Last week, Beatrice Turner had chest pains. She feared the worst, so she did what she always does when she has a problem. She called the mayor's office.
"I said, 'If the good Lord give me strength to get through these chest pains, I will be at the next City Council meeting.'" About an hour later, she got a callback from Mayor Oscar Goodman, wanting to know if she needed anything. Could he send someone over to take her to the hospital? No, she told him. She'll take care of it—she always does.
Loved or hated, Turner has been enough of a fixture in council chambers that her presence is missed. She recounts the situation two days later at her West Las Vegas home, where she's just awakened from a nap. This powerful resident native, who sits somewhere on the thin line between activist and gadfly, looks particularly vulnerable this morning, with her hair sticking up and a crease on her face from the pillow she's just risen from. She's rubbing her eyes, explaining that she feels better, but she's still not quite back. At the moment, her voice has less boom than local government officials have come to recognize, and the milky smooth words that meld into a singsong when she gets emotional come out enervated and gruff today. But she's on the mend—there's too much left to do for this 44-year-old to roll over.
Beatrice (pronounced Be-A-tris) Turner wavers between vicious guard dog of the common people and overzealous hurricane whose main tactic lies in loudly embarrassing public officials. Whether it's the city council in Las Vegas or North Las Vegas, the county commission, school board meetings or at the Las Vegas Housing Authority, where almost two years ago she was appointed housing commissioner. She'll cuss at anyone, wagging her finger and shaking her head while running her mouth—and the phrase "inside voice" bears no meaning to this short and brawny lioness.
She's a big fan of props. When she ran for school board in 2000, she handed a brown paper bag to Superintendent Carlos Garcia and told him to use it to store the head of Linda Young, the district's director of multicultural/community outreach programs, whom Turner accused of offering to sell her a copy of the state's high-school exit exam for $400. She's also been known to wag a bag of kibble at council members when dissatisfied with their decisions. ("My grandmama had a saying: 'You go down the street and a dog bites you, that's the dog's fault. But if you go back down the street and the dog bites you again, it's your fault.' So here's some Kibbles-n-Bits for the dog that's going to bite ya'll again.") She presented a wreath to the mayor, blaming him for the death of a public-housing resident. And at last month's housing authority meeting, when the topic turned to race—and in the presence of Beatrice, it often does—she announced that she must have come to the meeting wearing the wrong clothes because she forgot to bring her white sheet. The comment was inspired after the board scrutinized two African-American contractors one year into their two-year contract, while dozens of contractors who weren't African American made it through the consent agenda with no discussion.
"I appreciate citizens like Beatrice who are concerned about what's happening in their neighborhood and try to protect their neighborhood," Goodman says. "And she comes down and makes her position very, very clear as to how she perceives things are either happening or not happening in the historic west side. Sometimes I'm the subject of her wrath, but I always chuckle after she yells at me and criticizes the way I dress on a particular day and wants to know why my wife lets me out of the house looking the way I do sometimes. I get a kick out her."
Her intentions are nothing but pure. She wants good representation in the neighborhood she grew up in, and she wants Ward Five to have the same amenities as Summerlin. But her method can be questionable. It all begins with the head swivel. It starts straight, and you can hear the mm-hmmm sound of upset growing in her throat. Head cocks to the right, quickly. Remains posed there as her voice grows louder and her eyes beam strong, unblinking. Then her head swivels further to the right, then to the left, then back to the center. About this time the finger starts wagging and the face slopes more slowly to the left, eyes never leaving their prey. The lips purse, arms cross over the chest, and she's silent. A rarity for Turner.
Nothing was silent about her three weeks ago, when she walked through the housing authority building toward the office of Deputy Executive Director Richard Martinez. She was so busy smiling at a woman who greeted her—"Hi, Bea," the woman said, before catching herself. "I mean, Commissioner Turner"—that she shoved right through a door clearly marked "DO NOT OPEN THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR." Sweetly returning the greeting, Beatrice stormed though the wrong door, focusing on everything but the pathway she's taking toward her destination. It's the same attitude she brings to every meeting and every confrontation.
