Father Boyle, Founder of Homeboy Industries

DATE September 10, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Father Gregory Boyle discusses his career working with
former gang members in Los Angeles
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily
News, sitting in for Terry Gross.

Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who went from presiding over a mission
to embarking on one. From 1986 to '92, He was the pastor of Dolores Mission
Church in Los Angeles, a church which serves a poor and predominantly Latino
neighborhood. Then he founded Homeboy Industries, whose mission is to find
jobs for ex-gang members. Homeboy Industries finds jobs for former gang
members and ex-convicts in businesses that are willing to hire young people at
risk, and it runs fives businesses of its own, including a silk-screening
operation, a landscaping service and, until recently, a graffiti removal
service. The graffiti removal operation was stopped after two of the workers
were killed this summer. Last month the mayor and local labor leaders stepped
up and offered other jobs to those workers who were part of the graffiti
removal service.

Boyle has put his own life on the line, exposing himself to the cross-fire of
gang violence. Last year, he found out that illness was putting his life on
the line. He was diagnosed with leukemia, which, he says, is now in
remission. Terry spoke with Father Boyle last winter and again today. We'll
hear their new interview later in the show, but first, let's hear the
interview recorded in February. Father Boyle has known some of the people he's
worked with for nearly 20 years.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Keeping in touch with people who you worked with when they were in gangs and
are now long out of gangs, have you learned anything about what seems to reach
somebody on a more permanent life-changing basis?

Father GREGORY BOYLE (Founder, Homeboy Industries): Yeah. I think part of
what really works is the personal connection, you know, where people feel like
a sense of belonging. You know, I think that's what people experience at
Homeboy Industries, at the program I run. You know, community is the fullest,
truest antidote to gangs. It really supplies, you know, a place where kids
can truly become the truth of who they are. They can start to see that they
are exactly what God had in mind when God made them.

I mean, I had one--a kid, who, like, three months ago, came in, and he was 24
years old, released from Corcoran Prison. He was covered in tattoos. I don't
think I'd ever seen anything quite like this. It looked like he'd been dipped
in ink, you know, and he was--I don't think I had met him. Maybe I'd met him
before when he was a kid at juvenile hall. But very significant that he
stepped into my office. But his arms were covered in tattoos, his neck was
blackened with tattoos, shaved head covered in tattoos, but most prominently,
he had these, like, two black devil's horns tattooed on his forehead. And he
says to me, `You know, I'm having a hard time finding a job,' you know. And
I'm thinking, `Let's put our heads together on this one.'

And he says, `You know, I've never worked in my life, you know.' And he was
14 when he went in. And so I hired him at Homeboy Silk Screen, which is our
biggest business and has the most enemies working together. They print shirts
and do embroidery. And I sent him--I said, `Well, you start tomorrow.'

Well, I called him the day after that and I called the factory there and I
said, `Bring that new guy to the phone.' And I said--Carlos was his name--and
I said, `How's it feel to be working?' And he says, `You know, it feels
proper. I'm holding my head up high.' He says, `In fact, I'm like that guy
on the commercial, you know the one who walks up to total strangers and
says, "I've just lowered my cholesterol"?' And I said, `I'm sorry. I'm not
following this.' And he says, `Yeah, after my first day of work, I was all
tired and dirty and I was on the bus. I couldn't help myself. I just turned
to total strangers on the bus and I said, "I just got back from my first day
of work. Just got back from my first day on the job."'

And I just think, you know, here was a kid who had--who in the world would
hire this guy, you know? And I suspect the unsuspecting on the bus thought he
was--you know, like he didn't belong to us, you know. But there's no question
in my mind, watching this kid now, still working for us, it totally changed
his life. It gave him a reason to get up in the morning. He feels like he's
filled with a sense of dignity that he had never known before, and it came
through work. And plus, he worked side by--continues to work side by side
with his enemies and is able to put a human face on somebody who he used to
shoot at or hate, you know, and that's just huge.

GROSS: Does he still have the tattoo on his forehead?

Fr. BOYLE: Oh, he's removing them. We remove tattoos in our office, and we
have...

GROSS: In your office?

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah, we have our own kind of a room--we have a state-of-the-art
laser machine, and we have a thousand on our waiting list. We removed a
thousand tattoos last year. And we have a slew of doctors who volunteer their
time. It's happening right now in my office. And they come in. It's very
significant, you know, for a gang member to say, `I want to have this
removed.' You know, it was packed with meaning. And we're the only place
around that doesn't ask anything of them. They don't have to do community
service, they don't have to pay a little. It's a very costly procedure. It
would cost them thousands of dollars if they did it elsewhere. But, you know,
you have to wait. But we want to get them in real quick 'cause we acknowledge
it as the significant step that it is. And kids will forever say--lift up
their shirt and say, you know, `I want to get rid of this one.' I used to
say, you know, `Keep your shirt on, you know, no one will see it,' and they'll
say, `Well, my son will see it and I don't want him to.' And that's good
enough for me.

