Film: Homeboy (United States)

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00:00:00: SOUND UP
00:00:06: [MUSIC PLAYS]
00:00:12: FATHER GREGORY BOYLE, V/O: In Los Angeles County, there are 1,100 gangs and 86,000 gang members. More than 600 of those gangs would be Latino.
00:00:21: CHARLIE: How do you do it?
00:00:22: FATHER GREGORY J. BOYLE, Executive Director, Homeboy Industries: Somebody has to do prevention, keep kids from joining gangs and engage them and somehow keep them connected to loving, caring adults who pay attention.
00:00:31: FATHER BOYLE: (TO GIRL) Hey, kiddo, are you working?
00:00:32: GIRL: No.
00:00:33: FATHER BOYLE: Gangs are the places kids go when they’ve encountered their life as a misery. The kids are going to drift and misery loves company.
00:00:42: FATHER BOYLE: I’ve never met a hopeful kid who joined a gang – never ever, not once. Kids who can’t really conjure up an image of tomorrow move closer and closer to joining a gang. And kids don’t seek anything when they join a gang. They flee something. You know, he can’t say that both his parents were heroin addicts and, and been long dead. That guy can’t say that, you know, my mom used to put cigarettes out on me when I was a kid. Or, that kid’s gonna have a hard time saying that his mom used to hold his head in the toilet and flush until he nearly drowned, as a way to punish him.
00:01:17: FATHER BOYLE: In ’92, we started Homeboy Industries by way of Homeboy Bakery because we wanted to create jobs because people weren’t hiring these guys. Then, each thing was an evolution, you know. As we would progress, we’d discover things. We’d say, “Those are a lot of tattoos. They want them off. Nobody’s hiring them.
00:01:36: TATOO REMOVER: This, I’ll go over it with a little less strength because it’s already scarring. I think you were trying to take it away, right?
00:01:42: MAN: Yeah, I burned it off.
00:01:44: FATHER BOYLE: So, we started tattoo removal. We removed 1200 tattoos last year. We have 400 treatments a month. We have 1600 on the waiting list. This is Roscoe. How many treatments have you – He just got out of prison. What prison did you just get out of?
00:01:58: ROSCOE: Centinela.
00:01:59: FATHER BOYLE: Centinela.
00:02:00: FATHER BOYLE: This place is a touchstone. A place where they can come and connect with that sense of resilience. You want to get them to a place where they feel confident of who they are because, when they leave this place, the world’s gonna throw stuff at ‘em that’s gonna knock ‘em for a loop.
00:02:20: JOSEPH, Employee, Homeboy Industries: I’m 27 years old. I was born in Boyle Heights at the (UNCLEAR) Projects. I’ve been doing drugs and gang-banging since I was a really young kid. Like some people ask me, you know, “Well, how was it before – Try to remember the guy before you started gang-banging and using drugs and stuff and when I think back that far, I’m, like, on rollerskates, you know. (LAUGHS)
00:02:40: JOSEPH: So, we’d come down here and write all over the walls and get into the river on inner tubes and float down the river. It’s a little deep, you know. It starts way back. I mean, some of these kids out here don’t even know what they’re fighting for anymore. You know what I mean?
00:02:56: FATHER BOYLE: You start to see how hard it is for people to navigate these waters here, given that enormous gang reality. I came here as a priest in 1984. We had eight gangs at that time at war with each other. I buried my first kid in 1988. I buried my 141st a week ago. I’ve lived through a decade of death in this community from ’88 to ’98. In 1992, we had a thousand gang-related homicides in L.A. County. We had five hundred last year. That’s still horrific, but that’s still progress.
00:03:37: JOSEPH: I was shot in both legs, once when I was fourteen. I was shot right there - it went in and out - with a nine millimeter. When I turned fifteen, a year later, I was shot once here with a .38 special. I think I was just lucky. (LAUGHS) Yeah, because it let off the whole clip, but he only hit me once. I think this person that was once a criminal gang-banger, or whatever it was, can change into a productive member of society, you know. People change. I feel like Homeboy Industries is my calling. You know, I love to do what I do and I love to reach out to these kids because they’re all we got, you know, and I don’t want these kids going through what I went through. I believe in giving people chances and I think that’s exactly what Father Boyle does. He gives people chances – second chances, third chances, fourth chances, you know, whatever it takes. Forever. He’ll never turn you away.
00:04:32: FATHER BOYLE: You want to communicate always a “no matter what-ness.” No matter what you do, the day won’t ever come when I withdraw love or support or help from you. That day won’t ever come.
00:04:50: [MUSIC PLAYS – GRAPHIC]
Support Homeboy Industries
Homeboy Bakery
Homegirl Café
Homeboy/Homegirl Merchandise
Homeboy Silkscreen
Homeboy Landscaping
Homeboy Maintenance
Homeboy Graffiti Removal
www.homeboy-industries.org
00:05:00: END OF FILM

Now Viewing: Homeboy

Homeboy Industries is bringing hope to some of L.A.'s toughest neighborhoods by providing ways for at-risk youth and former gang members to meaningfully contribute to their communities. Under the leadership of the inspiring Father Greg Boyle, and with the motto Nothing Stops a Bullet like a Job, they guide more than 1,000 young people a month away from gang life.