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Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
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Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion

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“Destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality” (Los Angeles Times)—Tattoos on the Heart is a series of parables about kinship and redemption from pastor, activist, and renowned speaker, Father Gregory Boyle.

For twenty years, Father Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles—also known as the gang capital of the world. In Tattoos on the Heart, he has distilled his experience working in the ghetto into a breathtaking series of parables inspired by faith.

From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping at JC Penney fresh out of prison, you learn how to feel worthy of God’s love. From ten-year-old Pipi you learn the importance of being known and acknowledged. From Lulu you come to understand the kind of patience necessary to rescue someone from the dark—as Father Boyle phrases it, we can only shine a flashlight on a light switch in a darkened room.

This is a motivating look at how to stay faithful in spite of failure, how to meet the world with a loving heart, and how to conquer shame with boundless, restorative love.

Editor's Note

Business of compassion…

The story of Homeboy Industries and the priest whose kindness penetrated a gang-infested neighborhood, bringing about reform, respect, and awesome t-shirts.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherFree Press
Release dateMar 9, 2010
ISBN9781439171776
Author

Gregory Boyle

Gregory Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the President Obama named Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and The Whole Language. Cherished Belonging is his fourth book, and he will be donating all net proceeds to Homeboy Industries.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Terrifically moving memoir by a priest who truly serves the people of his neighborhood—the gangs of LA. Creator of Homeboy Industries.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A jesuit gets on a bike and starts a commercial industry among the est 86,ooo gang members in LA. Well written, Ignacious would appove of this priest
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5