GROSS: So in addition to hiring people for the Homeboy Industries, you also
send them out to job interviews for other businesses.

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah, nearly 1,000 jobs a month are--I mean, a year--are located.
And, you know, certainly, that's not as high as we would like it to be
relative to the need. We kind of put people most immediately in our
businesses because these are kind of the not-ready-for-prime-time player,
basically, you know, the folk who have been released from a detention facility
and have no kind of soft skills or work ethic or been very familiar with
what's required of you, you know, showing up on time and not missing and
taking orders from disagreeable supervisors. We provide all that for free so
they learn how to do all that stuff so we can send them out.

GROSS: If I were an employer, I'd be probably a little skeptical about hiring
somebody with a record, particularly somebody who was a convicted felon. So
what would you do to convince me to give it a shot?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, you know, like, I give talks all over the place, and I
always say yes to being able to get up there and kind of plead my case and,
you know, you never know, you might have an employer in the crowd and you want
people to kind of feel good about this kind of intentional hiring where they
can get up in the morning and say, `I'm part of the solution in the city of LA
because I've chosen to hire this guy and I'm going to teach him everything I
know,' and, you know, I think that appeals to people.

Plus, I think in the end people can get it, you know? It's--people make
mistakes and people understand the great degree of difficulty really there is
in kids in my community, you know, kind of navigating the treacherous waters
of their lives and of their adolescence. And a lot of times people say, `Oh,
so you give them a second chance.' Well, you kind of want to say, `Well, who
was it that gave them their first one?' you know? These are folks who I stand
in awe of what they have to carry, you know? These are folks whose burdens
are more than they can bear, and they're kind of the most disparaged. And
once you get beyond the fact that, you know, I think--they always say the same
thing, employers. They'll call me and say, `Wow, that was a really eager,
good worker, you know? Send me somebody else, you know?'

GROSS: Now when you say that these young people have burdens greater than they
can bear, what are some of the burdens you're thinking of?

Fr. BOYLE: I just think, you know, I've never met a hopeful kid who joined a
gang, so, you know, you know that any gang member is really coming from a
place of misery that's kind of intense, you know, and a despair that's dark
and bleak. And the bleaker it is, the more that kid's going to act out. And
so I just think they find themselves unparented and drifting and gravitating
perilously close to a gang, and then they find themselves in it. And then,
you know, before they know it, they have a record. And before they know it,
it's been years since they've been formally educated. And then pretty soon it
just becomes this dark place that you have to reach down and say, `Come on.
You know, it's not a hole in the end. It's a tunnel. And trust me, there's
light. And I'll walk with you till you get to the light. After such time,
you can walk on your own.'

I mean, I grew up in the same city as these kids did in the gang capital of
the world and, you know, I had wonderful family and terrific parents and
opportunities and there's no chance I ever would have joined a gang, but that
fact doesn't make me morally superior to these kids who just simply have to
carry more, deal with more, encounter more and have more obstacles in their
path than my life ever presented me with.

GROSS: What are some of the things you tell young people before sending them
out for job interviews?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, our job developers kind of do a lot of that stuff, you
know? They kind of do the protocol and the kind of crash course on what to do
and what not to do, and we have kind of a litany of, you know, who knew--you
know, we had to tell them not to slug the guy, you know, or, you know...

GROSS: To slug the critical supervisor.

Fr. BOYLE: Right. You know, it--I guess we neglected to put that in
our--and that happened once, you know, and it was because he thought he had
been slighted, and it was just terrible. But it's never happened again. But
it was very isolated. But, you know, we kind of tell them kind of how to do
it and how to--and, plus, for our core group, we have 100 employees and homies
who work in all our different businesses, and we insist that they all go
through a--we have a curriculum where we talk about everything from parenting
to courtesy issues to anger management and coping skills. So want them to
leave the Homeboy Industries part, which is, you know, temporary, really, with
skills to be able to manage their lives, you know, in the regular kind of
employment world.

BIANCULLI: Terry Gross speaking with Father Gregory Boyle. He works with
gangs and former gang members in Los Angeles. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's interview from last February with Father
Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works with gangs and former gang members in
one of LA's poorest neighborhoods. He founded Homeboy Industries, which finds
jobs for former gang members and ex-convicts.

