WHY HAVE SOME JUVIE PROBATION OFFICERS BANNED HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES?

by Matthew Fleischer

On first weekend of April, Homeboy Industries founder Father Greg Boyle was making his usual rounds to LA County’s various juvenile probation facilities, when he had a strange conversation with three female probationers.

“I asked them when they were coming to see me at Homeboy,” he remembers. “They told me, ‘We can’t. Our probation officer won’t let us.’ I thought, ‘Huh? That doesn’t sound right,.”

Homeboy Industries has a national reputation for its nearly 25 years of work with at-risk youth and former gang members from all over Los Angeles County. Thanks to a $1.3 contract with Los Angeles County, LA County juvenile probationers are supposed to be given preferential access to Homeboy’s formidable array of wrap-around services: tattoo removal, counseling and job training to name just a few. Boyle makes a point of encouraging kids to show up during the first week after their release when they are trying to repurpose their lives.

But, says Boyle, probation officers explicitly told these three girls they were not allowed to spend time at Homeboy. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten word of such directives. Boyle says he’s aware of at least 10 kids who desired to come to Homeboy for help but were prevented from doing so by their probation officers. “When I first heard about this happening I thought it was a mistake,” he says, “but this has been going on for months now.”

Homeboy’s director of legal services Elie Miller says she has had her own experiences with the anti- Homeboy prohibition. In one recent incident she dealt with a mother whose son had a job at Homeboy—but was forced to quit by his probation officer. “She was upset and came by to ask what she could do,” says Miller. “Here’s a mother excited her son is able to come somewhere for services, and the probation officer makes an arbitrary decision to halt that rehabilitation. It’s insane.”

So why are county juvenile probation officers denying kids in need of help the chance to work at Homeboy Industries? It certainly isn’t because of Homeboy’s performance, says UCLA researcher Jorja Leap, who was hired by the county to evaluate the effectiveness of Homeboy’s county-sponsored programs. In the first quarter of 2012, none of the 30 enrollees in Homeboy’s comprehensive Job Readiness and Job Placement Service Program were re-arrested.

“We’ve been following these kids very closely,” says Leap. “We’re finding that once they’re enrolled at Homeboy, there is virtually no recidivism—roughly 96 percent stay in the program. That is outstanding and virtually unprecedented.”

Nevertheless, says Father Boyle, probation officers are telling kids that working at Homeboy is a violation of the terms of their probation–because gang members are known to be on the premises, or former gang members anyway.

“That’s akin to telling an alcoholic he’s not allowed to go to AA because there will be other alcoholics there,” says Boyle. “It makes zero sense.”

Calvin Remington, deputy chief of the LA County probation department, agrees. I called him on Monday and asked if he thought working at Homeboy was a breach of probation protocol, due to the presence of gang members. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “We’d have to shut down our probation camps if that were the case.”

Remington assured me that there was no top-down directive from the probation department to steer kids away from Homeboy. But he also made it clear that Homeboy isn’t the perfect fit for all juvenile probationers—which could explain why probation officers discouraged certain individuals from attending. “For some kids less is better,” he said. “If you have a lightweight kid, there’s no reason to send them to Homeboy. Homeboy is for the deep-in kids: for the kids who need lots of help and need it quick.”

That caveat aside, Remington says there isn’t any other reason POs should be discouraging enrollment in Homeboy’s programs. “It’s possible that certain probation officers who are unfamiliar with the program could have told their kids to stay away from Homeboy,” he says. “We’ll look into it.

“I’ve known Father Boyle for a long time,” Remington continues. “I have tremendous respect for him and he provides a real service to the whole community.”

For his part, Boyle agrees with Remington that is likely a case of a small number of probation officers who haven’t done their research regarding Homeboy, its services and its rate of success. “Look, we have no shortage of kids looking to access our services,” says Boyle. “We’re not dependent on the probation department to help fill our caseloads. But I would hate to see someone denied the option to come here who really wants to turn their life around. The problem with many of these kids is a lethal absence of hope. Hope is our currency here at Homeboy.”

My friend Jorja Leap has written a wonderful new book called Jumped In: What Gangs Taught Me About Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption, about her last ten years spent in some of LA’s most violence haunted neighborhoods, in order to study the causes and possible solutions to the gang violence that still claims the lives of nearly 5000 kids and young adults in America.

Jorja is a nationally recognized expert in gangs, violence, and crisis intervention, she is the senior policy adviser on Gangs and Youth Violence for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and has served in similar post for the mayor, for the National Institute of Justice, and more. Jorja brought her crisis intervention skills to post war Bosnia and Kosavo, and is on the faculty at UCLA.