    Fr. Boyle worked and lived in the barrios of East Los Angeles and spent his life working with gang members. While he states at the beginning that his book isn't a "how to" book to solve the gang problem, his life of compassion illustrates that the only way to reach lives destroyed by shame, poverty and violence is to love them, see them through God's eyes, and help them recognize their own worth. Some of the stories made me laugh, some left me heartbroken, and all challenged me to see beyond people's exteriors. At one point he speaks of potential donors to "Homeboy Industries," the arm of his ministry that provides jobs, tattoo removal, and referral services. The donors want to contribute to programs that "work." Boyle understands that what he's doing won't eliminate gangs and their attendant heartbreak, but he's chosen to "stand" and let God do his work in his time. Among the many themes referenced in this book, this one had the biggest impact on me. Boyle just stayed there, kept loving, and kept showing gang members the love of God through his devotion. It's hard for us to "stand" while watching people contributing to their own downfall, but that willingness did change, and save, lives. I will never forget Fr. Boyle's book, or his homies.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There are no words to describe how much I love this book. I wish that everyone could read it and see what it truly means to align yourself with others and be one with them, more than simply helping someone, the power of identifying yourself as the same. I'm speechless.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very inspiring book. A true man of God with gifts fitting for God's work with gangs in LA.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Father Gregory Boyle service to gang members at the Delores Mission near Los Angeles is documented in this collection of several short stories of the people G. served. Even with all of the pain, the murders, the abuse and the suffering, Father found hope and holiness all around him. God met each of the young people in the stories he wrote about on their own turf. This memoir praises the sacredness of life as G. taught others to see themselves as God the Father sees them. 217 p.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Father Greg is a Jesuit priest in LosAngeles and runs the Home Boys Industries. The book is full of success stories and failures in a desperate situation.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I've been walking with homeless people, in a small, part-time kind of way, for about 20 years. The most important thing I can tell you about this book is that I recognize my homeless friends in the gang members Fr. Boyle writes about in this book. If you read this book simply for the stories--which are well told, meaningful and moving, you'll miss Fr. Boyle's insights about God, compassion and the worth of every human being. Every human being.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was incredible to read. Father Gregory Boyle works with ex-gang members in LA. The book is filled with stories of his work. It's a touching and inspiring collection.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm an avid reader; however, I must confess that I'm an even more enthusiastic book collector. My shelves contain hundreds of books that I've yet to read or that I've only read in snippets. And, sometimes, I find myself upset as I read through a book that I waited so long to get to it. "Tattoos on the Heart" is one such book.I suppose the best description of the book is "memoir," but that designation gives you no real indication of its power. Father Boyle's stories of his work with Homeboy Industries, an organization that works with gangs in Los Angeles is no simple collection of "feel good" stories. It presents, in vivid detail, what Switchfoot once called a "new way to be human."Father Boyle's touch is sure but light. The book makes you cry and laugh in equal measure, all the while demonstrating the common humanity that unites us all...the "kinship" that is at the root of who we are. He reminded me of something that is so easy to forget: Whatever else "sin" might be, it is an INTRUDER in human existence, a foreign object lodged in our character. And though it may shape much of human reality today, it is STILL an alien presence...and not the essence of who we are. No matter how degraded we become, there is always a piece of us, beyond the touch of any corruption, that retains the divine thumbprint, marks as God's own special creation with inestimable value. The book isn't "preachy" or "forced." It's just stories of one man's journey into authentic humanness. And it weaves together the tragicomedy of our life together in a way that calls us each not just to BRING beauty to our world but, more profoundly, to recognize the beauty that has been there all along.Just read it; then you'll understand.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In this book Fr. Boyle S.J., a Jesuit priest, recalls his experience working with gangs in Los Angeles County for more than two decades. He openly discusses ministering in jails and starting Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program that offers education, job training, tattoo removal, and employment. This memoir includes spiritual reflections and vignettes of those he ministered too.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Intense content giving heart-breaking stories of tragedies of young lives, with compelling evidence of faith and grace.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fr. Greg Boyle tells us in the preface that this is not a memoir and there is no narrative chronology, and it is not a “how to deal with gangs” book. Then what we are left with are relationships that matter to him with the people he has walked side by side with at the Delores Mission in Boyle Heights, the gang capital of Los Angeles. This book profoundly touches me, it makes me want to do better, to give everyone the benefit of doubt, to forgive my perceived enemies; to love more and complain less. His stories of ministering to gang members shift my perception of those around me. While reading it I find myself laughing out loud, and in the next moment crying because I care deeply about the Homies and realizing that losing someone with so much potential hurts us all. Between the lines I hear God speak, “Remember who you are, an ambassador for Christ, My hands on earth, and a light in the darkness. Don’t give up when it hurts to love, risk it….”There is one recollection of Fr. Boyle’s that brings tears to my eyes; he is just starting out as a young priest on a trip to Bolivia. He is asked to bring Mass to the village of Tirani, where the Indians only speak Quechua and he doesn’t even speak Spanish. He knows he is inadequate to the task even with a translator, but in the depths of his hopelessness God meets him there. In this book God meets us and we are loved and changed.I know when I’ve read something great, it’s when I start worrying about how many quotes I’ve underlined, but I’m not alone, on Kindle I can see that others have underlined excessively too. I’ll leave you with one warning, there is, ahem, a certain amount of “coarse language” and Fr. Boyle’s colorful banter with the homeboys might offend some. Don’t let the language stop you, this is a must read and I’ll be reading this book again.