GROSS: One of the things you're proud of with Homeboy Industries is that
members of rival gangs work together. What's it like early on when somebody
is starting to work there for the first time, and for the first time they're
supposed to be getting along with rival gang members?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, they always say the same thing, you know? They want the
job. And I say, `Well, I'm going to have you work over there at the Silk
Screen, and you have to work with these guys.' And they'll always say, `I'll
work with them, but I won't talk to them.' You know, they always say that.
And, you know, you can just look at your watch and time it, and in a short
order, they're talking to each other. I had these two kids, a kid named
Youngster and another kid named Caesar--Puppet they called him--and they were
enemies. I introduced Youngster to the Silk Screen, and he had--I introduced
him, walked him around. They shook hands with enemies, and I thought, `Well,
this is a good sign,' till we came to this kid, Puppet. They wouldn't shake
hands. They just stared at their shoes, you know, and I knew they were
enemies, of course.

I found out later this was a deeply personal hatred and hostility. And I told
them at the time, you know, `If you can't hang, if you can't do this, you let
me know. I got a lot of other people who want this job.' And they didn't say
anything. Three months later, Puppet found himself surrounded in an alley by
10 enemies. He was walking home from a little store. And they beat him badly
and they kicked him while he was down, and they kept kicking his head. They
wouldn't stop kicking his head till finally he was lying there lifeless, and
he was taken to a local hospital and was on kind of life support and
brain-dead basically. I've never seen anything quite as horrible as this.
His head was many times swollen.

But during that 48-hour period, before he was disconnected and I buried him, I
got a phone call from this kid, Youngster, who had worked with him for three
months, and he said, `That's messed up about what happened to Puppet.' And I
said, `Yeah, it was.' And then he said, `Is there anything I can do? Can I
give him my blood?' And we both sort of fell silent under the weight of it,
and I could hear him sort of--he started to choke back his tears, and he said,
with great deliberation, `He was not my enemy; he was my friend. We worked
together.' And there was this--you know, I asked myself, `Does that happen
all the time?' Has it ever not happened? It's always happened. It always
has.

GROSS: One of the rationalizations for not working, which has become almost a
cliche, is, `Why should I serve burgers at McDonald's when I could get paid a
whole lot more selling drugs?' How do you answer questions like that? And
how much do you pay the workers at Homeboy Industries? Is it minimum wage?
Is it above that?

Fr. BOYLE: No, we always pay higher than minimum, and we
encourage--employers sometimes will say, `How much should we pay?' And I'll
say, `Well, pay, you know, a just wage.' And so we try to approximate a just
wage as much as we can and then insurance and that kind of thing.

GROSS: Health insurance?

Fr. BOYLE: Uh-huh, yeah. So we try to, you know, model that for the
prospective employers, but, you know, if you are utterly convinced that a gang
member is a human being who has the same desires and kind of dreams as any
human being, then no one would be surprised to learn that they in fact would
rather have a, you know, above-minimum wage job rather than go out, running up
to a car and trying to sell crack. It has to do with kind of a sense of
dignity and pride and nobility and they want their kids to be able to say, you
know, `My dad drives a truck.' And they're kind of deathly afraid of the kid
reaching an age where the kid will say out in the yard, `Well, my dad sells
drugs,' you know? And plus walk around, look at the profiles--most gang
members who sell drugs, you know, they're not buying the house in the suburbs,
you know? That money, as they will tell you, quickly, you know, it's called
dirty money, easy money, and it's not the same as clean money. You don't--you
spend it differently. You kind of value it differently. And they'll all tell
you that.

GROSS: I'm sure that you feel frustrated because you can't reach every young
person you reach out to. Do you ever feel like, you know, a young person is
just beyond your reach, that they're just--you know, nothing's going to get
through to them?

Fr. BOYLE: No, I mean, I--yeah, because I've seen many, many kids who you
kind of secretly say, `Boy, I'm not sure anybody will ever be able to reach
this kid.' And then I've watched the kid, you know, find the place within
himself to kind of say, `Oh, I don't want any part of that anymore.' So, I
mean--but you do encounter sometimes serious mental illness and psychopathic
behaviors or sociopathic. But that's so tiny and that's a small slice of this
group. But mainly I've been surprised many times by kids who you thought,
`I'm not sure this is ever going to work,' and then it does.

GROSS: Where does God, faith, religion come in in your interactions with gang
members? Do you talk to them about religion? Do you try to get them back to
the church? Or is it about jobs and about straightening out their lives, and
if, you know, they choose to learn more about religion, that's their issue?

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah. You know, I think part of--I'm in 25 different detention
facilities, where I say Mass, so I'm talking to these kids. And I, you know,
try to explain...

GROSS: You're a busy guy.

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: Gee.

Fr. BOYLE: Yes. So I try to explain, you know, the Gospel to them at their
level, you know. So I'm always telling stories about, you know, homies and
kind of parables of homies seeing the light or not seeing the light, you know.
And I primarily want to speak to them the good news that they're OK and that
they're beloved, you know. And so that comes up certainly when they're not
locked up and when they're in my office. But, you know, part of, I think,
from my own Christian perspective, you know, Jesus isn't expecting us to sort
of--kind of constantly talking about or announcing a message, you know. His
hope is that we become that message. You know, God doesn't want us endlessly
to praise God for being compassionate. God is hoping that we will spend our
time being compassionate.