She’s also in the middle of a five year study of the homeboys and homegirls at Homeboy Industries, and has another project at Jordan Downs in partnership with Mike Cummings, a gargantuan former gang member who goes by (and lives up to) the name of Big Mike. Once a fearsome and notorious gangster who helped found the Grape Street Crips, Mike now facilitates groups of men to discover in themselves a passion for fatherhood, with Jorja documenting it all.

In other words, she knows her stuff.

The book draws from all that expertise, of course, but the heart of it is something much closer to the ground, much more intimate, much more heartbreaking, tragic, joy-producing and transformative.

It is also a personal tale of finding her own deepest self in the course of delving into the lives of others. (Did I mention that right in the middle of her research Jorja, the tough girl who was never going to have kids, inconveniently fell in love with and married a widower LAPD Commander with a young daughter? For quite some time, both cop husband-to-be and gangster research subjects were horrified by the proximity of each other.)

But rather than give you any more generalizations, I’ve posted some (very rough) iPhone shot video clips of Jorja speaking at Skylight Books* on Tuesday night.

In the clip above, Jorja fields questions about any fears she had doing the research, and what cultural barriers she encountered.

In the clip below, former gang member Wilfredo Lopez, who came with Jorja to the Skylight event, gives his own perspective on some of the issues the book covers.

In the clip above, Jorja is asked what most surprised her in the course of researching the book. “I know just what surprised me,” she says without missing a beat. “Lesbians.”

In this clip, Jorja address a question about how one “pierces the veil of secrecy” surrounding gangs.

Here she talks about the difference between LA street gangs and organized crime.

*NOTE: Apologies to the wonderful and unmistakable Skylight Books for, in my fatigued haze, originally writing their name as the also wonderful City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.

[MORE BELOW THE JUMP]

Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, June 14, Buck, the much anticipated documentary about horse whisperer Buck Brannaman, a film that won the audience award at this year’s Sundance, will be featured at a special screening benefiting Homeboy Industries.

(The film opens later this week.)

The screening, held at 7 p.m. at the Landmark Theater, 10850 West Pico Blvd., will include a discussion between Father Greg Boyle, film director Cindy Meehl, and Buck Brannaman.

Buck is reputed to be a wonderful movie. Catering for the night will be provided by the Homegirl Cafe.

There are still tickets available here

Although prospects had looked bleak for months, when four out of five of LAX’s wildly lucrative food and beverage contracts were finally handed out on Monday afternoon— an unexpected beneficiary of the decision is Homeboy Industries’ popular and unique Homegirl Cafe.

In a decision that seems to have been complicated by more than the usual number of lobbyists, personal agendas, and multiple conflicts of interest (see stories byDavid Zahniser and Gene Maddaus for some of those specifics), the special five-person LA City Council panel known as the Board of Referred Powers decided (in a 4-1 vote) to award four of the five of LAX’s wildly lucrative food and beverage contracts and, at the same time, to throw out the bid by the celebrity-packed group that was originally the front-runner in the contract contest.

The fifth contract will likely be rebid in the near future and it is hoped that the whole five contract food and beverage package. (plus three additional airport vendor contracts) will be up for approval by the full city council in about a month.

(For some of the finer details on the contract squabbles, and the tortured road to Monday’s contract awards see the LA Times story, the Daily Breeze coverage, and the article in the LA WAVE.)

The Homegirl Cafe—one of Homeboy’s six businesses— is among the vendors included in the bid put forth by Miami-based Areas USA, which was originally figured to be a dark horse. When Areas USA was selected, that meant that Homegirl Cafe was too—along with other food purveyors like downtown Los Angeles steakhouse Engine Co. 28 and Culver City-based gastropub Ford’s Filling Station.

Although it is known for the fact that it trains and employs young women recovering from gang life and/or incarceration, Homegirl Cafe is also an excellent and uniquely LA food purveyor in its own right. (Homegirl describes its fare as “Latina flavors with a contemporary twist.” ) Its fully organic menu features delicate-flavored dishes designed by Chef Patricia Zarate using vegetables and herbs from its own organic garden and other local farms.

Father Greg Boyle was also among those who spoke to the panel at the meeting that concluded late Monday afternoon. When I saw him later on Monday night (at an unrelated gathering), he was extremely pleased, as would be expected, but still seemed a bit stunned by what, for Homeboy, is a very happy turn of events—yet well deserved in terms of the quality of the cafe itself.

The fifth and final contract was not awarded Monday after a winning bid involving some of LA’s best known chefs (Nancy Silverton, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken) was unexpectedly tossed out because of a possible conflict of interest that the LA city attorney’s office believed might trigger a court challenge and thus fatally delay the entire LAX project.

