From Deep Respect
On a dark street in East Los Angeles, a Jesuit priest named Gregory Boyle chats with several parishioners, who happen to be members of a gang called The Mob Crew, or TMC. Suddenly, the night erupts in gunshots as a rival gang opens fire. It's not the first time Boyle -- "G-Dawg" to the homeboys -- has been caught in the cross fire, though he's never been hit. The TMC member closest to Boyle hurls himself onto the priest like a bodyguard, and after two long minutes, the barrage stops.The teen used what Boyle calls the "Secret Service maneuver" to protect him, and on these streets, it's proof that the priest has the homeboys' deep respect.
Boyle earned that honor by coming up with a practical way to offer hope to residents of the barrio -- giving them jobs. Fifteen years ago, he created Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit coalition of businesses that hire gang members to lure them away from old lifestyles. It's now America's largest gang intervention program and has helped transform the lives of thousands.
Gregory Boyle can't remember ever wanting to be anything but a Jesuit. He spent his first year in the priesthood in Bolivia, working among impoverished flower vendors who, he says, taught him what it means to live according to the Gospel. For his next assignment, in the United States, he made one request: "Send me to the poorest place we've got." In 1986 he got his wish when he was sent to an East Los Angeles neighborhood coincidentally named Boyle Heights. At the time, the area was home to eight different gangs who were, literally, at war.
There, Boyle repeatedly heard older members of gangs say, "If I only had a job." It struck him in its simplicity. "We very often focus on the wrong thing when we're trying to solve problems," he says. He figured the best way to keep gang members out of trouble was to give them something constructive to do, teach them about holding steady employment and give them hope for the future. In other words, get them working.
He began by attempting to charm local employers into hiring gang members, a not-so-easy proposition. Soon, he got the idea of starting up nonprofit businesses to employ homeboys. But he had mixed success. An early attempt, Homeboy Plumbing, didn't take off ("Who knew people didn't want gang members in their homes?" Boyle deadpans). Five Homeboy businesses thrive today, however, and though Boyle has lost count of how many jobs he's given to young people, there have been enough successes to reinforce the coalition's slogan: "Nothing stops a bullet like a job."
Ruben Rodriguez panicked when he saw Father Boyle driving toward the building that would soon become Homeboy Silkscreen. That winter morning 11 years ago, Boyle had put Rodriguez in charge of four young homies from rival gangs, who were told to clear weeds from the parking lot, the first step toward refurbishing the facility and setting up the new business. They'd worked the entire day before finding a Nerf football against the fence -- now a game of catch was under way. Would Boyle think they'd been loafing all afternoon?
"Ruben," Boyle boomed as he got out of his car. "This is wonderful! This morning, these guys were enemies. Now they're playing ball together!"
Rodriguez was 34, and he'd grown up fatherless in the projects. He had never joined a gang, but he was near rock bottom when he met Boyle in the street late one night ten years earlier. Boyle had once rushed to the hospital to be with Rodriguez's mother when her son Paul had been shot. Now, as Rodriguez began talking with the priest, he felt compelled to bare his soul. He'd been skipping work and maxing out his credit cards. He was drinking too much, his marriage was in jeopardy and he had two small sons to feed.
To Rodriguez's astonishment, Boyle wrote a check for $2,000 to pay his bills. "But money is not the answer to your problems," the priest told him. He suggested that Rodriguez sequester himself in a building in the parish for two weeks and meditate on how to take responsibility for his life.
There, alone in a room above the school, Rodriguez had time to contemplate the loneliness he was doomed to live with if he didn't get things right with his family. Soon after, with Boyle as his mentor, he stopped drinking and was promoted at his job in a food-processing plant. He then took a second job with the city's parks department. "Before Father Greg," Rodriguez says, "there was no one who took an interest in my life." Now Rodriguez and his wife, Cristina, had begun saving money, and Rodriguez was spending more time with his sons.
Responsibility
When Boyle asked him to refurbish Homeboy Bakery, he agreed -- though he didn't know the first thing about the baking business. In fact, Rodriguez's secret dream was to run a silkscreen shop, printing T-shirts and other apparel. One night after he'd been working at the bakery for eight months, he and Boyle had one of their talks. "Padre," Rodriguez said, "what do you think about someone else running the bakery and me starting a T-shirt printing shop?""It's a great idea."
