Convo speaker described life for former gang members in downtown Los Angeles and talked about his church’s job placement program.
By Sarah Pye
Living Editor
Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries and inspiration to countless reformed gang members, offered Pepperdine students an important message when he spoke at Wednesday morning’s Convocation.
“Life’s about showing people the truth that they are exactly what God had in mind when he made them.”
Homeboy Industries, which operates under the motto “Nothing stops a bullet like a job,” was created by Boyle in 1988 to provide job placement services to gang-affiliated DANIEL JOHNSON/PHOTO EDITOR
young men and women
ready to turn their lives around.
Boyle saw the need for such an organization while serving as pastor of the Dolores Mission in the Pico Gardens and Aliso Village housing projects in Los Angeles.
The Pico-Aliso projects, which, according to the Homeboy Industries Web site, www.homeboy-industries.org, is the largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi, were occupied in the late 1980s by eight rival gangs, and gang-related violence had become an overwhelming problem in the area.
Boyle and others in the community recognized that many of the young men and women involved in the gangs could be valuable members of the workforce, if given the opportunity.
Out of this grew Boyle’s Jobs for a Future program, which puts these young men and women to work across the Los Angeles area. In addition to job placement, Jobs for a Future offers counseling services, educational placement, interview coaching and substance abuse support groups.
Jobs for a Future also offers free tattoo removal to those seeking employment, because Boyle found that those with obvious gang tattoos were often denied jobs by wary employers. The service is provided two days a week by several doctors who donate their time, and has become so popular that it is now underwritten by a three-year grant from the California Endowment Fund.
The five businesses now run by Homeboy Industries grew out of Boyle’s Jobs for a Future when he found some interested young men and women who would normally be difficult to place in jobs because of visible gang tattoos or minimal job experience.
The first Homeboy Industries business, Homeboy Bakery, was started by Boyle in 1992, and employed rival gang members side by side to bake and sell bread. Though the bakery burned down in 1999, it re-opened as the scaled-back Homeboy Tortillas.
In addition to Homeboy Tortillas, Homeboy Industries now operates Homeboy Silkscreen, Homeboy Landscaping, Homeboy Graffiti Removal and Homeboy/Homegirl Merchandise, which sells T-shirts, mugs, tote bags and mouse pads bearing the Homeboy Industries logo.
In total, the five businesses employ more than 60 former gang members.
“At Homeboy Industries what we try to do always is be a manufacturer of hope in a community with a fatal lack of it,” Boyle told his convocation audience.
Boyle described his organization as “a place where folks have chosen to stand with those who are poor and voiceless and powerless … and whose burdens are more than they can bear.”
Boyle told the story of one young man whose entire life was turned around for the better by his ability to utter to a stranger on the bus the words: “I just got back from my first day of work.”
He also told the story of a young man named Chico, a goofy looking kid with big ears, who left his gang for a job working with computers at the Chrysalis Homeless Resource Center. Chico sent Boyle a fax during his first week of work: “Dear G, I am learning to use a fax machine. … P.S. I really love this job. Thanks for getting it for me.”
Three months later, Chico was fatally shot while standing on his own front porch.
“More valuable than the little measly paycheck I had to hand to him every Friday was the time I had to spend with him,” Boyle said. “And I regret to this day that I did not have more.”
However, Chico’s time with Homeboy Industries was not for nothing, according to Boyle, because when Chico died “he knew he was exactly what God had in mind when he made him.”
Boyle has spoken to Pepperdine students during Convocation three times, and said he keeps coming back to spread the message that the larger community should not “demonize” gang members.
“We’re all diminished as people when we demonize,” Boyle said, adding that people need to know more about gang members than what they see on the evening news.
Boyle urged those interested in helping out his organization to find employers willing to hire reformed gang members, and put them in contact with Homeboy Industries.
“All we want to do is give folks a chance,” he said.
October 02, 2003