A clearly disappointed Silverton also spoke at the Monday’s meeting. “I want to warn you, If you don’t you’ll help us, the people of L.A. and the visitors to L.A. may be stuck with food choices and food quality that are currently available to them at every off-ramp on every freeway across America.”

(Well, not exactly. Nancy, we love you but you aren’t the only food game in town. Sorry.)

The group that includes Silverton et al, plus Boyle Heights’ la Serenata De Garibaldi and the local favorite Bertha’s Soul Food, is expected to rebid for the final contract.

(Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have Homegirl and some of our LA star chefs, La Serenata and Bertha’s Soul Food? )

In the meantime, it feels great to cheer Homegirl’s well-earned victory.

I notice that a lot of people have been checking WitnessLA for information on Irvin Panameno. (You can find Irvin’s story here.). Thus I wanted to post some details about the services for Irvin.

The wake for Irvin Panameno—known around the Homeboy Industries office as Smiley—will be held on Friday night, Sept 17 (tonight), from 6 to 9 p.m. at Felipe Bagues Mortuary, 130 E. 1st Street, Los Angeles, 90033.

The funeral will be on Saturday, Sept. 18, at Dolores Mission Church, at 11 a.m. 10:00 a.m.

[NOTE CHANGE: I HAVE JUST BEEN INFORMED THAT THE SERVICES ARE AT 10 a.m. NOT 11.]

And while we on the topic of a great kid whose death has broken a a lot of hearts, there is one more story about Smiley that I wanted to pass along to you. (After all, it’s the small things that often reveal the most about character.)

It’s a story that James Parra, Employment Services Director at Homeboy Industries, tells about Irvin joining the Homeboy LA Marathon team last year. It seems that originally Irvin joined as a “waterboy”—not as a runner. He figured he’d be part of the experience by providing help and back up for other Homeboy staffers who had trained to run the 26-mile course.

But then, “a few days before the race,” writes James, “he decided to do it. At first I thought he couldn’t run 26 miles.”

After all, James says, Irvin had no experience at all in distance running. But he wanted to try it anyway. For segments of the race, Irvin even helped another friend and staffer, a guy named Alex Diaz, who is confined to a wheel chair but “ran” the race by being propelled by his fellow team members, several of whom took turns pushing Alex as they themselves ran.

Once Smiley decided he was going to try to run the marathon, he also wanted to be one of the wheelchair pushers.

“Irvin ran for the spirit of Homeboy….” writes James. ” And he finished, crossing the line in Santa Monica……”

The photo above shows the Homeboy runners at the end of the race.

“No bullet can remove our sacred memories, brother,” writes James under one of the race photos he has posted on Irvin’s Facebook page.

Of course. That is precisely what Greg Boyle has been telling Smiley’s grief-stricken co-workers all week, but it also has the advantage of being the truth: Against memories like these ones, against affection like this kid engendered, bullets are reduced to dust. They have no power at all.

On Tuesday morning, The LA County Board of Supervisors voted to okay a $1.3 million grant for Homeboy Industries, which was very welcome news.

Although it has been in the works for a while, amazingly not all the supervisors were willing to sign on to the notion in the beginning. But in the end, although only 3 sups were present at the meeting for vote, they were all reportedly in favor.

The grant is scheduled to run for a nine-and-a-half month period— from now until June 30, 2011.

In return for the money, Homeboy is required to provide certain services, which are spelled out in detail in a 35-page contract. Basically, the contract dictates that Homeboy is required to keep doing what it’s doing—namely to provide tattoo removal, job counseling, psychological services, legal services, GED and computer training and a bunch of other programs for gang-affected kids and adults between the ages of 14 and 30, who are released from the county’s probation camps, juvenile halls, and jails, and are hoping to turn their lives around.

Since that’s what Homeboy has been providing to the county’s juvenile probationers and parolees anyway—without getting paid for it—-these are not exactly an onerous requirements.

In addition, Homeboy has to provide paid job training for 20 extra kids coming out of lock-up during that same 9 months.

Again, this is precisely what Homeboy does every day.. Moreover, it is these very kinds of services—and trainee jobs— that were badly threatened when Homeboy’s money crisis required that they lay off more than 300 of their workers. (More than 100 have been hired back now that the organization has been getting a few more donations.)

So it’s nice that the county has seen fit to pay actual $$ for the reentry services it has been getting for free.

BUT HERE’S WHERE IT STARTS TO GET INTERESTING….

The contract also requires that a specified portion of the county’s $1.3 million be spent on an evaluation of how effective the Homeboy program is for the county kids and adults who receive it. Do such clients improve or do they recidivate? (The protocol for the evaluation is spelled out in 7 single-spaced, typed pages.)