So, you know, I kind of want to live as if the truth were true, and I want to
go where love has not yet arrived. And you want to choose to stand with the
folks that God chooses to stand with. And in that action, you know, it's not
about words. I mean, I think it's not about kind of, `You're going to have to
hear this message if you want a job here. You're going to have to have to sit
down and hear my preachifying.' I just don't believe in that. You know, I've
been on panels...

GROSS: Yeah, it's like the old mission model, you know, where you could get
your free doughnuts and you could get your free soup as long as you come in
and sing the prayers and, you know, listen to the service.

Fr. BOYLE: I mean, frankly, you know, I got visited by the Department of
Justice, and I think they're, you know, pursuing some kind of--you know, the
whole faith-based kind of approach. And I don't know if I pleased them, you
know, because they were asking, you know, how much do I talk about, you know,
Jesus as their personal savior. And I don't do it because I just think it's
not appropriate to do it in that context. People want concrete help.

I mean, I've been on panels with kind of born-again folks, and with all due
respect, who will say things like, `I don't know why we're talking about
economic justice and jobs when what we really need to be telling these kids is
that Jesus is their personal savior.' And, of course, you know, no one would
be more horrified by that perspective than Jesus. You know, he would say,
`What? What are you talking about?' You know, this is about rolling up your
sleeves and really walking with folks who are having a hard time. And it's
about concrete help. It's not about inserting a message in their earlobe.
It's about somehow showing them that--somehow imitating the kind of God you
believe in, one who loves without measure and without regret, one whose joy it
is to love us, you know.

And pretty soon, you know, it's like the Zen saying the finger pointing to the
moon is not the moon; it just points to it. You want to be able to live a
life that points to the moon, that somehow indicates to them the kind of God
we have without preaching at them. You know, it's not about them listening to
me anyway. It's about me listening to them and, in that action, somehow
conveying the deepest spiritual reality. I think all we are about is God and
spirituality at Homeboy Industries. It's the only reason to do it.

BIANCULLI: Father Gregory Boyle works with gang members and former gang
members in Los Angeles and is the father of Homeboy Industries. He spoke with
Terry Gross in February. We'll hear more of their interview and a new one in
the second half of the show.

I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Coming up, a homeboy parable. We continue our conversation with
Father Greg Boyle about working with gang members in one of LA's poorest and
toughest neighborhoods. Also, film critic David Edelstein reviews "Cellular,"
starring Kim Basinger.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli.

Let's get back to Terry Gross' interview with Father Gregory Boyle. Since the
mid-1980s, he's worked with gang members and former gang members in one of
LA's poorest and toughest neighborhoods. He founded Homeboy Industries, whose
mission is to provide jobs to former gang members and help turn their lives
around. When we left off, Father Boyle was talking about how God and religion
fit in with his relationships with gang members. He says he tells them
parables from their own lives.

GROSS: Could I ask you to tell a short homeboy parable?

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah. I kind of used it. A homey who works for me named Robert
called me on New Year's Day, and he said, `Happy New Year's.' And I thanked
him--20 years old, completely rejected by his family, had been living on his
own in a crummy apartment just barely making it. And I said, `You know, I was
thinking of you. How was your Christmas?' because this was during Christmas.
`What'd you do Christmas?' And he goes, `I was just right here in my
apartment.' I said, `By yourself?' He said, `No. I invited a couple of the
homies that I work with who didn't have a place to go either,' and these were
enemies. I said, `Really? And what'd you do?' And he goes, `You're not
going to believe it. I cooked a turkey.' I said, `Really? You cooked a
turkey?' He goes, `Yeah.'

I said, `Well, how'd you prepare it?' He goes, `Ghetto style.' I said,
`Well, I'm not familiar with that recipe. What's ghetto style?' And he said,
`Well, you rub it with butter, and I poured a gang of salt and pepper on it,
then I squeezed two limonas,' two lemons, `all over it. I popped it in the
oven. It tasted proper,' he said, which is a very gang expression. It tasted
proper. And I said, `Wow! What else did you have besides turkey?' And he
said, `That's it, just turkey.' I said, `Really?' He goes, `Yeah, the six of
us just sat in the kitchen staring at the oven waiting for that turkey to be
done. Did I mention that it tasted proper?' he said.

And I thought, for me, that's what it's about. It's about six vatos, you
know, six gang members, enemies, no place to go sitting in a kitchen staring
at an oven waiting for the turkey to be done. You know, that's as sacred and
as ordinary as the Last Supper, you know. I can't remember what the context
was in which I mentioned that, but that's an example of--it's not really a
story so much as an image of people hanging on to each other and declaring
with unshakable certainty that, `We belong to each other.'

