Father Greg Boyle, Founder, Homeboy Industries - On Radical Compassion

[Music] [Applause] [Music] father Bole is the subject of Academy Award winner free to lead Mock's 2012 documentary called g dog he has received the California Peace Prize and inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 20 4 the White House named father boy a champion of change he received the 2016 humanitarian of the Year award from the James Beard Foundation the national culinary arts organization father Bo is one of the most inspirational voices and speakers of our time and we are really privileged to have him here with us as our nro disruptor for change for good he is Father Greg [Applause] Bo thank you thank you jelle I think it's important to talk about what are we disrupting I turned on CNN and and the big banner was attack on Republicans and I remember thinking wow really you know we couldn't be that so unsophisticated you know but I thought it was an interesting thing you know this wasn't the story of a guy with opinions it was a mentally ill man with a an assault weapon weon what are we disrupting we're disrupting this notion that it's possible that there are some folks who aren't our own who don't belong to us Mother Teresa diagnosed the world's ills correctly I think when she said that the problem is that we've forgotten that we belong to each other and these are kind of untenable situations for ourselves as people the guy who opened up fire because he had to carry clearly mental illness he belongs to us and so does Dylan rof who killed eight people at mother ual church he belongs to us find me somebody who doesn't belong to us who isn't our own I don't think you'll be able to find anybody and I think that's key until we know that there are no such thing as bad guys and much less bad ombr uh for 30 years I've worked with gang members I've never met one I've never met an evil person never because the minute you start to know what people carry it breaks through and you stand in awe at what folks have to carry rather than in Judgment at how they carry it everybody belongs it's where you begin and so you imagine a c circle of compassion then you imagine nobody standing outside that Circle that's what we try to disrupt is the notion that there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives we stand against it and you stand at the margins with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless and those whose dignity has been denied and those whose burdens including mental illness are more than they can bear for which you can only have one response compassion and that's why it's untenable in our country because we have to hate them and then you stand against demonizing so that the demonizing will stop and you stand with the Disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away and then homeboy becomes a sanctuary for folks who feel less than and then they become the sanctuary that they sought there and then they go home and provide and present Sanctuary for their kids and Cycles get broken we belong to each other and so we try to create a community of kinship such that God in fact might recognize it and homeboy really is about healing in our early days you know we were about uh Nothing Stops a bullet like a job an educated inmate mayor may not return to prison or an employed one may or may not return to prison but a healed gang member won't ever go back to prison period I would bet my whole life on that and we have people like Miguel and Jose who are here who are not just homeboys and been in prison a long time but our leaders but in the end the invitation is to somehow uh acknowledge that we belong to each other and so that we can say everybody is our own and and mass incarceration just won't matter to people unless folks know that we all belong that there is no us and them there's just us and homeboy wants to be what the world is ultimately invited to become which is this place of kinship and connection there's a homie uh named Danny who uh who I knew as a little kid 13 years old and he was uh oh he was a knucklehead he was so into his gang and so into his V and he was always putting work putting in work for his neighborhood and and he once vowed to me as I saw him in his in his where his homies kicked it in this alley he said you know I won't ever step foot in Homeboy Industries but I got to know him you know and uh and saw him when he was in juvenile hall and in probation camp and Youth Authority finally went to prison at uh 18 but it only did two years and we always say at homeboy you know because it's recovery essentially it it it takes what it takes in recovery you know the uh the birth of a son the death of a friend a long stretch in prison it takes what it takes for people to kind of redirect their lives and and so Danny gets out after 2 years in prison and um his mother was uh dying of pancreatic cancer and uh a large family but he was the designated hospice caregiver it was so tender and gentle to watch this kid by her bedside especially knowing that this woman actually tortured this kid when he was a child and um so uh he was there every day of taking care of her and then she died and a week later I buried her and a week after that he walked into um Homeboy Industries and so he worked there and I I could watch him from my little perch and my glass and clothed office as you saw there and wow there he is and he's got his arm around enemies right Rivals guys I know he used to shoot at I know he did cuz I was there you know and and and he was back in school and he got his GED and then he went to uh elac and he kind of inhabited the truth of who he was that he was exactly what God had in mind when God made him and and he was becoming that truth and so uh he comes into my office one day and uh his big dramatic kind of uh introduction to what he was going to tell me was what happened to me yesterday he says has never happened to me in my life and so he tells me that he was on the Gold Line after the uh office had closed and he uh was taking the train East to go home and it was a packed train but he was able to get a seat and he said standing right in front of him hanging on to this kind of pole he said was a medal be guy a guy was a little bit drunk he said I know he's a homie cuz I can see tattoos on his hand uh but he's an older guy I don't really know who he is and Danny was wearing a a homeboy sweatshirt that said jobs not jails big thing that said