In addition, the evaluators—who happen to be the excellent Drs. Jorja Leap and Todd Franke, both from the UCLA School of Public Affairs—are required to compare Homeboy’s outcomes to retention and recidivism rates of those who go through the county’s own $1.1 million gang program, The Regional Gang Violence Reduction Initiative, in order to determine how well each of the two strategies are working.

What a good idea! Both programs are to be held accountable for their effectiveness!

(Would that more country programs were held to such a standard. LA County’s probation camps spring to mind as a random example. Ah, but I digress.)

AND NOW THE MATTER GETS EVEN MORE INTERESTING

The Homeboy contract is—in my understanding—a one shot grant. Unlike the county’s re-entry program, it will not be up for renewal when the 9 months are finished.

So, here’s my question, if the evaluators find that Homeboy’s re-entry program is equally or more effective than the county’s personal (and thus far entirely unproven) gang re-entry program, what then?

Will the Sups still decline to renew Homeboy’s grant and keep going with its own program? And, if so, will they expect Homeboy to keep providing essential services for probationers coming out of camp, prison and jail, just as they have always done? Except that, after next June—once again—they will no longer be paid for it?

I’m just askin’.

PS: Did I mention that the recidivism rate for all kids coming out of LA County’s juvenile probation camps is a whopping 70 percent—meaning 7 out of every 10 kids who get out of camp will soon be reincarcerated. (This is, by the way, according to the county’s own figures. And Sam Slovic of the LA Weekly did a terrific article on that issue this past July. )

You should also know that it costs around $50 grand a year to keep a kid in probation camp—more if they are old enough to land in prison.

Okay, so do you want to do the math? Or shall I?

That means if Homeboy kept just 26 kids—out of the thousands of kids and young adults who walk through its doors each year— from going back to any kind of county lock-up, and directed them toward productive lives instead, that would save the county the amount of money it has just granted to Homeboy, exactly to the penny.

A FRIENDLY NOTE TO THE SUPERVISORS WHO DRAGGED THEIR FEET ON THE HOMEBOY GRANT (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE): Not to be mean, but perhaps at the next Sups meeting you could vote yourselves the funds for calculators. Awfully analog, I know. But sometimes they honestly come in handy.

(Both the LA Times and Zach Behrens at LAist wrote about Tuesday’s vote. So check their reports too.)

Thursday night, it was quieter around the Rampart police station than it has been the rest of this week. Although plenty of officers were again brought in from elsewhere in the city just in case the sometimes violent demonstrations of the past three nights reignited, on night four, those on the street protesting Sunday’s shooting death of Manuel Jamines by an LAPD officer were a comparatively tame group.

Yet much earlier on Thursday, another tragic drama around another local shooting began to unfolding in that same Rampart area. This new and tragic incident involved a 19-year-old, El Salvadoran-born man named Irvin Panameno.

Irvin Panameno, whose nickname was Smiley, joined a gang when he was 13-years-old. For the next three years, by his own admission, he was decidedly up to no good. Then for the last two years, he had been gradually trying to set his life right.

The turning point, he told those who inquired, occurred during the 18 months he spent at one of LA County’s probation camps, Camp David Gonzales, the place considered by many to be the jewel in the county’s deeply troubled probation system.

Irvin worked as a cook at Gonzales, where he was mentored by the camp’s head cook, a large, kind man named Dennis. Learning a skill made Irvin feel better about himself, he said, made him feel he was worth something. Camp also made him feel secure and, when his time at Gonzales was nearly up, he confided in some of the women counselors that he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go back to the old life, he said.

It was at Gonzales that he heard about Homeboy Industries, that it was a place that would provide help for somebody like him who was ready to make a change. As his release day approached, he held on to that thought like a beacon.

After leaving camp, Irvin showed up at the Homeboy offices at Alameda and Bruno, and waited for as long as it took until he could see Father Greg Boyle personally in order to ask him for a job. The priest agreed to put him on the building’s maintenance crew.

Right from the beginning, Irvin became known as the guy who showed up at the offices earlier than was required, and was nearly the last person out of the building. “He was around all the time. I mean ALL the time,” said one of the staff members.

But that wasn’t a criticism. People appreciated his enthusiasm and, within a short time, Irvin was a favorite at Homeboy. For one thing, he had smile that unfolded frequently and seemed devoid of pretense. He also had habit of reaching beyond his prescribed duties to help others–like the time after one senior staff member returned to work following major surgery. Irvin made a point of watching for her to arrive in every morning, so he could help her out of her car and into the office.

And he seemed to be trying to better himself. He enrolled in the continuation school that operated on the premises and happily wrote in his Facebook page that he was part of the class of 2011.