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Father Greg Boyle is a good story teller. He reminds us that people do not grow very well as people if they are not loved. He shares how he goes about loving some of the toughest most hard headed people in our larger society... He shows that they are really worth loving and invites us to follow Jesus in loving them too.Not everyone can hang with G'Dogs Compassion for all. Yet I hope that many will find a way to give and receive love from those who seem to be on the outside of our society. To the church I would simply say ... "While we sere still sinners Christ died for us". God makes the first hard choice of risking love for us... and we are invited to follow in His Steps.There is no safe way to love... Sacrificial love is a call... not to be entered into lightly... It is better to love and to lose than never to have loved at all.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I rarely give a book 5/5 stars the first time I read it, but this book deserves it. Father Boyle's stories are heartbreaking, challenging, and thought-provoking, and his overall message redefines what it means to live a successful life in the face of great tragedy and opposition. (This book also merits 5/5 boxes of Kleenex.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Inspiring. Truly made me think about the meaning of compassion, to grasp the concept is not enough, you must act.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wow -- Gregory Boyle is the man, the priest, the writer of the decade, if not century, for me now. This powerful book definitely has tattoed its stories on my heart. Boyle works in LA, in neighborhoods that are rarely left by the teens and young adults who live there. It is hard to say whether poverty, drugs, or guns are the larger problems, but the unholy trinity wrecks lives and people. Boyle, armed with jobs and faith in God and his homies and home girls is in the restoration business...a godly business indeed. And what a gift to all who happen upon it, that he is such an accomplished writer and communicator. This is a life-changing, life-enriching book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tattoos on the Heart is a funny, inspiring, heartbreaking book. Fr. Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, shares memories of his years among “homies”, gang members living in the "gang capital of L.A." Interspersed with the vignettes are Fr. Boyle’s insights into the nature of God, community, redemption, mercy and grace. The homies leap out of the pages, grabbing your heart as you laugh one moment and catch your breath in sorrow the next. The love that “G”, as Fr. Boyle is affectionately known, and the homies have for each other is palpable. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This review was first posted to my blog.When I was initially contacted by Condor Tours with a request to review this book, I jumped on it .. with both feet AND a headstand. Why? Because I am very familiar with Father Boyle's work, and am in admiration of the selfless love that he shows and has shown for the past 25 years. I am a firm believer that EVERYone, no matter what their background, ethnicity, race, creed, EVERYONE deserves a chance (or two or three and sometimes more) to succeed. Although I'd like to think that, given a different set of life circumstances, I could have lived a life dedicated to service, I can't say for certain that would have been the case. I am, however, deeply humbled and stand in admiration of those that do.This review is NOT going to be a review of the work of Father Boyle as a whole, because trying to do so in a blog format would take up too many pages :). If you'd like more information on Homeboy Industries and on how YOU can help this worthy cause, I will provide information and links at the end of this review.I WILL say that this is the most soul-stirring, inspiring, make me laugh, make me cry, make my heart swell book that I think I have ever read. Reading Father Boyle's modern-day parables, mixed with liberal doses of humanism and compassion, is an experience that will stick with me for the long-term.The way this book flows is sort of like that "story-tellin' uncle/granddad/brother-in-law" that we all have. It's easy-to-read, non-judgmental, pragmatic, often hilarious, and just as often sob-worthy. I found myself laughing at one page and crying at the next. The crying - well, it wasn't necessarily at some of the sad stories (although sometimes it was at that) - it was more often at the gladness of hope and at the sharing of simple joys - the simple joys and pleasures that many of us take for granted and that we forget are not available to everyone. When a young father sits at his dinner table after work and waits for his wife and children to finish eating so that he can take pleasure in being able to provide for them - even when this means that sometimes there's no food left - and he's HAPPY HAPPY to do so, that's a sob-worthy picture.Drawing from God's word, from basic humanity, from Ghandi, philosophy, and many others, Father Boyle illuminates the power of redemption and illustrates basic compassion in the simplest and most understandable of fashions - through stories that illustrate each point clearly.You don't have to consider yourself "Christian" to appreciate this book ... you only have to be human. It doesn't matter what your race/socio-economic status/education/political leaning/creed - this book is a book for all of us. If a lot of us took the time to open our hearts and stop dividing ourselves into "us" and "them", then passed this on to our children, what a difference we could make!Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars with an exclamation point!When I read a book for review, I use little "bookmarklets" - basically little pieces of paper that I tear to mark a place in the book that I feel contains a passage or paragraph that particularly touched me, or that illustrates a basic concept of the book, or ... well, you get the idea. If I were to use ALL of the passages from all of my little bookmarklets - suffice it to say, I can't. There are just TOO many worthy passages, so I will just at random pick three for you.Quotes:On eating at a sit-down restaurant a notch above Denny's, where the hostess was reluctant to seat them - once they got to a table:"There's just pure, rich white people here," Richie pleads."Yeah," Chepe clarifies, "Them people who be eatin' Grey Poupon 'n' shit."