that bold
the them
thank you very much it's a privilege to be with you I E
I want to apologize I love you probably heard me talk before it happens
I'll I was speaking at a pasta grandparents gathering
some years ago and now I'd spoken at the summer before that I don't know why they
invited me to
summers in a row but after the second talker
grandmother came up to me I think she liked the talk she had big tears in our
eyes and
she grabbed both my hands and she said
divergent last year it never gets better
Anna
kinda hoping she was Miss speaking there anyway thank you for your attention you
know i i
anybody ok just want some attention especially folks on the margins
I had a homie a gang member a step into my office the other day very earnest
16-year-old gang member
standing in front my desk and he says look I need
your divided attention said
you art in luck you know I suppose there's a vision that brings you to a
place
like this the theater for the day and it's a vision of wanting to see the
world
a looking differently than it currently looks the prophet Habakkuk
writes the vision still has its time presses on to fulfilment
and it will not disappoint and if it delays
wait for but nobody wants to wait for too long
a we want to make something happen and that's what I want to suggest in the
brief time I have with you
that what we all want to create and form is a cutie of kinship
such that got in fact might recognize that
I suspect that mother teresa diagnose the world's ills correctly when she
suggested that the problem in the world
is that we've just for gotten that we belong to each other
so how do we stand against forgetting that how to we
created imagine a circle of compassion and then imagine nobody standing outside
that circle
and to that end what we hope to do all of us i think is too
inch our way out to the margins so that we can stand with the poor in the
powerless in the voiceless
that we can stand with those his dignity has been denied
with those whose burdens are more than they can bear
occasional you get very fortunate and blessed to be able to stand
with be easily despised in the readily left out
with the demonized so that the demonizing
will stop and with the disposable
so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away
I suspect that if kinship was our goal we would no longer be promoting justice
we would in fact be celebrating at
for no kinship no justice
no kinship no peace so for 25 years it's been a privilege of my life to work go
with gang members and they've taught me
everything value really up but a special left couple years the puppy had attacked
so I'm so grateful to the Y
a I find that it sure beats the heck out of actually talking to people and
and so pretty Dexter said it lol and OMG and btw you know in
and the homies the public a new one oooh in
which apparently stance for all hail no
and
I i've been using that one quite a bit lately and so there I am with two homies
manual important job they're older but those who work in my
at homeboy industries where 400 employees there in guys been to
president at two
they do a variety of things they're gonna help me give a talk in Palm Desert
at a high school in
so we meet at 9 get my car 15 minutes on the road manuals in the front seat and
he gets an incoming text and he chuckles
to himself I so what is it because I know it's Dom it's from Snoopy
back at the office white just seen Snoopy Snoopy give me a big
a bit of soap as the day began in snoopy in manual work together in the clock in
the room where the clock in all our
a all our workers it's a tough job I saw what she say
our cash hang on that saddam a dog gets me snoops
yeah I got my ass locked up at county jail
they're charging me with being be ugliest bob dole in america
you have to come down right now shown they got the wrong guy
the
where we died laughing you know and then I realized
that manual and Snoopy are enemies
rivals the use to should bullet at each other
now the issue text messages
there's a word for that in the word is kinship how can we achieve
a certain kind of compassion that stands in awe what the poor have to carry
rather than stand in judgment at how they carry a
for the measure of our compassion life not in our service %uh voles
on the margins but in our willingness to see ourselves and kinship with them and
mutuality
I was a great privilege of my life to dunno says start job is as a friend and
I can remember once a reporter had commented 2 a.m.