UCLA researcher Jorja Leap got to know Irvin when she added him to the list of newly hired former gang members she was tracking as part of her 5-year long evaluation of the Homeboy program. After nearly a year of following Irvin’s progress, she became cautiously convinced that he was one of those she would be able to count as a success story. “He was this sweet, joyful soul,” she said. “People called him Smiley around the office. And he lived up to his nickname.”

Novelist Leslie Schwartz, who runs the Homeboy writing program, was also taken with the kid. She talked with him at length this past Wednesday, after he had asked to join her class, telling her that, when he was locked up, he’d discovered that he loved to write poetry and he wanted to get better so he could one day publish his stuff “in a real magazine.”

“He was a real sweetheart,” Leslie said. But he said that it has been a hard year because his cousin got killed, then his brother—i think it was— was badly beaten.” In spite of it all, Leslie found him upbeat about the future. “He was excited about life.”

She told Irvin he could join her class the following Wednesday.

But it was not to be.

At 7:30 Thursday morning, Irvin had left his house to catch the bus that took him to work every weekday, and was walking along Rampart Blvd. between 3rd and 4th streets, when he was approached by someone. Perhaps it was several someones. In any case, somebody came up on him, then pulled out a gun and shot Irvin three times rapidly—BAM, BAM, BAM—once in the cheek, once in the back, once in the neck. Then the shooter vanished.

The cheek bullet did not enter Irvin’s brain tissue, as it might have, but his injuries were such that, in the intervening minutes between the shooting and the arrival of the paramedics, his brain was deprived of oxygen. It was unclear for how long, and whether the interval was lengthy enough to cause irreparable damage.

At Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center—more commonly known as County General— Irvin was rushed to surgery where the doctors were able to repair the damage that was causing him to bleed internally. Then the worst was confirmed. It was now nearly certain that his brain function was too minimal to sustain life and thought.

Staff from both Homeboy and Camp Gonzales streamed to the hospital when they got word of the shooting. Dennis the camp cook arrived, as did Father Greg, of course. Everyone did their best to comfort Irvin’s shell-shocked family.

By late Thursday afternoon, word came back to the Homeboy offices that it was just a matter of time before Irvin would be removed from life support. The fact that many on staff had been through this kind of sudden loss and grief on multiple terrible occasions did nothing to ease the loss now.

Also during the afternoon, Homeboy’s in-house attorney, Elie Miller, contacted the Rampart police station to find out if Irvin’s mother could pick up her son’s possessions–his wallet and his cell phone—that cops had taken from the scene in order to examine them. Yes, that would be fine, the officer she reached informed her. But the mother should not come at night because she might not be able to get in, “because of the protests,” he said.

Also, although the detectives at the Rampart Division had eliminated robbery as a motive, they were not yet saying whether the shooting was gang related.

The Homeboy staffers did not need to ask the question. They had no doubt that the shooting was gang related. They just didn’t know the why of it. Had Irvin backslid in some unknown way? Or did something in his past catch up with him? Or did someone simply go looking for a member of his old gang then, locating him, decide that he would do.

One thing, however, that everyone said they knew for sure was the fact that Irvin Panameno had changed his life —and that at Homeboy he was loved. (People kept using those words, “He was loved.”)

What no one said—what they didn’t have to say— is that sometimes, no matter how fast change has occurred, it isn’t fast enough to keep one safe.

CODA: Just before I finished writing this post, I glanced again at Irvin’s Facebook page and noted that his last few status updates were filled with a determined sort of optimism:

For example, on Saturday, September 4, he wrote: Living LIFE ALL DAY…

Then on Monday, September 6, he wrote: Livin life to da fullest never look back at da mistakes gettin my shyt together….

After that, all the messages were only from others—full of love and prayers and sorrow.

UPDATE: No one at Homeboy wants to give up on Irvin, at least not while one shred of possibility for a good outcome remains. At this morning’s meeting, which all of the staff generally attends every day before the office opens, Father Greg announced that Irvin had made it through the night, thus had lived 24 hours, and that this was a good sign—such as it was. With his words, Greg was careful not to raise unrealistic expectations, but nor did he want to squash hope.

After the medical update, Greg shifted the focus of his message. Those who had gathered listened intently, their expressions both controlled and stricken.

“One of homies said to me [yesterday], ‘No bullet can erase who he was for us.’” said Greg. “And it certainly can’t erase who he discovered himself to be in this place. ….

“That’s the thing that was mostly communicated to me yesterday.” he said, then fiddled with his iPhone for a moment to find something, and then read from the screen.

