This July, when my husband and I were in Los Angeles for a family wedding, were also able to manage a trip to Homeboy Industries. It is currently the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world, and I have wanted to visit if for a few years now. Homeboy has come a long way from where it started decades ago in Dolores Mission, in the poorest Catholic parish in the city. A young Jesuit priest named Gregory Boyle was assigned there and served a Latino church between the two housing projects where eight different gangs vied viciously for turf. Father G, as he is called at Homeboy, recognized how dire poverty and pervasive despair fed cycles of escalating violence. So he decided to see what could be done to interrupt them. It turns out that a lot could be done — and a lot still can be.
Like many people, I got to know the origin of story of Homeboy by reading Father G’s bestselling memoir titled Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His first book was followed by others, including Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship; The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness; and most recently, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. The subtitles titles are fairly self-explanatory, and they plainly point to the values that have given Homeboy such staying power over the years. These days, I think it’s fair to say, it almost as much a movement as it is an organization, which explains the existence of a growing Global Homeboy Network across five continents.
Father G’s thinking about the role Homeboy could play in L.A. has evolved through the years. Initially, it was an educational program that sought to provide the former members of gangs with the chance to continue or even complete their schooling. Then it expanded to offer employment opportunities and connect ex-convicts with what he characterized as “felony-friendly” work placements. When those appeared fairly hard to come by, Homeboy started a bakery, which was soon followed by several additional enterprises, among them a catering business and the Homegirl Cafe. Then Father G and the people he worked alongside came to realize that although education and employment made it much less likely that homeboys and homegirls would re-offend, it gave no guarantee. Father G eventually concluded that only the collective healing of individuals through trauma-informed care could provide any real preventative. The people who heal together are that much stronger for the faith they place in one another.
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