Homeboy Industries and the little bit drunk guy says hey you work there and Danny doesn't think he ought to really engage this guy and so uh he kind of nods is it any good and um Danny says well it's helped me in fact I don't think I'm going to go back to prison because of this place and then he stands up and he fishes into his pocket and he finds a piece of paper and a pen and he starts to write on this piece of paper the address at Homeboy Industries and as he's telling me the story he says I couldn't believe I knew the address by heart you know and so he writes it out and he hands it to the guy and he says come see us we'll help you and the guy studies the piece of paper and he says thank you and the train stops and the guy gets off and Dany takes his seat again and then you can tell he's starting to feel the emotion and he says what happened to me next has never happened to me in my life everyone on the train was looking at me everyone on the train was nodding at me everyone on the train was smiling at me and for the first time in my life I felt admired absolutely nothing can change until we stand against forgetting that we belong to each other it's how it works and so we kind of dedicate ourselves I think to the slow work of God which is to be in kinship with each other and to insist on it and even Times Like These in which we live remind us of the things we care about it occurs to people uh universities mainly to um uh force their students sometimes to read my book against their will and I'm not complaining uh but Gonzaga University my alma moer forced The Freshman Class to read my book for the summer before they started and so they um uh called me and uh said would you come and speak and it'll be a huge kind of venue with a thousand people people including all these freshmen and I said sure and they said can you bring two homies with you and I said sure So I invited two homies uh Bobby African-American gang member who worked in our bakery at the time and Mario who uh at the time worked in our merchandise store Mario is probably the most tattooed individual who has ever worked there he's all sleeved out and his neck is blackened with the name of his gang and head shaved and covered in tattoos and forehead cheeks chin eyelids and i' never actually been in public with him you know so we were walking through Burbank and people are like this you know and mothers are clutching their kids a little more closely and I'm thinking wow isn't that interesting because if you were to go to Homeboy Industries tomorrow and asked anyone who is the kindest most gentle soul who works there no one will say me they'll say Mario he sells baked goods behind the the counter at the bakery kind gentle he's proof that only the soul that ventilates the world with tenderness has any chance of changing the world so uh we get to Gonzaga and so I tell Mario and Bobby I said I'm not going to speak in any of these classroom ones you will and they're nervous especially Mario uh but they get up and they do a good job and there's stories of Terror and torture and violence and abuse of every imaginable kind and honest to God if their stories had been Flames you'd have to keep your distance otherwise you'd get scorched very moving so then I did my 45 minutes or whatever and then I invited them to come on up and and yeah qu yes ma'am and a woman stands and she says yeah I got a question is for Mario first question out the gates for Mario so Mario he comes and he clutches the microphone and yes and he's just terrified and he's this tall drink of water little skinny guy and the woman says well uh you say you're a father and you have a son and a daughter and they're about to enter their teenage years what wisdom do you impart to them you know what advice do you give them and Mario just clutches the microphone and he closes his eyes and and I can feel the emotion starting to rise and he's getting a damn hernia trying to come up with some answer you know and when suddenly he blurts out I just and as soon as he says those two words he Retreats back to his closed eyes microphone clutching Retreat and I he's trembling now but he wants to get this answer out I just don't want my kids to turn out to be like me and there's silence until the woman who asked the question stands and now it's her turned to cry and she says why wouldn't you want your kids to turn out to be like you you are loving you are kind you are gentle you are wise I hope your kids turn out to be like you and a thousand total perfect strangers stand and they will not stop clapping and all Mario can do is hold his face in his hand so overwhelmed that this room full of strangers had returned him to himself and they in turned in turn returned to themselves because it is exquisitely [Applause] mutual when we enter into kinship with each other when we declare with our lives that there is no one who is not our own no one and so we stand against forgetting that we belong to each other amen I got a warm warm Applause [Applause] for you're about to celebrate or at least commemorate 30 years three decades with homeboy what's the biggest takeaway if you had to summarize just the one thing you've learned learned from the capacity of the human being what would it be um well I've learned a lot you know homeboy has evolved over the years you know I think if you um our our treatment plans are only as good as our diagnosis and so homeboy has sort of helped uh the city of Los Angeles arrive at a diagnosis and it it did that I think by listening to people by receiving people by allowing yourselves to be reached by them so I think if you listen people will tell you I think it's the difference between humility and hubris you know humility asks folks on the margins what would help and hubris says here's what your problem is and I think it's important at the get-go to kind of choose a stance that that wants to uh receive who people are and and Delight in who they are I mean the day won't ever come come when I have more courage or I am more noble or I'm closer to God I mean just absolutely they taught me more than um all the stuff that's valuable and so but we as an organization you know have really moved through all sorts of periods you know where where we worked with gangs in the early days and now we say we don't work with gangs we work with gang members because we don't want to supply oxygen into gangs and that was something we learned and uh you know we were an