The Jersey City Independent"

Photo: Maury Phillios

Rev. Greg Boyle is the founder of the large Los Angeles gang-intervention program Homeboy Industries (tagline: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job”). The nonprofit provides job training, placement assistance and other free programs, but also operates small businesses (Homeboy Bakery, Homegirl Cafe, and even Homeboy Silkscreen) that provides transitional jobs for former gang members who might not have great employment prospects because of their pasts. The small businesses helps these people learn new skills while building a resume and gaining valuable work experience.

Boyle, whose recent memoir Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion was released earlier this month, will speak at St. Peter’s College Monday at 11 am as part of the college’s Ignatian Heritage Week, a collaboration of performances, lectures and presentations that address the identity and principles surrounding Ignatian spirituality. We caught up with Boyle late last week over email to ask him a few questions about his work.

How did you get into your gang-intervention and youth outreach work? Had you always wanted to do this, or was it something that organically evolved, or was it driven by a single event?

I was pastor of the poorest parish in Los Angeles, with eight gangs, in the housing projects which comprised the largest grouping of public housing west of the Mississippi. It was the area of highest concentration of gang activity in Los Angeles (the gang capitol of the world: 1100 gangs; 86,000 gang members). I buried my first kid killed by this sadness in 1988 and buried my 168th three months ago.

I fell into this ministry.

In Jersey City, many youth programs have fallen victim to the economic hard times, and lots of parents and community members say there isn’t enough being done by the city itself to provide opportunities. What’s the role that local government has to play in this kind of work?

Though government needs to be involved, it is all hands on deck — everybody needs to do their part. So much needs to be done that I am hard pressed to imagine anyone not bringing a beneficial presence to this issue.

How does your faith inform what you do? How does the idea of social justice spring from your beliefs?

If our outreach to gang members does not involve concrete help, Jesus is not interested. Jesus stood with those on the margins, with those whose burdens were more than they can bear, with the easily despised and the readily left-out; with the poor and powerless and the voiceless. And so it is a privilege to stand with the demonized, so that the demonizing will stop. To stand with the disposable, so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

What kind of advice would you give someone trying to do similar work in, say, Jersey City?

Begin in churches and offer what gang members actually need: help, jobs, care and attention.

What about advice for young people who might not have many options, and their parents? How can they both work to stay out of the gang life?

Gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope. No hopeful kid has ever joined a gang. Kids are not drawn or attracted to gangs; they are not seeking anything when they join a gang — they are always fleeing something. Always. Gangs are the places kids go when they’ve encountered their life as a misery — and misery loves company. Just keep kids infused with hope.

What’s the hardest part of your work, and what’s the most rewarding?

Hardest part: raising enough money to keep our doors open.

Most rewarding: watching folks discover the truth of who they are: that they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them.

Rev. Greg Boyle will give a free lecture, “Tattoos on the Heart: Strategies for Working With At-Risk Youth,” Monday, March 29, at 11 am, at St. Peter’s College’s McIntyre Lounge.