police arrive within minutes and usher out the protesters, who form a circular picket on the sidewalk and shine their flashlights through the shop’s front window for the next half hour. “Where, oh where, has my security deposit gone? Oh where, oh where could it be?”
Until recently, Byrd’s activism had pretty much consisted of once helping to raise funds for abortion clinics in Louisiana. She says she’s always been outspoken, but she never imagined herself orchestrating a noisy grassroots effort to right a wrong. But, she says, “when something terrible happens to your family you turn into an activist pretty quickly.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Byrd and Anderson’s troubles began in April 1996, when Pirodan bought the nine-unit building at 4456 N. Sawyer where they lived with their newborn son, Quinn. In the previous seven months Byrd and Anderson had become strongly attached to their apartment. “That’s where I spent my pregnancy,” says Byrd. “I nested there. We had clouds painted on the nursery ceiling. I had such feelings about that apartment.” Planning to live there until they saved up for a house, they patched holes in the walls, painted each room, installed a showerhead, and did other work to fix up the place. Anderson, now 26, had worked in construction on and off for six years before he started selling steel for a living.
Byrd started talking with her neighbors, and she contacted tenants’ organizations, asking about her rights. Someone referred her to John Farrell, an attorney with the firm Freeborn & Peters, which sometimes provides pro bono advice to tenants. In the months that followed Byrd consulted Farrell nearly every week. He sent her sample letters, which the couple eventually used as a guide when lodging a complaint or requesting maintenance. He also taught her to keep meticulous records and to send letters to Pirodan by FedEx and certified mail. “It was a long and arduous education,” says Anderson.
Later that month the couple sat down with Pirodan to negotiate a new lease, which was to begin in September. They pointed out things that concerned them, then held on to the lease, figuring they’d add a few clauses requiring Pirodan to fix the problems. But a week or so later, Byrd recalls, “I’m standing in my kitchen with my three-month-old baby, with water dripping off the lightbulb and the electricity shorting out. And I’m scared to death. So I called the city.”