“Another homeboy texted me and said, ‘It hurts, pops. We were rivals on the streets. But Homeboy Industries made us brothers at the end. I got to know him real good. And I hate this bullshit.’”

Greg looked up from the phone, gazed around the room, and turned the angle of the message he was delivering yet again.

“Exactly right. No bullet can take from him who he was for for us.…and who he will continue to be for us, no matter what happens….”

If you want to listen to the rest of the section of the meeting about Irvin, it begins at the 3:50 minute mark on the video below. (I particularly recommend from 6:20 to 7:45.)

A very cool reading and party starring a group of talented Homeboy poets and featuring a short talk from Father Greg Boyle.

I’m going. You should too if you’d like to experience a moving, intriguing and one-of-a-kind literary event.

If you show up, please find me and say “hi,” (or whatever else you’re moved to say).

WHEN: Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Time: 7 pm
Where: Homeboy Industries
130 West Bruno Street
Los Angeles, California 90012

WHAT: This reading is free and open to the public. However, please help us in our current time of need. You give us $5 bucks we give you five chances to win our amazing raffle including signed copies of Tattoos on the Heart, G-Dog and The Homeboys, Homeboy Review’s debut issue, a Homeboy T-shirt, coffee mug and lunch for two at the Homegirl Café.

“If we lose hope, then we will be unable to give hope.”
Former gang member, now senior staff member at Homeboy Industries

Thursday night Father Greg Boyle was on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He’s been on the show several times before but this show was I think the best. It was inspiring, funny—and extremely upsetting because of Homeboy Industries’ present situation.

(Here’s the link to listen to the show online. Do it. I promise you won’t be sorry.)

Fresh Air’s host, Terry Gross, wanted Greg to be on the show, in part, because of the release of his new book, Tattoos on the Heart, which is steadily moving up the LA Times best seller list.

But first Gross was interested in talking about the financial crisis at Homeboy.

It has been exactly one week since Homeboy Industries announced that it was laying off 330 of its 427 employees because, after nearly 20-years of operation, the largest and best known gang intervention program in the nation simply could not meet its payroll.

The various businesses that Homeboy runs—the bakery, the cafe, the silkscreen business, the merchandise—will keep going because they are largely self-sustaining and becoming ever more successful. But the day-to day-operations—the jobs programs (training, placement and interim employment), tattoo removal, legal and psychological services—which serve upwards of 12,000 men and women a year, need a cash infusion of $5 million dollars to return to fiscal health and sustainability.

To be clear: the $5 million is not needed to square a deficit. Homeboy did not spend itself into a $5 million a hole. It has been struggling for nearly a year to make up for the loss of grants and big ticket donations that vanished into the abyss of the collapsing economy. This slowdown of the funding stream was combined with the burgeoning need for Homeboy’s services, a need that the same economic meltdown engendered. The organization patched together operating cash for as long as it could. Then one day it couldn’t any more. That day was, officially, last Thursday.

The needed $5 million will give give the organization the breathing room to recover to a point of fiscal sustainability, plus provide a cushion so that it is not one emergency away from another cash flow catastrophe.

(To put this in perspective, MOCA needed two separate $30 million endowments to return itself to sustainability. Reggie the Alligator cost $7.9 million to be caught and housed, which as Greg mentions on Fresh Air, is roughly Homeboy’s yearly budget.)

Since last week, there has been a nonstop outpouring of support—both monetary and emotional—from ordinary people. But no deep pocket angels have thus far stepped forward with the necessary big pot of cash. Although the wealthy of Los Angeles universally praise Father Greg as “saintlike” or whatever, in most cases, that’s as far it goes.

Wednesday, the day he taped the Fresh Air broadcast, was Father Greg’s 56th birthday and the recently-laid-off staff of Homeboy, plus a crowd of others who consider Greg to be “my real father,” came to surprise him with a cake, cheering, hugs, tears and some checks, one check for $1000, funds raised by a bunch of concerned UCLA students.

(And while we’re on the subject, DONATIONS TO HOMEBOY MAY BE MADE HERE.

I spent most of the day at Homeboy, in part to be present for Greg’s party. But more than anything, I just needed to spend time on the premises, to be in some kind of—I don’t know—solidarity with the people and the program that I care about so much.

Here’s the thing: I cannot imagine Los Angeles without the services, the community—and the hope—that Homeboy provides. I mean it. I simply cannot imagine it. The thought feels like the what-if-George-Bailey-had never-lived part of “Its a Wonderful Life,“—times ten thousand.

As Greg’s cake was being passed out, I looked around the room at those who had come to celebrate with much joy and much worry. I saw person after person who, at one time or another, had told me that they are not sure they would be alive were it not for Father Greg and Homeboy.