She was here to fight what she thinks is the good fight. But she's not always the most skilled at choosing her battles. This time, her focus was a Section 8 resident who may lose her housing voucher. County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates' office referred the resident to Beatrice, who set up an appointment with Martinez. Turner talked with the woman for about 10 minutes before sharing her story, telling Martinez about the slumlord the woman was living under, and explaining that the treatment of this woman is unjust. She was armed with a folder of information, decorated with a whimsical picture of a golden-maned horse. On the back was the rear end of the horse. Martinez greeted her warmly and listened to what she had to say. He grabbed a packet of paper from his desk and flipped the stapled stack over, taking notes on the back of an already marked piece of paper, drawing lines and columns, hearing what she had to say. But he wasn't clear about her goal.
"I just want to make sure I've got the facts straight," Martinez said.
"Mm-hmm," Turner replied.
"She was a Section 8 participant."
"Mmmm-hmmm."
"At [address]."
"Mmm-hmm."
"During the tenancy there was an allegation apparently made ..."
"And she moved out the address."
"That there had been damages."
"And that's when she moved out, they came out with the damages."
"Normally that's what will happen."
"Two months later.
"Under the rules they have a right to submit a claim of damages."
Though they weren't really getting anywhere, he listened, watching Beatrice get incrementally upset, wag her finger, swivel that head. His look was curious, bemused. Hers, staunch, determined. Her reason for fighting was getting lost. Getting rid of a slumlord? That's Martinez's goal, too, he explained. But this woman's case has already been through the courts, and she's been assigned the fines deemed appropriate for the way she left her house when she was evicted. There's not much the housing authority can do once a judgment has been made. By the end of the meeting, Beatrice agreed that the woman, of whom she'd initially been a strong advocate, isn't completely in the right. But, she proclaimed, she'll be at the next Las Vegas City Council meeting trying to get this issue resolved. Whatever the actual issue is.
Her friends and detractors all remark on Beatrice's enthusiasm and determination. Jerry Neal, secretary of the residents' council at the Marble Manor public housing project, has watched Beatrice go against The Man for years and admires her strength. "She don't mind putting it out there, just like she said. She don't bite her tongue about it. If it's a duck, she call it a duck, whatever it is, that's the way she do it," Neal says. "You can't be afraid of pissing people off. Because if you're afraid of pissing people off, you're never going to get anywhere."
And that's really the question: Has Beatrice gotten anywhere? By some measures, absolutely. She led successful fights against the housing authority back when she was living in public housing, winning a settlement in a class-action lawsuit that involved padding rents. She helped oust former NAACP Director Rev. Chester Richardson. She's had wheelchair ramps installed in the homes of those in need, gotten liquor out of convenience stores in blighted areas and decried the proliferation of churches and dearth of business in West Las Vegas. The former house cleaner who's now a home health-care provider lacks formal training when it comes to governmental affairs, and that stands out—particularly now that she has a place on the housing commission, one of the more scandal-ridden organizations in town. She's been able to act as a spokesperson for those living in public housing—something she knows about firsthand, after living in different projects across the city. But it's a commission that often spirals into catty remarks and unnecessary infighting, a lot of it thanks to Turner herself.
"I think she's a contentious person who has not brought any kind of collegiality to the table. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I think it's a fact," says Goodman, who appointed her to the housing commission. "I think there's a way of being a leader, and that is, be able to pull different parts together, and that's how you're able to gain consensus. ... And her personality is so strong and her views are so pointed that she doesn't approach issues that way, and that's her prerogative, but it doesn't necessarily get the job done all the time over there."
What it often boils down to are screaming matches, name-calling and recollections of events that are filtered through the bias of each commissioner. Take the familiarization bus tour that was organized when the new board of housing commissioners came on in June 2003. (Beatrice was the one holdover from the former board. The mayor asked all of the commissioners to step down because he wanted to start fresh. Turner was the only one who refused.) Beatrice's head starts to swivel at the thought of it. "Ooooh," she growls. She goes on to say that her fellow commissioners were afraid to leave the bus and actually stand amid the housing projects they were appointed to oversee. "I said, 'Well what are we doing, a drive-by? We ain't no better than the gangbangers.' They would not get off the bus," she says.