while these farmworkers sure love you
ancestor just shrugged and smiled and he says the feelings mutual
and that's what we want to achieve this the sense that mutuality
where we obliterate once and for all the illusion that were separate
know us and them just us
for there's an idea that's taken root in the world is at the root of all that's
wrong with that in the idea would be this
that there just might be lives out there that matter less than
other lives how do we stand against that idea
although industries was born in nearly 25 years ago when I was passed from the
poor spares in the city of Los Angeles
delors mission nestled in the middle look to public housing projects
people gardens and a lethal village at the time they comprise the largest
grouping of public housing West
the mississippi we have eight games there
happen those games that war with the other half I buried my first young
person killed because that the sadness and
1988 and I buried my out
one hundred and a bf a some months ago
we did a lot of things we started the school in a jobs program and when we
couldn't find enough jobs we
start our first business on boy bakery in 1992
a month later we started complete but the S and the Grand Central Market
not everything worked you know I'll be the first to admit it complete plumbing
was not a huge success a
who knew people didn't want gang members in their homes I
I did I did not see that coming
and now we we didn't intend to do this but we have backed our way into becoming
the largest gang intervention rehab and reentry Center
in the country I'll the so
fifteen thousand folks a year walk through our doors keep in mind the 1100
gangs in LA County
and 86,000 gang members and so you name anything that might be helpful we do it
from curricular things like anger management and parenting
lots and lots of mental health counselors case managers job developers
free tattoo removal no place on the planet removes more tattoos than we do
we have a designated clinic a three laser machines
29 doctors 800 treatments
a month it was all started because if a guy named Frank
who wandered out of court in state prison to date at a prison
any wanders into my office and he sitting in front of me
and tattooed on his forehead like a a banner like a billboard and pardon my
french
says fuck the world yeah and he said
um you know what I'm having a hard time finding a job
and I feel oh well Frank a
you know maybe we could put our heads together on this
so anyway I found a doctor who donated sometime in little by little be chipped
away at his forehead
and what we have our chips and salsa is an all the routes enough food for less
than we have a home diner the only place you can get food
in that city hall we're about to move into the alley
acts American Airlines terminal have put a restaurant there
up
homeboy a bakery homeboyz ok screen homeboy home-grown merchandise for
reseller local stuff
are in 24 different farmers markets
we have the solar panel installation training program and homegirl cafe
where women with records young ladies from rival gangs
waitresses with attitude I'll
will gladly take your order
%uh last year you know at the cafe we had a visit from Diane Keaton
the oscar-winning actress movie star Annie Hall
Godfather movies and she's there with a regular guy who's there once a week and
her waitress to stay as Glinda england is a homegirl been there done that
kept tube into prison the felon the parolee she doesn't know
who dying keep missin so she's taking our order and Diane Keaton says what do
you recommend
and now glenda rattles off the three plot the heels that you particularly
like San
and banking says all have that second one that sounds good
and then something dawns on Blondo exactly that moment she says wait a
minute
I feel like I know you from somewhere like maybe we've met
and dying keep the sites that deflected humbly oh gosh I don't know I suppose I
have one of those spaces you know that people think they've seen before
and then going to cause know what now eyeing Noel
we were locked up together %uh
but that just took my breath away when I read it and a
I don't believe we've had any further Diane Keaton sighting since that moment
but suddenly kinship so quickly oscar-winning actress
attitudinal waitress exactly what God had in mind
and if you permit me to speak for God
Jesus says it pretty clearly that you may be one
that's the whole thing that you may be one
that's the hope anyway
all of us are called to be what Alice Miller the late great child psychologist
calls and lightened witnesses
people who through your kindness and tenderness and focused attentive low
return people to themselves you don't hold the bar up and ask
anybody them measure up you just show up
you hold a mirror up in you tell people the truth
you say you are exactly what God had in mind when got major
and then you watch people become that truth you watch them inhabit that truth
& Noble it can pierce it know for prison wall
can keep out and DEF can't touch it because it's
huge but sometimes have to reach in and dismantle message is a shame and
disgrace that get in the way
so that the sole can feel it's worth
know homie resisted by offers of help more than a kid
name bandit a with gang member lived in a lease a village housing projects I
would ride my bike in the middle of the night
and i'd to see him run up to cars and sell crack cocaine
walk away counting his money I'd say how bout a real job
and it was very polite you know that's okay gee thanks though
until one day fifteen years ago he shows up in my office I couldn't believe he
was there
and he says with gang members often say I'm tired of being tired
so I walked into one of our job developers and as luck would have it