employment dispatching industry where we were sending homies to um to employment but there wasn't essential healing that happened and and so they had no resilience and they hadn't reidentified who they are in the world and so we learned that uh you know over 30 years and so now we're in a different place place and and and I like where we are because it's a community of tenderness if love is the answer Community is the context but tenderness is the methodology tenderness is is the connective tissue otherwise love stays in the air or in your head but it so we're not trans we're not a transactional agency homeboy is relational because that's the only thing that works I think if you go through this country and find programs that not only work but help it's because they're anchored in relationships that's why folks show up every day we're because it's it's unrelenting in its relational tenderness and that's a foreign thing to the gang member there was a woman in the film that I think said so much she said father G says hello to me by my name so people feel seen not just by their tattoos or their affiliation um but they feel seen we live in a world today where so many are not seen you say to be in service to a real expression of compassion is not just to be in service it is actually to see as you said kinship in one another it's so very hard in the outside world in politics in corporate America in Los Angeles and both East West when such separatism such Shame of the poor and the disenfranchise is occurring more than ever can what you've done at Homeboy Industries translate into this infrastructure do you see it happening well you know again that it that's why it's important I think sometimes to unders or what needs to be disrupted you know because we get comp complacent you know um I I even think in terms of if you'll permit me you know because I think we have two kinds of gods you know there's a God we actually have and then there's the god we've settled for so um because recently i' visited mother Emanuel Church and I remember you know just days after um um this terrible tragedy had happened um and we all recall it family members were standing in front of Dylan roof and forgiving him and everybody knew that you were in the presence of the God we actually have but cut to I don't know nine months later when they decide to execute him and call it God's justice that's the god we've settled for that's the god who's more realistic that's the partial God and so I think it's important to know what it is that we're being called to disrupt at homeboy one of the homies said the other day all of us homies are used to being watched but we're we're not used to being seen so you disrupt those little things that we settle for all along the way and because the goal is to become to again this is my perspective but it's you want to become in the be in the world who God is compassionate loving kindness and and and frankly you know Jesus Took only four things seriously inclusion nonviolence unconditional compassionate loving kindness that's one thing and acceptance and when we resist today and want to disrupt what are we disrupting we're disrupting this inclination as Bob was saying you know to exclude and and and the tolerance for violence and conditions on our love and wholesale rejection of people so this isn't about and I agree with Bob this isn't about elections or who won this is about Republican or Democrat this is really huge because when you stand against forgetting that we belong to each other you Embrace those things that you have to take seriously that will show us how to resist in in compelling ways and so I I think this these are not just interesting times but they're urgent in terms of what we what are we uh inviting really to to um acknowledge what it is that we really care about and I think it's going to you know the the arc is going to move in such a way uh that we lead you know inextricably to kinship 30 years ago Homeboy Industries for the first 10 years was hated despised bomb threat death threats hate mail not from gang members cuz we always represented hope for them but but folks who who hated gang members who demonized and it's hard to retrieve that time because they really kind of don't exist not like in those days operation hammer and wipe them out and um that's not around today like it was 20 years ago and that's good so for people who who get discouraged about how long this is taking well you know you just make progress in the good and and you believe in the things that are good and true and right and just and you believe that only the soul that can ventilate the world with tenderness has any shot at this anyway you're you make me cry when I hear you um in person and in all your speeches that I've seen on YouTube because you are so just bloody Humane and deeply see the grace in the broken and and the not broken um but I wonder as a human being and when I've read Mother Teresa's work she has said that she even uh doubted her faith and struggled in her service and I wonder you know is it easy for you in your capacity in your tenure now three decades to always see the grace in the tude hardness that first arrives um or is it something you have to work at and I pray that it is because it will give us all hope to be able to do the same no I've really found it quite easy um no I'm just kidding um no I mean but part of the thing is you know I did it wrong for a long time you know in my early years I thought I was supposed to save people and and I think saving lives is for the Coast Guard so I I sort of stopped doing that and then it's more accompaniment and then it's um you're going to hold it the mirror and I'm going to you know remind you who you are and then you want folks you want to see folks as God sees them and that's that's really quite easy and but you know tikn Natan has a poem it's it's more about anger but in it he says uh keep your loneliness warm and part of what he means is don't let your Brokenness and your own wound be very far because you're going to need it every day because if you don't welcome your own wound you will be tempted to despise the wounded and and that is sort of a diagnosis of what's happening in our country at the moment because you can't allow yourself to be strangers to your own Brokenness because you will be tempted to despise the broken that's why you need to keep your loneliness warm that's why you need to keep it right at hand so