****************************************************You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.******************************************************David comes into the office:"You know," he says, "I ran into a man who attended one of your talks recently."I give a lot of talks, and David has accompanied me several times."Really," I say, "That's nice.""Yep," he says, "he found your talk ... rather monotonous.""Gosh," I say, with some dismay, "really? He did?""Weelll, actually," David says, "that didn't happen. But I just need practice using bigger words."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The stories in this book were so touching. There were times I was crying and times I was laughing. Hope and compassion are really great words to use when talking about this book. There were so many stories, and while they were all touching they were presented in a way that seemed a bit jumpy to me. If the stories had flowed better I would have been much happier with this one. But it was still pretty good as it is. The language took a bit for me to get used to. Greg Boyle's language shocked me the most. There were a few times that he used some swear words, and all I could think was this is a man of cloth.... But given the situations that he was in, and the people he was in those situations with the language was understandable. It just shocked me the first few times. The work that Greg Boyle has done working with the Homies is amazing. The stories he has gained in the last 20 years are a testament to his work. These stories range from sad, to touching, to happy. It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster reading this one, but I think it was well worth it. There is a religious message in this book, and even though it is repeated many times throughout the book I didn't feel as if Greg Boyle was trying to be pushy. For those that don't like to read religious books I would say you should give this one a go regardless. The stories really are touching and they filled me with a feeling of hope.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    From My Blog...Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle is a deeply moving, heartwarming series of essays from some of the most memorable times of Father Boyle’s career. Father Boyle has been a Jesuit Priest for 25 years working with many sections of the population that others deem frightening at best, including his work at his beloved Dolores Mission and the creation of Homeboy Industries (which is brilliant and what he refers to as a “tiny drop in a pretty big bucket” yet one we all could learn from), creating jobs for gang members in Los Angeles, working in the gang laden barrios of Los Angeles, at juvenile detention centers, probation camps, as well as at prisons. Tattoos on the Heart is not an autobiography of Father Gregory Boyle’s life and works but rather a collection of essays if you will, showing examples of grace, forgiveness, love, compassion, and faith. Father Boyle shows us how we are all ultimately looking for the same things in life. Through his book the reader comes to know those whom Father Boyle befriends and in turn the reader learns valuable life lessons from some of the most hardened of criminals and gang members. Tattoos on the Heart is exquisitely written, full of life and love, and Father Boyle allows the reader a glimpse into his heart and the hearts of others offering up one of the most memorable non-fiction books I have read in a long time. I would not hesitate to recommend Tattoos on the Heart to anyone, religious or not, the stories speak for themselves.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Father Gregory Boyle of The Society of Jesus has done a great job. Each chapter is a non-fiction parable one building on the previous. It's an easy read and well worth the time. Thanks Greg!"
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    to say this book is moving and inspirational is an understatement. may I give it 10 stars?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rating: A+Outstanding read. Boyle is a great storyteller of heartfelt stories. He takes you on a roller-coaster, merry-go-round. Laughter. Gut punches. Tears. Empathy. His theology is spot on. Hope to meet him someday. He is a role model for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of the most powerful and impactful books I have ever read. Thank you to my son for sending it my way. Father Boyle is an inspiration. His love for and belief in these young people in LA sets a high bar for the rest of us. I am humbled by his ministry, rocked by the sadness and violence, and empowered to help in some small way.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Not a memoir, per se, but a collection of reflections and observations about Fr. Greg Boyle's ministry with the gangs of LA and the power of love to transform lives. He founded Homeboy Industries which has multi-faceted alternatives to life on the streets - tattoo removal, graffiti removal, a bakery and a few other options for an honest living. This is a testimony to the idea that faith is a verb, that action must accompany belief and that preaching might reach ears, but it doesn't reach hearts. Again and again, Boyle seeks the good and godly in the most feared and despised and it yields results. Acceptance and love triumph repeatedly - and the model is here, but still challenging to implement. If one person can do so much good, we need to unleash the "army" of those who will follow his example. The positive results would be staggering.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book added a whole new dimension on how to deal with "the other." Father Greg's answer? You just love them.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A short book about a man's journey to the worset of the worst section of LA and learn compassion and love for those who have never had compassion of love given to them. The man is Fr.Gregory Boyle S.J. who spent 20 years ministering and being a part of the the community of two projects in LA. An inspiring, sad, funny series of essays viewing aspecs of the lives of those who live there. He focuses on the group of people who are in gangs, from 10 - 25 years old and how it takes firmness, love and concern for others and more than a little patience to wait for someone to come to you. The sub-title is "The Power of Boundless Compassion" which is what this book is about, though that would be more than a little off-putting for a title. A book worth reading, if only to hear how the other side lives and how most of us don't have it quite so bad.