The statements are not hyperbole. Just based on my own knowledge, if pressed, I could list off the top of my head at least 100 people—double or triple that if I made a real effort—who could easily be dead, locked up for a very long time, or mired in some other chasm of despair, if it were not for this place that, with a few notable exceptions, the wealthy and powerful of Los Angeles have thus far not deemed worthy of rescue.

For example, there is Louis Perez, pictured above at the recent ALOUD event with Father Greg that I moderated. Louis, who is 30 years old, spent 12 of his 30 years on earth locked up in some incarceration facility or other, both juvenile and adult. Now Louis is on Homeboy’s senior staff and is one of the most talented people you’ll ever meet at helping younger guys gather the courage to change their own lives. “This place gave me the family I didn’t have,” he says, tearing up when he says it. “Father Greg was the father I didn’t have. That’s the way it is for most of us.”

Wednesday, I also spent time talking to Gustavo Martinez, whom I’ve known since back in the day when he was a young and surly gangster. Even during his bad old gang days, Gus was also wickedly funny with a heart the size of Wyoming, despite the fact that, when he was a child, his mother used to put cigarettes out on his skin—and worse.

Due to the combination of horrific childhood abuse, gang-engendered PTSD, and a series of deaths of friends close to him, in the last few years Gus suffered from clinical depression that sent him into spirals of incapacitation. Therapy at Homeboy, plus the support of the community, has brought him back to himself and he now is working as the assistant maintenance supervisor for the building. (He was busily unclogging a pesky drain in the Homegirl cafe as I was leaving the offices.)

Two weeks ago, before the layoffs, Gus confided to me that he had signed up for a series of cooking classes. “I can cook, no problem,” he told me. “But I want to learn to use spices. Spices are the key.” Knowing him as I do, I was delighted by his admission. It wasn’t so much the cooking that struck me, it was what it symbolized in rebooted optimism.

For Gus too, Homeboy is the only family, the only parent, the one dependably caring place that has allowed him to right himself.

It’s important to know too that, in many ways, Gus is the exception, not the rule in terms of those who pass through these programs. In fact, most of those I know whose lives have been transformed by Homeboy Industries weren’t there on Wednesday because the party was in the middle of the business day and, having gotten their start at one of Homeboy’s programs, they had long ago graduated and were hard at work elsewhere— on a construction crew, as a PA on a movie set (or higher up the film crew food chain), as a crew manager for an oil and gas company, in administration at a local college, in auto mechanics or, in one case, at a legal firm, in another case, working for the mayor of Los Angeles.

Yet, for each of them, at the crucial moment-–often at many, many crucial moments—Homeboy provided the needed “no-matter-what-ness” as Greg puts it, the firm, unshakable conviction the young man or woman is worth something, that he or she matters and can have a decent future beyond what their past had predicted. Even when homeboys and homegirls are still too enmeshed in gangs to qualify to work at Homeboy, a belief in their possibilities and inherent goodness is held for them, as if in trust —”no matter what.”

A homegirl I ran into on Wednesday is one of those who, like Gus, has not made it to the graduation goal line. She is at an earlier stage than he is, yet her progress is heartening. Her name is Jessica Valles. When she was young, one of Jessica’s eyes was terribly damaged in a gang shooting. Forever after it bulged, froglike, from its socket, and no parent or family member had either the wherewithal or the desire to see that it got repaired. The eye combined with severe childhood abuse turned Jessica into a very tough and very angry young woman. Yet, to anyone bothering to glance slightly below the surface, the hurt girl beneath the fury was always visible.

I met her a few years ago when she first came to Homeboy. For a long time, her progress was a matter of four-steps-forward, three-and-a-half back. She’d be working, doing well, then would explode and disappear into her old life. The steps forward seemed to take better hold when, last year, through a Homeboy connection, she was finally able to get the needed plastic surgery to have her eye fixed.

After that, the Homeboy staff got her into rehab so that she could kick the meth with which she often self-medicated. She would sometimes call me from the rehab facility, saying she was making progress, that she finally understood that all the rage was masking tears. “It’s hard to face,” she said. “But I’m strong, Celeste. I’m strong. And it’s different from my old strength.”

But now that she is out of rehab, she needs a job. Finding nothing elsewhere, she came to the Homeboy offices for help.

When I saw Jessica on Wednesday, she told me confidently that she was on the waiting list for a job at Homeboy.

I winced at her statement, and asked if she was aware of the recent money troubles.

She nodded. “I know they can’t hire me now,” she said. “But I’ll wait. And I’ll find a way to make it until they can. I’ve gotten this far. I’m strong.” She paused, her expression faltering. “I need to be here,” she said finally. And then she repeated the refrain I’ve heard a zillion times. “G’s like the parent I never had. And Homeboy’s like the home I never had, you know what I’m sayin’?”