they located
entry-level unskilled low-paying job first kinda job in a warehouse
now cut to today bandit runs the whole thing is this supervisor the supervisors
old his own home he's married has three kids
I hadn't heard from a min in like two years any calls me one Friday afternoon
a little bit
breathless and panicky he says gee you got a blessed my daughter
I secure bus only place she sick issue in the hospital
Ono Ono on Sunday she's going to Humboldt college
imagine my older she's going to college which is a little tough but it then
we're afraid for you think there's
you any way you could give a blessing before she goes
go are you kidding I be honored look tomorrow Saturday I have baptisms at one
wanted to come at 12:30 will send off
and sure enough bandit and his wife and three kids show up at 12:30
and we are situated everybody in front the alternative list but just in the
middle that surrounded with our bodies in with Arlo
everybody toucher connect to work put your hand on her shoulder on
on our arms go ahead for transgender hit
and i thinkin about your heads close your eyes
and as the homie say I do a long ass prayer you know I go on and on and
air and somewhere in the middle of this prayer I notice we've all become Cheong
is you know we're all crying girl sniffling
I don't know why were crying except for the fact the bandit and his wife don't
know anybody
who's ever gone to college except me certainly nobody in the family
so you know we can to wipe our eyes and we laugh about how much she we got in
info to change subject I look at just got 8 what do you study
at humbled college she was very quick forensic psychology a good game forensic
psychology
embedded James in yes she was to study the criminal mind
the and and Jessica
very deadpan looks at her father and she does love the
and and he sees Aaron says yeah I'm gonna be her first subject
so we walk up to the car and pick up one of those in the pile on the carpet but
bad at Hanks back
glad we have and they say a
they tell you something
I give you credit for the man you chosen to become
for choosing to walk in your own footsteps
I'm proud to you and his eyes well up with tears
any face I was gay Prada myself
all my life people called me a lowlife
upon a but another a good for nothing
I guess I showed him yeah I guess you did
and the soul feels for
people always ask about enemies who work together it's kinda tents at first
homie will come in and say I'm ready I'm ready LC okay I have an opening in the
bakery but you have to work with XY and z.
and I rattle off the names rivals and now we say the same thing they always
say
are all work with them but I'm not to talk to him
but you know used to bother me in the early days but you know the truth is
human beings can't demonize people they know hard to sustain that really
so it homie name youngster little tiny guy everybody called youngster
and here I thought he was ready so bring them into the homeboy Sox wing factory
and introduce some
to all his thirty coworkers that's our biggest business
huge factory and I watch him as he shakes hands with everybody looking them
in the eye
even enemies until it gets to the last guy a guy
everybody called puppet puppet seems to be avoiding this encounter altogether
and when puppet in youngster are in each other's vicinity that kinda mumble
something
they start their shoes they don't shake hands
well I know their enemies but he just in a shaking hands with other enemies
I discover later that this is a hatred that's quite personal on deep
beyond which neither them think they can get past
so I sense that at the moment and I say a few guys can hang working together
let me know I got a buncha people want this job
and they say nothing six months later puppet is walking to a corner store not
far from his home in
buy something and but on the way home he kind of take the detour
shortcut cuts into an alley suddenly he surrounded by 10 members of a rival gang
10 against one they beat him badly
he falls to the ground while he's lying on the ground they will not stop kicking
is at
until he's lying there lifeless
somebody finds his body takes them to White Memorial Hospital where he was
declared effectively
brain-dead though policy there to keep you connected to machines for 48 hours
so that doctors can get two days have a flat read
then they sign the death certificate
this allowed family and friends to gather I
was in Saint Louis University giving a talk I flew home
I seen a lot of horrible things in my life
but nothing to compare to the site at this young man with this had stolen
many many times that size it was horrifying
you could barely train your eyes on 'em
so at the end of the 48 hour period I gave them a blessing
anointed his forehead with oil we disconnected
and week later I buried him
but in the first 24 hours I'm alone in my office that they 30 at night
in the phone rings and its youngster from that's ok screen factory
puppets coworker a he says
its best up about what happened a puppet
yeah it is and then with a certain kinda eagerness even
he says is there anything I can do
get a given my blood
we both fall silent under the wait a bit
until finally he breaks the silence
choking back his tears and he says with great deliberation
he was stopped by your enemy he was bi friend
we work together
know can I say that always happens at homeboy industry
yeah any exceptions
now and it shouldn't surprise us that God's own dream come true
for us that we be one
just happens to be our own deepest longing
for ourselves
it turns out
it's mutual
for the vision still has its time presses on to fulfilment
and it will not disappoint
and if it delays
we can wait for
thank you very much
the