Book preview

Tattoos on the Heart - Gregory Boyle

Preface

I suppose I’ve tried to write this book for more than a decade. People encouraged me all the time, but I never felt I had the discipline (or blocks of time) to do it. I have all these stories and parables locked away in the Public Storage of my brain, and I have long wanted to find a permanent home for them. The usual containers for these stories are my homilies at Mass in the twenty-five detention centers where I celebrate the Eucharist (juvenile halls, probation camps, and Youth Authority facilities). I illustrate the gospel with three stories and usually tell another one just before communion. After Mass once, at one of these probation camps, a homie grabbed both my hands and looked me in the eye. This is my last Mass at camp. I go home on Monday. I’m gonna miss your stories. You tell good stories. And I hope . . . I never have to hear your stories again.

Along with my ministry in jails, I give nearly two hundred talks a year to social workers, law enforcement, university students, parish groups, and educators. The stories get trotted out there too. They are the bricks around which I hope, in this book, to slather some thematic mortar that can hold them together. With any luck, they will lift us up so we can see beyond the confines of the things that limit our view. After recently bumping heads with cancer, I started to feel that death might actually not make an exception in my case. So sensing that none of us will get out of this alive, I asked for and was graciously given a four-month sabbatical by my provincial superior, John McGarry, S.J., and sent to Italy. This will explain the ragu de agnello stains on some of the pages that follow.

There are several things this book knows it doesn’t want to be. It’s not a memoir of my past twenty plus years working with gang members. There is no narrative chronology that I’ll follow, though I will give a brief aerial view of Dolores Mission and the birth and beginnings of Homeboy Industries. The subsequent stories will need that kind of contextualizing at the gate (as the homies say), if they are to make sense. I would refer the reader to an excellent account of those early days at Dolores Mission in Celeste Fremon’s G-Dog and the Homeboys. Her keen portrayal of the young men and women who struggled with this gang phenomenon in the early ’90s in that community has now become an even more powerful, longitudinal study in the sociology of gangs, with her two recent updates of the material. (Young gang members write me from all over the country, after having read Celeste’s book, and have been deeply moved by it. Most say it’s the only book they have, thus far, ever read.)

My book will not be a How to deal with gangs book. It will not lay out a comprehensive plan for a city to prevent and intervene in their burgeoning gang situation.

Clearly, the themes that bind the stories together are things that matter to me. As a Jesuit for thirty-seven years and a priest for twenty-five years, it would not be possible for me to present these stories apart from God, Jesus, compassion, kinship, redemption, mercy, and our common call to delight in one another. If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives. William Blake wrote, We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love. Turns out this is what we all have in common, gang member and nongang member alike: we’re just trying to learn how to bear the beams of love.