GROSS: Did you suggest a side dish for the next time? Some potatoes to go
along with it?

Fr. BOYLE: I said, `Sometimes your guests actually expect more than just the
bird.' So...

GROSS: Yeah.

Fr. BOYLE: But, you know, next year we may have something. I'll try to
expand his menu.

GROSS: Yeah. That's a great story.

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Father Gregory Boyle, and he
works with gang members in Los Angeles. He founded something called Homeboy
Industries, which gives jobs to many gang members and helps other gang members
find jobs.

Well, something that's fairly new for you is you were diagnosed with leukemia,
and thank goodness you're in remission now. You've had chemo. You're now in
remission. But how did that affect the gang members when they found out that
your life was in jeopardy? And these are people who'd put their own and each
other's lives in jeopardy all the time.

Fr. BOYLE: Oh, it was a remarkably gracious period for me. You know, I would
not trade that moment for anything. I was diagnosed in, I guess, the
beginning of April, and I began chemo right away. And so it was out of the
woodwork. Folks would come back--and, really, for two months I had to just
tell myself, `This is now my ministry. My ministry is to allow these folks to
come back, sit in my office, sob and cry.' And they needed to tell me where I
had been for them. And then it allowed me an opportunity to reciprocate.

I remember getting a voice mail from a homegirl name Cheena(ph), where she
said, `Now it's our turn to take care of you.' Very sweet. And I remember a
kid named Grumpy, big huge guy, no neck and tattoos, standing in front of my
desk; big tears in his eyes. And he says, `What do I have that you need?' you
know, meaning organs, you know, not that I needed any, but I think it was the
thought that counted, you know.

My favorite one was a kid who called me not that long ago collect from jail, a
guy named--we called him Loco. And he says, `What's this leukemia anyway?' I
said, `Well leukemia, it's in the blood. My white count is too high.' And he
goes, `Oh, those doctors, they don't know anything.' I said, `What do you
mean?' He said, `Well, hello, of course your white count is high. You
white.' And it was an endless stream of this just sort of joyous, tearful,
wonderful kind of--just absolute grace upon grace.

And, you know, they'd drive me to my chemo because, you know, you're really
not supposed to drive yourself. And so, you know, I'd have the graffiti crew.
I'd hop in the truck and they'd drop me off. And just wonderful, you know.
And, you know, feeling fine and everything, and you know, and then it sort of
triggered all these lifetime achievement awards from all sorts of
organizations because apparently they thought I had reached my lifetime,
so--but it was always...

GROSS: Well, you were told that, weren't you? I mean, I read that you were
given five to six years to live.

Fr. BOYLE: No, I don't know where that came from. I think it--the doctor
would--never told me anything like that. I think it came from just sort of my
own study of--I'd be in a Barnes & Noble, and I'd pick out a new cancer book,
and it would say, you know, `Prognosis: five to six years.' And I think
somehow that got repeated somewhere. And so it appeared somewhere in the
press or in LA Times here. So, you know, `I suspect, you know, that this will
all come back again in a year,' is what he told me. But, you know, and then
I'll have to deal with it again either with kind of another round of chemo or
something.

But right now, I'm back at it. But it was a remarkably gracious time of--and
it was good for kids to be able to kind of say, `Now you need to listen to
this. You need to shut up and listen to this.' They would say it like that,
you know. And I had had to kind of put on hold my life. I couldn't do all
the work I needed to do, because this was the work that needed to be done.
They needed to come in, and they needed to say that with great tears. And
then it was consoling for them, because, I think, when they heard `cancer' and
they heard `chemo,' you know, they needed to come and kind of see me. And I
think, you know, that they could see I wasn't falling apart, and I'm kind of
hair-deprived anyway, so we always joked about, you know, chemo didn't take my
hair, 'cause God had sort of done that prior to this, so...

GROSS: Now you've risked your life before. You've been in the middle of
sprays of bullets just in the work that you do, working with gangs. So, you
know, you've taken your risks. You've come close to the edge. But this is a
different kind of coming close to the edge, so how did you take the news that
you had a potentially life-threatening illness?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, you know, I have kind of a light grasp on these things.
You know, I don't know why this is or even claim, you know, that this is some
kind of superior way to be. It's just death is not on my top 10 list of
things to dread. You know, I more often than not dread meeting payroll or
that kind of thing or far sillier things. It just doesn't compute with me,
and so I never had a moment of `Why me?' and `Oh, my God,' and it was just
a--you know, and again, I don't mean to portray that as overly noble or
courageous. It just is not in--but you recognize that it is on everybody
else's list, so they project onto you their great fears of mortality. And so
you have to be sensitive not to trivialize their anxiety about me, though I
don't...