Commissioner Don Davidson, vice president of Triple Five Nevada Development, remembers the story quite differently, and bristles at Beatrice's account. "I organized a bus tour, and I used it strictly as a bus tour to go see all our properties for the first time. I scheduled it as such, knowing that we do not have time to get off, get on, get off, get on, and I promised her that when the time was appropriate, that I would take the time, and so would the other commissioners, to go around and see each property and talk to some of the residents. ... But the main thing is, we did not get off the bus because that was not the intent of the bus trip." Despite his obvious irritation at what he says is Beatrice turning the story around, Davidson, who's clashed with her on many occasions, still says that nobody works harder at trying to be a good commissioner than she does.
Federal public defender and fellow housing commissioner Franny Forsman agrees that Turner is a strong, hardworking woman who's a benefit to the commission. But there are areas she needs to work on to live up to her potential. "I think she wants to be effective. I think she cares about the housing authority, I think she cares about the tenants of the housing authority. But I think sometimes she doesn't know how to carry that out, so instead she falls back on the things she's been doing for all these years in these meetings, as an audience participant, and I think it detracts from her ability to be an effective commissioner."
But there's a yin to every yang, and those same qualities have gotten Beatrice to where she is today. Single mothers living in public housing who sit quietly and accept what's given to them don't make it to a position of power, where they can affect change. Though her protests come with beveled edges, they also come from experience. Beatrice grew up in Berkley Square, a neighborhood that used to be considered the black aristocrat area. But when she graduated high school as a single mom, she decided it was time to be independent and move away from her parents. So she moved into Marble Manor, which, back in the '80s, was overrun with gangs and crime. Residents couldn't sit out on their porches or leave laundry hanging outside for fear of what could happen.
She adjusted to her new life quickly, until a neighbor started using her barbecue pit to hide drugs. So she doused the paper bag with lighter fluid and sparked a match. It became a daily routine. The drug dealer would hope the package would get picked up before Beatrice got home. If it wasn't, his wares would waft through the neighborhood in smoke. Soon he began threatening her, so she called the cops. Only, they didn't come quickly enough for her liking.
"He knocked at the door. I had opened my door, and I was, like, 'Get the f--k off of my lawn.' They was out there and it was getting dark. Because you couldn't even sit outside in your lawn chair. That's just how bad it got, especially in that corner where I lived. I closed the door, and the man went and smoked one of his own packages, and came back and knocked on my door. He was banging on the door saying, 'You don't tell us to get off the lawn.' And I opened my door, and I shot him and closed the door." (No charges were filed.)
Though she'd shot him in the chest, the man recovered. She remained at Marble Manor for awhile, until she saw one of her other neighbors robbing two men at gunpoint, right outside her bedroom window. Then it was time to go back home, back with the aristocrats. But only for a little while. In the late '80s, she moved to the Ernie Cragin housing project, where her activism really began. These were the days when residents had to pay an extra $15 a month to rent stoves and refrigerators in their homes. Arthur Sartini, who headed the housing commission, claimed it was because residents were abusing the appliances, and was preventative. Beatrice and others who joined in a class-action lawsuit called it rent-gouging. A $350,000 out-of-court settlement eventually reimbursed residents the fees. And gave Beatrice a true taste of victory.
To citizens who feel powerless, and to other residents looking to make an impact on the community, Beatrice is a hero. She's standing up for what she believes in and taking elected officials to task. You may have to muddle through what she's talking about and find the meat of the issue—if there truly is an issue at hand—but if you ask people like former City Councilman Steve Miller (who also straddles the line between activist and gadfly), Las Vegas would do well to have more people like Beatrice. "Everything she does affects change, and the people she freaks out need to get their asses out of there immediately. If she can freak them out, they don't belong there. ...We need many more people like Beatrice Turner."
And as long as that heart's still beating, she'll be down at those meetings, wearing a white nursing shirt decorated with hearts and dancing frogs, wagging her finger and swiveling her head, swearing up and down and waving that kibble. As long as that heart's still beating—and then some, if she has her way.
As for dying, Beatrice has a plan. She's been telling her three grown children this plan for some time. If all goes as she's ordered, Beatrice Turner will be cremated, and her ashes divided four ways. One for the city council. One for the county commission. One for the school district. And one for the housing authority. She plans for her kids to pick up fellow gadfly Tom McGowan and drive him to each of the four meetings, paying him $100 after each performance. He'll walk up to the microphone during public comment, lift up her cremated remains, and get to sprinkling.
"Let him go in there and say 'Mm-hmm. She ain't here, but here she go right here.'"
Getting her point across in the most offensive way possible, one last time.