you can get underneath Behavior what language is this Behavior speaking what kind of pain is this person in nobody doubts for a second that the God we actually have asks that question of the guy who open fire on the baseball practice yesterday I mean nobody doubts that for even a second now we don't operate out of that because we've settled for a more realistic God but nobody doubts in their heart that that God says wow what kind of pain is that guy in because he belongs to me and so it forces you to ask that question I think you know in the California endowment and Bob has made so much progress in this that that the kind of the New Frontier is really the mental health issue that it's not just about stigmatizing it's once we can stand in awe at what folks have to carry then we're going to leave judgment behind and then compassion is going to rush in the largest mental institution in the world is LA County Jail what does that tell us we're we're in denial we'd rather think that people are bad rather than unwell and that will change someday but that has to change because we love striking the high moral distance between us and them we are not like that guy that opened up fire yesterday morning in Virginia but he belongs to us and and that's a tough stance to take but nobody doubts for a second that it's the only stance that God takes you have seen practically um the Transcendence of hate enemies come together and work together how does that happen realistically and why does it happen when they see themselves in each other and it's something that could be projected into the national narrative well you know gang violence is about something else this is is why in my own history of doing this I I stopped doing shuttle diplomacy peace treaty ceas fires I stopped doing it because I I always believe that you need to be anchored in this work in the two refusals you refuse to demonize a single gang member and you refuse to romanticize a single gang you have to romanticize a gang if you're putting them bringing them together you have to there's no other way around it because you have to see them as nation states or um Northern Ireland or the Middle East and they aren't it's gang violence is the language of the despondent and the traumatized Infuse hope to folks for whom hope is foreign or healed heal the damaged and the traumatized or deliver Mental Health Services in a timely and culturally appro appropriate way then you're really doing something but we're we're all into kind of symptom relief we all want to calm the cough of the lung cancer patient rather than deal with the lung cancer and it's too bad because it's shortsighted and then we're stratching our heads why we don't make progress I'm old-fashioned I think peacemaking requires conflict there is no conflict in game violence there's violence but there's no conflict it's not about anything those diagnoses the key diagnostic moments are always important because once you know that okay I'm not going to do that anymore because that just serves the cohesion of gangs that supplies oxygen one gang member at a time and and homeboy is historically in this County it's the it's the exit ramp even for gang members who have never walked through the door in their imagination it's important that it exists it's a little bit like some essential piece of infrastructure in the LA County I I don't know what would happen it's a little bit like what would happen if the Golden Gate Bridge just fell over it would be more than inconvenient in San Francisco it it would be so disruptive and and uh and that's tough because I know if homeboy was a a shelter for abandoned puppies we'd be endowed by now but we're not you know no place on the planet has more gang members who show up wanting to redirect their lives we don't recruit we don't coax we don't force they have to walk through the door and there is no place anywhere in this country where more gang members walk through the door and yet we shouldn't struggle as much as we do and um and that's too bad you know because that's only because we haven't arrived at that moment of kinship where we can say yeah they belong to us too and they are some Mother's Son and they have kids and and we're all better off if we can say yeah we're going to help them too it doesn't just have a singular impact on Public Safety in the county in which we all live but it's also a step in the direction of God's dream come true and I think the only thing that quenches God's thirst is our connection to each other is our Union is our our kinship you often quote Martin Luther King in your speeches and you say it's not where we've come from it's where we're going so if you had to project the next just decade after 30 years of immense and immeasurable service how would you paint that next 10 years for you and for homeboy well Martin Luther King was talking about church and he says church is not the place you come to it's the place you go from so he's trying to get folks to not stay complacent and and he's trying to disrupt a kind of a status quo and um what we've settled for as a society um but I believe that people are good thoroughly good it's just that they don't know it or they've forgotten or they have to be reintroduced to their own uh tenderness and kindness and and Brilliance and so um you know I'm happy that homeboy has become this model and and that there are 141 programs in the United States and 16 outside the country who have all come to our place and have started similar programs um to kind of stand at the margins uh because that's the only place where the margins get erased and um so the more that that happens in an incremental slow way the better and you know I folks who work at homeboy they know the experience of not becoming depleted they're exhausted but they're not depleted and that's because they go there every day including folks who are here tonight to be reached by folks who are trustworthy guides who know what it's like to have been cut off and because they've suffered that particular pain they're the ones who will lead the rest of us to the kinship of God and so that doesn't deplete you that fulfills you that's not okay that's pretty perfect it's past my bedtime does anybody uh care [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] about [Music]

Channel: Radical Disruptors

Views: 114,252

Keywords:

Id: 4rLTkgkTTa0

Length: 37min 32sec (2252 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2017