GROSS: What about pain and suffering? Where does pain, suffering,
discomfort--where does that come in, in your list of dreads?

Fr. BOYLE: It just doesn't. I mean, you know, I had a relatively, you know,
good run with the chemo. I mean, I was telling people that on any given day,
I was one of the Seven Dwarfs, you know, Grumpy or Sleepy or Sneezy or--I
don't know if Itchy is one of them, but he ought to be. And sometimes, I was
all seven of the Seven Dwarfs at once. And that was it. You know, it wasn't
more traumatic than that. Sometimes, I just didn't feel good enough to come
in, and people gave me, you know, the room to do that. And other times, I was
at my desk, or I cut back on some of my camps, you know, and jails, because,
you know, I just--even now my antibodies aren't that high, and my resistance
isn't--their concern is that I might get something that they won't be able to
fight, you know, so I'm careful, you know. Cut back a little bit, but I'm
back at it really now.

So--and part of the thing is I've seen some of the most extraordinarily
heartbreaking, you know, sufferings of mothers losing their sons and mothers
losing multiple sons, you know? You just can't wrap your mind or heart around
the depth of that kind of pain. And I'm the luckiest man alive. I wouldn't
trade my life for anybody's. And so I just feel like it just wasn't an issue,
you know?

GROSS: Do you ever feel like there's too many people, you don't have enough
time to give them each what they require?

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah, only every day, you know? So--yeah. That's a constant one.
And that's one where I need to always challenge myself and just say, `I can
only do what I can do.' And I--you know, for me, my pivotal image is of a
dream a kid had who saw him and me in a big locked room with no windows, pitch
black, and we don't speak to each other. And in the dream, he says that I
have a flashlight, and I pull it out, and I aim it at the light switch. No
words are exchanged. And the kid says that he knows that in this dream--he
knows that he's the only who can turn the light switch on. He's deeply
grateful that I happen to have a flashlight. And so in the dream, he walks
over to the light switch, flips it on, and the room is filled with light. And
as he's telling me this dream, he's starting to sob. And he says with kind of
a great discovery, `The light is better than the darkness,' like he never knew
that. And I just feel that frees me. I don't have to turn on the light
switch on for anybody, but I want to be able to shine the light so that that
kid can do it himself, you know.

GROSS: Well, nice image to end on. Father Boyle, thank you so much for
talking with us, and good luck with your work, and good luck with your health.

Fr. BOYLE: Thank you, Terry.

BIANCULLI: Father Gregory Boyle, speaking with Terry Gross last February. He
works with gangs and former gang members in Los Angeles.

After a break, we'll hear a short interview Terry recorded this morning with
Father Boyle.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Father Gregory Boyle works with gangs and former gang members in
Los Angeles, and founded Homeboy Industries to provide jobs for ex-gang
members and help turn their lives around. This morning, Terry talked with
Father Boyle about the murders this summer of two ex-gang members who had been
working with Homeboy Industries in their graffiti-removal program. Father
Boyle has since discontinued that part of the program.

GROSS: Father Boyle, why did you decide to discontinue the graffiti-removal
service that Homeboy Industries provided?

Fr. BOYLE: We had two deaths this summer, six weeks apart, unrelated to each
other and unrelated to our organization and removal of graffiti. But I just
felt it was untenable to have formerly gang-involved youth taking out gang
graffiti. So we're moving on and we're going to explore other ventures.

GROSS: So if the shootings weren't really related to the nature of the work,
removing graffiti, why discontinue that part of your operations?

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah, I just think that there are lots of things we can do. We
don't--there's nothing that says we have to remove graffiti as one of our
outlets of--and businesses. And I thought by--if they're more vulnerable than
the other workers in our other businesses, then I'm not willing to take that
risk anymore.

GROSS: What made them more vulnerable, do you think?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, they're formerly gang-involved youth who go into gang
territory and remove gang graffiti, so that was just becoming untenable for me
to send them out there, and there was always a risk and some kind of
harassment often. And I thought, no, we don't need to do that. We're
building a bakery and so that's our next project.

GROSS: It must have been really hard for you to lose two of the men that you
work with, particularly in such close proximity to each other.

Fr. BOYLE: It was as difficult a time as I've ever known in my life. But you
know, you look at the thing and, you know, try to make friends with your dread
about, you know, the next day and how you're going to proceed, and you try to
stay in the present moment. But it's also shown here in the city that there's
remarkably--there's room in people's grief for these two guys in a way that
that wouldn't have happened even five years ago.

GROSS: Is this a sign that things are heating up again in the gang wars?

Fr. BOYLE: I don't think so. You know, I think it's--nothing could compare
to, you know, a decade ago. I just think they were isolated incidents that
happened. I don't think they signal anything, really.

