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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.
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