A note on how I’ve chosen to proceed. In virtually every instance, I have changed the names of the young men and women whose stories fill these pages, with the exception of anecdotes in which the name is the subject of the story. I have also foregone mentioning any specific gang by its name. Too much heartache, pain, and death have been visited upon our communities to elevate these groupings to any possible fame these pages could bring them. Everything in this book happened, as best as I can recall. I apologize, antemano, if I have left out some detail, person, or subtle contour that those familiar with these stories would have included.

I was born and raised in the gang capital of the world, Los Angeles, California, just west of the area where I have spent nearly a quarter of a century in ministry. I had two wonderful parents, five sisters and two brothers, lived comfortably, went to Catholic private schools, and always had jobs once I was of an age to work. Disneyland was not the Happiest Place on Earth; my home on Norton Avenue was. As a teenager, though, I would not have known a gang member if one came up and, as they say, hit me upside the head. I would not have been able to find a gang if you’d sent me on a scavenger hunt to locate one. It is safe to declare that as a teenager growing up in LA, it would have been impossible for me to join a gang. That is a fact. That fact, however, does not make me morally superior to the young men and women you will meet in this book. Quite the opposite. I have come to see with greater clarity that the day simply won’t come when I am more noble, have more courage, or am closer to God than the folks whose lives fill these pages.

In Africa they say a person becomes a person through other people. There can be no doubt that the homies have returned me to myself. I’ve learned, with their patient guidance, to worship Christ as He lives in them. It’s easy to echo Gerard Manley Hopkins here, For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.

Once, after dealing with a particularly exasperating homie named Sharkey, I switch my strategy and decide to catch him in the act of doing the right thing. I can see I have been too harsh and exacting with him, and he is, after all, trying the best he can. I tell him how heroic he is and how the courage he now exhibits in transforming his life far surpasses the hollow bravery of his barrio past. I tell him that he is a giant among men. I mean it. Sharkey seems to be thrown off balance by all this and silently stares at me. Then he says, Damn, G . . . I’m gonna tattoo that on my heart.

In finding a home for these stories in this modest effort, I hope, likewise, to tattoo those mentioned here on our collective heart. Though this book does not concern itself with solving the gang problem, it does aspire to broaden the parameters of our kinship. It hopes not only to put a human face on the gang member, but to recognize our own wounds in the broken lives and daunting struggles of the men and women in these parables.

Our common human hospitality longs to find room for those who are left out. It’s just who we are if allowed to foster something different, something more greatly resembling what God had in mind. Perhaps, together, we can teach each other how to bear the beams of love, persons becoming persons, right before our eyes. Returned to ourselves.

Introduction

Dolores Mission and Homeboy Industries

I spent the summers of 1984 and 1985 as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. In 1986 I became pastor of the church. Originally, I was scheduled to go to Santa Clara University to run their student service program, but Bolivia changed all that. I can’t explain how the poor in Bolivia evangelized me during that year of 1984–85, but they turned me inside out, and from that moment forward I only wanted to walk with them. This was a wholly selfish decision on my part. I knew that the poor had some privileged delivery system for giving me access to the gospel. Naturally, I wanted to be around this. When I raised this desire to work with the poor with my provincial superior, I was sent to Dolores Mission, instead of Santa Clara, as the youngest pastor in the history of the diocese. The church had been in Boyle Heights for some forty years, nestled in the middle of two large public-housing projects, Pico Gardens and Aliso Village. Together, they comprised the largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi. When I arrived, we had eight active gangs, seven Latino and one African American. (The projects were 25 percent African American back in 1986 and are now 99.9 percent Latino.) At the time, the Pico-Aliso area was known to have the highest concentration of gang activity in the entire city. If Los Angeles was the gang capital of the world, our little postage-stamp-size area on the map was the gang capital of LA. I buried my first young person killed because of gang violence in 1988, and as of this writing, I have been called upon for this sad task an additional 167 times.

