For nearly 40 years, Father Greg Boyle has helped steer gang members away from violence and despair in Southern California.

“All we wanted to do at Homeboy Industries was infuse hope in those for whom it was foreign,” Boyle said in an interview with GV Wire.

Boyle will share his story at the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at 10:30 a.m. at the Saroyan Theatre in downtown Fresno. He will share parables from his 40 years of walking with gang members.

A Catholic priest assigned to Boyle Heights in the 1980s, Boyle founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 as a school and job program to help rehabilitate gang members. The organization has helped men and women ages 14 to 70.

“We’re the largest gang-intervention, rehab, and reentry program on the planet. About 10,000 people a year walk through our doors wanting to reimagine their lives. We have 14 social enterprises, free tattoo removal, therapy, and classes,” Boyle said. “Everybody’s unshakably good, and we belong to each other. So it allows us to roll up our sleeves and try to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it.”

How does Father Greg connect with gang members?

“You don’t have to be identical to them, but you do have to listen. You listen and you love, and that’s the formula,” he said.

Hostility Then Support

When Boyle founded the program, he received hostility not from the gang world but from law enforcement.

“If you demonize gang members, it’s just a short leap to demonize me for helping them. The first 10 years brought death threats, bomb threats, and hate mail from unlikely sources. Many law enforcement officers sent anonymous letters: ‘We hate you. You’re part of the problem,'” Boyle said.

Things changed when a bakery operated by Homeboy Industries burned in 1999. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times said the program doesn’t belong to Father Greg but to the entire city.

Poverty is the leading factor in the lack of hope, Boyle said.

“If they can’t imagine a future, then they won’t care whether they inflict harm or whether they duck to get out of harm’s way,” Boyle said. “The minute you can flood the zone with hope — because no hopeful kid has ever joined a gang in the history of the world — everybody rolls up their sleeves, and it’s all hands on deck. We’re going to be delivery systems of hope for these kids.”

GV Wire is a sponsor of San Joaquin Valley Town Hall.