GROSS: Now what about the other people who worked on the graffiti-removal
program? What are they doing now?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, we've managed to locate for most of them. We're still
trying to find something--you know, the Indians have stepped up and have
offered to place them so we haven't finished that task yet, even four weeks
after the last death, but we're attempting to place them all and we're
committed to doing that.

GROSS: What was the reaction of the other people who were employed by Homeboy
Industries? What was their reaction to the deaths?

Fr. BOYLE: You know, it's interesting. You don't--all these guys have, you
know, been present when other--when things like this have happened,
truthfully, in their lifetime. They've seen other homies killed. But several
of them came and were quite undone, understandably, and wanted to talk to kind
of a trauma therapist, basically, and the reason, I think, was because they
finally cared about stuff in their life, cared about how they were living,
cared about their kids and wanted to be around for a while, so it was a
remarkable change. Trauma was able to happen because they now cared about
their lives.

GROSS: So did they get the counseling?

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah, but in all my years I'd never seen that, actually. You
know, they kind of move on and there's gallows humor and there's kind of
stuff that outsiders might look at it and say, `Wow, this is weird,' but it's
sort of how they cope. But this time, you had a lot of guys who wanted to
kind of talk it out with somebody, and you never hear that.

GROSS: Father Boyle, what about you? How's your health?

Fr. BOYLE: I'm OK. I still get my--these infusions of ...(unintelligible) a
little more often than I had when we last talked. But I'm doing OK; feeling
OK.

GROSS: Are you in remission? Like how would you...

Fr. BOYLE: I'm in remission--technical remission. My antibodies are low, so
I have to make sure I have enough--the wherewithal to fight off West Nile if
it should knock on the door. So any kind of infection I have to be careful
about.

GROSS: Are your doctors worried about the amount of stress and anxiety and
just emotional suffering that your job, your work, your calling exposes you
to?

Fr. BOYLE: Well, you know, you try to stay anchored in a sense of what you're
about, keep a light grasp on life. You want to be able to always, you know,
celebrate impermanence, really, rather than lament it. You know, each moment
is an opportunity to lead you into transformation and to see things
differently, and so it's a stress reducer. But there's no question that this
was as stressful time as I've ever known and painful and the grief was
unbearable at times. But you still want to keep your eyes on exactly the
place you need to focus.

GROSS: You know, you've said that this was the most difficult time. You've
been through so many difficult times with Homeboy Industries and you're
talking about--you know, last time we spoke you explained that it was a few
years ago that the gang murders were really at their height, so I'm just
wondering what made this summer even more difficult to bear than that period
when there were more gang murders than there are now.

Fr. BOYLE: You know, these are two employees of mine; that makes it
difficult. These are two guys I've known for many, many years, one for 20
years. And you know, so obviously there was a personal connection. But then,
you know, you had to kind of think as an organization what does this mean and
what do you do, and so there were a lot of layers of pain and responsibility.
And all my workers wanted to go back again, even after the second death, but
I--and it was a risk they were willing to take, and I was a little concerned
that they were willing to take it, and I just made a decision--no, I don't
think so. I don't want to do this. Let's get you some employment elsewhere.

GROSS: The man who you knew 20 years--how did you first meet?

Fr. BOYLE: I met him when he was 15 years old and came to the church as a
very strong-headed, belligerent kid who had to do community service at the
church and wasn't one bit happy about it, and was--never liked to have anybody
tell him to sweep there and wash that window and--but over the years we had
many run-ins--he was what we would call a knucklehead. And--but he--20
years later he walked in my door and said--burst into tears and said, `I don't
want to live like this anymore.' He had gotten out of prison after 10 years,
and so I hired him immediately.

GROSS: And how soon after that was he killed?

Fr. BOYLE: Three months later.

GROSS: I really understand more why this was so devastating. Yeah.

Fr. BOYLE: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, you try to put this into some
kind of perspective. There are so many more things worse than death in the
world. You know, what if this kid hadn't had those three months of feeling a
sense of dignity and a purpose in getting up in the morning and the sense of
community that was palpable and real, and I don't think he'd ever really known
that before. Boy, not to have experienced that is certainly worse than death.

GROSS: Father Boyle, all best to you. Thank you so much for talking with us
today.

Fr. BOYLE: Thank you, Terry. It's always great.

BIANCULLI: Father Gregory Boyle works with gang members and former gang
members in Los Angeles, where he founded Homeboy Industries. The book "G-Dog
and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles" by
Celeste Fremon has just been republished in a new updated version.