The first kid I buried was an eighteen-year-old identical twin. Even the family had a hard time distinguishing these two brothers from each other. At the funeral, Vicente peered into the casket of his brother, Danny. They were both wearing identical clothes. It was as if someone had slapped a mirror down and Vicente was staring at his own reflection. Because this was my first funeral of this kind, the snapshot of a young man peering at his own mirror image has stayed with me all these years, as a metaphor for gang violence in all its self-destruction.

At the time, there were so many gang-involved middle school kids who had been given the boot from their schools that their constant presence in the projects during school hours brought violence and major drug-dealing. So the first thing we did as a parish community, to respond to this gang reality, was to open our alternative school, Dolores Mission Alternative (DMA), in 1988. The school drew different gangs and their members to the third floor of Dolores Mission’s elementary school in what used to be the convent. Fights were daily occurrences and keeping staff was a challenge. We had a principal last two days and several teachers who hung in there for just one.

With the school came a new parish attitude. Suddenly, the welcome mat was tentatively placed out front. A new sense of church had emerged, open and inclusive, replacing the hermetically sealed model that had kept the good folks in and the bad folks out. The Christian Base Communities (Comunidades Eclesiales de Base—CEBs) were sectors of people in the parish, mainly women, who reflected on the gospel as it impacted their real lives. Their reflection compelled them to extend themselves to the gangs in their area of the projects. They would have carne asadas and other gatherings to communicate clearly that the gang members were not our enemies. One CEB even had a Thanksgiving dinner for homies who had no place to go. They wanted to signal to the gang members, You are our sons/daughters—whether we brought you into this world or not.

I can remember standing outside police tape on an early Sunday morning, just around the block from the church. The body of a gang member was lying on the ground, partially covered with a sheet. His head and upper torso were draped with the sheet, revealing only his oversize, cut-off Dickies shorts, white tube socks pulled up to the knee, and a pair of blue Nike Cortez—all standard-issue gang wear at the time. He wasn’t from the projects, and who knows why he wandered into this foreign turf. Pam McDuffy, an activist mother in the community, sidled up to me and put her arm around my waist. She was crying. I don’t know who that kid is, but he was some mother’s son.

Soon gang members began to kick it at the church. The garage became a quasi-weight room, and the bell tower always had some ten gang members or so huddled there, smoking cigarettes and passing the time. I figured if they’re at the church, they’re not wreaking havoc in the community. This didn’t thrill all parishioners, and the grumbling reached a pitch that forced me to call a parish meeting. The parish hall was packed; this would be either a vote of confidence in my leadership or an opportunity for the parishioners to tell me, Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry.

I didn’t speak. But the E. F. Huttons of the community (when they spoke, people tended to listen), Teresa Navarro and Paula Hernandez, needed only to stand and invoke Jesus.

We help gang members at this parish because it is what Jesus would do.

People applauded and the parish never looked back.

Soon the women organized major marches, or caminatas, moving through the projects, often in the heat of tension and in the wake of ceaseless shooting. The Comité Pro Paz (Committee for Peace), as the women called themselves, would move to hotspots, and their gentle praying and singing presence would calm the gang members ready for battle.

It was one such march that gave birth to Homeboy Industries in 1988. Armed with fliers reading Jobs for a Future, hundreds of women walked to the factories surrounding the housing projects and, with this show of force, handed a flier to the foreman of each factory. It had become clear that what gang members most requested were jobs. Having a jale (a job) was all they ever talked about. We waited for the factories to call with employment offers, but this never happened. Still, an organization was born: Jobs for a Future—which initially sought gainful employment for the gang members from Pico-Aliso.

This parish-led program soon launched projects that hired huge swaths of gang members: the building of a child-care center, neighborhood clean-up crews, and graffiti removal, landscaping, and maintenance crews. Gang members were placed in a variety of businesses and nonprofits, and Jobs for a Future paid their salaries. I wrote more rubber checks than a U.S. congressperson. We constantly lived in the paradox of precariousness. The money was never there when you needed it, and it was always on time.

