G-Dog

On Wednesday night, my casa attended a talk given by Fr. Greg Boyle at USC. Fr. Greg is the founder of Homeboy Industries , a nonprofit downtown that provides employment opportunities, courses, and social services to gang members in LA. There are over 1,100 different gangs in LA County alone, and thousands of young people – particularly pre-teens and adolescents – are caught up in the violence and crime that comes with gang affiliations. In communities where gang membership is the only known form of protection and survival, it makes sense to me that kids – most of whom are living below the poverty line and in broken homes – chose to join.

Fr. Greg, affectionately known by the homies he works with as “G,” is currently on a book tour promoting Tattoos on the Heart.Much of his talk last night reflected what is in this book. We have a copy in our house, so it is certainly next on my reading list. Currently, I’m reading G-dog and Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles.  The book is an account of Fr. Greg’s work in the early-mid 90’s at Dolores Mission Parish, the Jesuit parish surrounded by the largest housing project complex west of the Mississippi.  I am learning so much about Fr. Greg’s work, his philosophy, and also about second chances. The whole principal of Fr. Greg’s pastoral work in East LA and at Homeboy is to treat the homies, many of whom are ex-convicts with ‘resumes’ that include crime, addiction, and gang-affiliation, as human. It sounds so simple. But is it?

Cara works as a case manager at Homeboy. As I read more about Homeboy and hear her stories, I grow more and more in awe of what she does. Thinking about it, our two programs operate on opposite ends of the gang-involvement spectrum. My kids at Urban Compass live in a neighborhood controlled by a very well known gang.  Our goal is prevention: to keep them out of neighborhood gangs, off the streets, and motivated to stay in school.  We want to give them a chance. As a case manager at Homeboy, Cara’s works in intervention: her role is to give people a second chance. Her clients have been involved in gangs and have records, but at Homeboy, they are humans. They are family. For many of the homies, the only family they know before Homeboy is their gang family. The gang becomes a source of income, protection from enemy gangs, employment (think drug sales), and relationship. Urban Compass and Homeboy work to model positive relationships outside the gang structure, and provide opportunities for people before, during, and after gang involvement.

Some points of reflection from Fr. Greg’s talk…

Kinship: “We’ve forgotten that we belong to each other.” Fr. Greg shared this theme last night, and it struck me as an almost deeper and more provocative word than solidarity, a term I have heard and used a lot in my own discussions about and reflections on service and social justice. Kinship, though, implies family, belonging, community in the most intimately connected sense.  “No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice.”

Church: Our collective work, as a people, is to work against separation, to work towards a world where there is no “them.” To be kin, there can be no “other” person. In East LA, this meant that the definition of ‘church’ must change. Many traditional church communities believe that the good people are inside the church, and the bad ones are kept out. But to be kin, to be in solidarity, we must jostle that definition. Fr. Greg did this by starting a school for gang members in Dolores Mission Parish, so he very literally invited the “bad” people inside.

Service: An appropriate theme to reflect on with 10 JVs in the audience! “Service is the hallway that leads to the ballroom of kinship.” G’s mission and model is not built on the service provider and service recipient model, but is rather a relational model: talk to people, get to know their story, take them seriously, treat them as humans, treat them as family.  Service is not about helping. F. Greg told a story about a dream that one of his homies had: Fr. Greg and the homie were standing together in a completely dark room. The homie, the dreamer, couldn’t find any source light. Then, G used his flashlight to shine a beam of light across the room directly to the light-switch. In retelling the dream, Fr. Greg emphasized that no one else could have turned the light on, metaphorically speaking, for this homie, but it was his role – and is our collective role – to use our light to show each other how we can do it for ourselves. (Doesn’t that give you chills?!)

The following evening, my house watched a documentary about the development of gangs in Los Angeles. I highly recommend Crips and Bloods: Made In America to anyone who is interested in learning more about the psychology, history, and rationale behind gangs. This documentary is mainly focused on black gangs formed in Los Angeles – the most famous of which are now found in almost every major city.  I think the documentary addresses a lot of questions that people like me, who were raised in a world completely never penetrated by gang involvement, understand the reasons why people like my students, whose lives since the moment they were born have been surrounded by this lifestyle, join gangs.  Also, much of the documentary shows images of Nickerson Gardens, the neighborhood where Urban Compass Students live.

  

I really hope to return to these themes in a couple weeks when I meet my students. Even though I am very much enjoying work, I am getting very antsy without students! My hope is to keep Fr. Greg’s reflections on kinship, church, and service in mind as I meet my students and their families, and come to know more about their lives.  If you have any reflections, ideas, questions to share…whatever it may be…please comment or email me!  Thanks again for reading J