Coming up, a review of the film "Celluloid."(ph)

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Movie "Cellular"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Anyone who uses a cell phone knows there's an element of suspense in the most
routine call. Will there be a signal? Will the call go through? Will the
connection hold? The new thriller "Cellular" ups the ante by making a single
cell phone connection a matter of life and death for a hostage, played by Kim
Basinger, and her family. Film critic David Edelstein has a review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN reporting:

A crackerjack thriller like "Cellular" is a kind of exquisite torture machine,
a contraption engineered to deliver pleasure and pain in just the right
proportion. You get squeezed, then tickled, then jolted. You think you'll
suffocate. You suddenly breathe. Then the grip, you find, is even tighter.
That sounds pretty kinky, and a thriller that isn't kinky, I submit, isn't
much of a thriller.

It's also got to have, as the strippers in "Gypsy" put it, a gimmick. The
gimmick of "Cellular" is perfect for our mobile communications age and for the
epicenter of mobile blabbing, Los Angeles. A Brentwood woman, Jessica--that's
Kim Basinger--is brutally kidnapped, her housekeeper murdered, and then
roughly thrown into an attic. There's a phone in the attic--why, I can't tell
you. You don't dwell on stuff like that in a good thriller. But in comes the
chief kidnapper, a big guy with a buzz cut, and he smashes it with a
sledgehammer. I'd have just slid it off the wall and brought it downstairs,
but you don't dwell on stuff like that in a good thriller.

Our heroine hears a dial tone and realizes the connection hasn't been broken,
and she taps the wires together, hoping to get through to someone, anyone, and
finally, finally, she does, to the cell phone of a handsome good-for-nothing
on the Santa Monica Pier, not the sort of guy who'd buy a line like, `Help me.
I've been kidnapped. I think they're going to kill me.' But hearing Kim
Basinger whine for five minutes without stopping for breath is pretty
impressive.

Speaking of not stopping for breath, the 75 minutes that follow are
relentless. This has been the stuff of melodrama since Pauline was tied to
the tracks, except that mobile phones give more opportunity for cross-cutting
and more bizarre hurdles to jump. If the guy--his name is Ryan and he's
played by newcomer Chris Evans--goes up the stairwell at the police station to
the robbery-homicide division, he'll lose the precious signal. If he doesn't
get a charger for his cell phone battery, he'll lose the precious signal. He
drives by an obnoxious lawyer and he does lose the precious signal, but the
lawyer picks it up. And Ryan steals the twerp's mobile phone and his new car
to boot.

(Soundbite of "Cellular")

Mr. CHRIS EVANS: (As Ryan) OK, Jessica. I'm here.

Ms. KIM BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) Oh, I thought I lost you.

Unidentified Man #1: Have fun.

Mr. EVANS: (As Ryan) I'm sorry.

Ms. BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) What's happening?

Mr. EVANS: (As Ryan) It's OK. Our lines got crossed with some lawyer. It's
all right. I got his phone. I got his car.

Ms. BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) Oh, OK. What is it?

Mr. EVANS: (As Ryan) It's a tunnel. Look. Look.

Ms. BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) What's happening?

Unidentified Woman: Get out of the way!

Ms. BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) Can you back up?

Unidentified Man #2: What are you doing?

Mr. EVANS: (As Ryan) Jeez, there's traffic.

Ms. BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) You can't lose me.

Unidentified Man #3: Hey!

Ms. BASINGER: (As Jessica Martin) Can you hear me?

EDELSTEIN: You get a sense from that of how the movie sounds, but its look
isn't quite so assaultive. As Ryan hurdles from the pier to downtown LA to
the airport and back to the pier, finally tangling with the bad guys himself,
the action is amazingly fluid. The director, David Ellis, isn't some young
punk. He's been a stunt coordinator and second-unit director on big features.
His last movie, "Final Destination 2," was a remarkable piece of craftsmanship
and remarkably cruel, full of Rube Goldberg killing set pieces, intricate and
splattery little numbers.

There's nothing so sadistic in "Cellular," but Ellis displays the same knack
for making a Rube Goldberg machine in which no cog turns, no lever twists, no
ball drops quite where you expect it. The story was concocted by the
visionary exploitation maven Larry Cohen, who also gave us "Phone Booth," the
one about a sniper who kept Colin Farrell on the line for 90 minutes. It was
fun for half an hour but obviously more stagebound, with an outrageously lame
ending.

As rewritten by Chris Morgan, "Cellular" has more balls in the air and more
payoffs. The marvelous William H. Macy plays a hangdog police desk sergeant
with a brush moustache. He's about to open a beauty salon or, as he insists,
a day spa, but he can't stop thinking about the freaky kid with the cell phone
who tried to tell him a woman had been kidnapped. And there's texture galore
from an army of bit players who get left in the dust in the race to save the
day. But the heart of "Cellular" is that slender, precious silicon fiber that
binds the amiable Evans to the stricken Basinger. Forget the stale McGuffin,
the bland bad guys. "Cellular" exploits our miraculous modern
interconnectedness. You could say it's the soul of the new machine.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.