"Good," said Rodriguez. From his pocket, he pulled a piece of paper. It was a California retail license for a business called Homeboy Silkscreen. Father Boyle burst out laughing. "What is it you always say, Padre?" Rodriguez said, grinning. "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission?"
It's well over 100 degrees on the shop floor inside Homeboy Silkscreen, but no one seems bothered by the heat. Ruben and Cristina Rodriguez carry armloads of T-shirts toward the loading area, past a muscular, tattooed young man named Gabriel Flores, who's operating a printing machine.
The shop has provided jobs for hundreds of homies, and its full-time staff has grown from 4 to 17. Flores works his machine with a Zen-like half smile, carefully smoothing each shirt onto a wooden base, dropping the silkscreen, applying the paint. He is Rodriguez's most trusted employee, but like many former gang members, his path to success has been rocky.
Flores first met Father Boyle in 1993, when he was 14. The priest had come to say Mass at the juvenile hall where Flores was locked up for running with a gang and using drugs. "Come see me when you get out," Boyle told him. Flores felt drawn to the priest but never got around to calling him.
Four years later, he met Boyle again while in court on an under-the-influence charge. In addition to his other problems, Flores's girlfriend was pregnant. Once more, Boyle asked him to call when he got out. This time, Flores did.
But the roller coaster ride was not over yet. After four years of progress at Homeboy Silkscreen, Flores suffered what he calls his downfall. Found in possession of a handgun, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison for violating his parole.
Rodriguez kept a position, albeit at a lower level, waiting for him. "I was just so grateful," says Flores.
In the five years since his release, Flores has taken on more responsibility than ever before. When Ruben and Cristina are away, he runs the shop floor. He recently received his GED, and his daughter Gabriella, nine, lives with him and attends a charter school.
"The cycle gets broken when kids like Gabriella see their father get up every morning to go to work and come home every afternoon to spend time with them," Rodriguez says, sounding like Boyle. "Maybe in 20 years, Gabriel will mentor someone the way I've mentored him."
Last year, Homeboy Silkscreen did more than $800,000 in sales, and as the business has grown, so has Rodriguez. "Working alongside homeboys," he says, "the stereotypes start breaking down. You see that they're people, and you start caring." Homeboy Industries now offers an array of service programs to members of gangs across Los Angeles County, helping them find work, remove their tattoos, learn anger management and deal with substance abuse. Last year, the organization broke ground on a block-long facility near Chinatown, where many of its businesses and services will be consolidated.
Even for Father Boyle, hope comes in fits and starts. On this August morning, he and a crowd of mourners gather at a grave site. The priest had known Tony, a veterano, since his days on East Los Angeles's streets in the late '80s. Now the former gangbanger, his throat cut in prison, has become the 147th homeboy Boyle has buried.
Earlier in Boyle's career, a death like Tony's might have made the priest question the effectiveness of his work. Today he comforts Tony's loved ones, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." Then family members release eight doves, symbols of peace. The birds, momentarily panicked, flutter up into the mourners' hair and faces, and everyone, Boyle included, bursts out laughing. Soon the tears of sorrow and joy are so intermingled that Boyle can scarcely tell them apart.
This is the kind of thing that always seems to happen in the barrio, he says, and it's why he feels fortunate to have found his life's work here. "People think I do this because it's the harder thing," he says. "But I'm here because it engages your heart completely, pain and joy all on the same day."
He hugs the last of the mourners, then climbs into his dingy Corolla and drives to Homeboy Industries, just down the street from the morgue and the police station. (Rodriguez often tells young homies that the buildings represent their three choices for the future.) Back in his office, where he has calls to return, letters to write, young gangbangers to joke with, comfort and counsel, he says he has developed a "light grasp" of death. "Death," Boyle says, "doesn't even make my top ten worst things that could happen to you."
And he should know something about that: In 2003, he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, an incurable cancer that is now in remission. Or, as one of his homeboys put it, in "intermission."
"That's right!" Boyle laughs heartily. "It's just stepped out into the lobby to buy some popcorn."