It was during this period that I promoted any number of truces, cease-fires, and peace treaties. I spent a great deal of time in a kind of shuttle diplomacy, riding my bike between neighborhoods (as gang members do, I use interchangeably the words gang, barrio, and neighborhood; they all refer to gang), securing signed agreements from the warring factions. Some were Pyrrhic victories such as an agreement not to shoot into houses.

I learned early on that all sides would speak so positively about the peace process when first approached.

Yeah, G [what most homies call me; short for Greg], let’s get a peace treaty going.

But once you brought them together, they couldn’t resist posturing in high gear in front of one another. I eventually ceased having these meetings, and like the Soviet Union and the USA, I worked out all the details of peace beforehand and just had the principals sign the agreements.

That was then; this is now. Though I don’t regret having orchestrated these truces and treaties, I’d never do it again. The unintended consequence of it all was that it legitimized the gangs and fed them oxygen. I eventually came to see that this kind of work keeps gangs alive.

The unrest of 1992 was unlike anything I had ever seen in Los Angeles. Working my paper corner as a sixth grader during the Watts riots in 1965, I had a sense then of containment—that this was unrest happening over there.

Not so in 1992. The sky, blackened with smoke, reached every corner of the city. I sat on the stoop of an apartment in Pico Gardens with a huge gang member, a shot-caller. When all the other homies were out of earshot, he turned to me and said, This is the end of the world, isn’t it, G? his voice trembling and uncertain.

I reassured him, No, ’course it isn’t.

But I wasn’t at all sure that he was wrong. The National Guard arrived in our projects several days after the initial explosion of things, but we didn’t need them there. Things didn’t explode in this, the poorest of communities in Los Angeles, where everyone fully expected mayhem. I suspect the reason they didn’t was that we had so many strategically employed gang members who finally had a stake in keeping the projects from igniting that the peace was kept.

Because I said as much in a Los Angeles Times interview about the riot, Ray Stark summoned me. Ray was a hugely successful Hollywood agent (Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas) and a megahit movie producer (Funny Girl). His beloved wife, Fran, had died shortly before our visit, and Ray wanted to make an impact on this burgeoning and daunting gang issue. At our meeting Ray suggested some ideas that I had to respectfully dismiss. Finally, after I swatted down a number of these suggestions (e.g., arm gang members with their own video cameras so we could make a documentary), Ray was exasperated.

I give up, what do you think I should do with my money?

I told him that an old bakery was for sale across the street from the church. He could buy it, and we could bring rival gang members together. We could call it The Homeboy Bakery.

Ray was electrified, and so we began the economic-development branch of Jobs for a Future. Some months later, we commandeered a tortilla machine in the Grand Central Market, and now, with multiple businesses, we became Homeboy Industries (no longer Jobs for a Future) in the summer of 1992.

Our first office was on the church property, but our second was a storefront at 1848 East First Street, from 1994 to 2000. White Memorial Hospital, long supporters of my work with gang members, paid my rent. It was here that gang members from all the forty-plus gangs in the Hollenbeck Police Division (some ten thousand members) began to arrive, looking for a way out of the gang life. Perhaps gang members had always longed for this, but for the absence of a place to go, the desire had festered. Soon we added staff and job developers to locate employment in the private sector. We began tattoo removal because of a guy named Ramiro. A gang member, fresh out of prison, with a long record, had FUCK THE WORLD tattooed on his forehead, completely filling the space there. He told me his job search was not going so great. I’m only imagining him at McDonald’s: Do you want fries with that? and seeing mothers grab their kids, fleeing the store.

So I hired him at the bakery, and little by little we erased his forehead. We have since added many laser machines and doctors who perform more than four thousand treatments a year.

We owe it all to Ramiro (who moved on to a job as a security guard at a movie studio—no trace left of the angriest moment in his life).

Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy

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