I did. I do.

But the more relevant question is does the rest of Los Angeles understand Homeboy’s importance?—both to the homeboys and homegirls who seek its help, and to the city’s own claim to humanity.

As of this writing, it is a question that remains open.

“My hope is that this will be a moment where people in Los Angeles put first things recognizably first…. A Warhol, the Hollywood Sign, and Reggie the Alligator seem to be of more value, frankly, than the 12,000 gang members who walk through our doors every year. So maybe this is a moment for people to say, ‘That’s not right, actually.’”

Greg Boyle, May 19, 2010, on Fresh Air

ONE MORE PITCH FOR DONATIONS TO HOMEBOY, if you’re so moved. They may be made HERE.

For over a year, Father Greg Boyle has been warning that Homeboy Industries was in financial trouble that was edging ever closer to a full blown crisis.

Thursday that long-feared crisis arrived.

On Thursday morning, Homeboy Industries employed 427 people. On Thursday afternoon, Father Greg and his senior staff had to tell 330 of those employees they had been laid off. There was simply not enough money to pay their salaries. Greg himself would not be taking any salary either.

Ever since the national financial debacle began in 2008, like many nonprofits, Homeboy’s saw its grants and donations slide drastically. At the same time, fiscal hard times caused the number of people in need of Homeboy’s services to skyrocket.

Now, frankly, $5 million is needed to keep Homeboy going. And the individual donations, miscellaneous grants, (including the $300K that the City of LA managed finally to fork over last fall, after much pressure) were simply not enough to bridge the gap.

“People are willing to raise tens of millions to save the the Hollywood sign and MOCA,” said Greg Thursday night, “and I don’t begrudge that. I love MOCA. I just wish the same level of concern was present when it comes to saving the real, live human beings who come through our doors every day at Homeboy.”

Homeboy’s businesses—the Homeboy bakery, Homeboy Silkscreen and the Homegirl Cafe—are all largely self-sustaining, so they are not at issue. Homegirl salsa is due to start arriving in Ralph’s stores and a Homegirl cafe is being seriously considered for a new section of LAX. The Learning Works Charter High School is also funded and remain open. Ditto the solar panel training program.

But the main part of services that Homeboy provides the approximately 12,000 people each year from gangs all over LA County who come for help to this largest gang intervention program in the nation, are given away free. And they cost a tidy sum to maintain.

Among its services, Homeboy offers job training and placement (and in many cases, jobs period, for those who will clearly not be hired elsewhere), plus tattoo removal, psychological services, anger management classes, and legal services that cover a range of needs, like getting a guy’s record expunged, so that he might get the job that will allow him to feed his kids, a job for which he is otherwise qualified.

Most of all, really, Homeboy provides a community that offers hope to men and women who are in desperate and painful need of hope.

It is those services, and that unique community, which Homeboy can no longer afford to maintain until and unless it can get a big cash infusion.

After the announcement in the Homeboy offices there were many tears. But there was also a universal determination among the staff—from senior members to young part-timers— to come to work anyway. The mission was too important, they said. Then there were group prayers said. And more tears. And more vows of determination to find a way through the crisis.

They would not let the hope that Homeboy represents just vanish, they said. They could not. The cost to the city—and to themselves—would be too great.

But, obviously, people cannot work for free forever. Rents and electric bills will need to be paid.

Thursday night Greg spoke at a sold out event at the Central Library. The event was centered around the release of his book, Tattoos on the Heart, and along with Greg, it featured one of his senior staffers, a wildly smart and articulate former homeboy named Louis Perez (with me moderating and interviewing). The rapt audience in the library’s theater gasped as if gut punched when Greg announced the layoffs near the event’s end.

Thursday was a day of gut punches

You can MAKE DONATIONS by going here.

I notice that Hecter Beccerra at the LA Times has a story on the layoffs that is worth reading.

UPDATE: KPPC’s Nick Roman has a story here.

And here’s the story that ABC news did Thursday night just as Greg and Louis were getting ready to come to the library.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATES: Jon Weiner has an excellent article in The Nation that I know has stimulated donations.

Greg was on Patt Morrison’s show—with the mayor. Listen here. It’s quite good—and heartbreaking. (You can play the individual segment online.)

And then read Dennis Romero’s column in the LA Weekly.

I’ve been at odds with Romero many times. But today…. GO DENNIS.

PS: One more thing: Does anybody know Oprah Winfrey? I’m serious. if she would just read Greg’s utterly wonderful book, Tattoos on the Heart, I feel sure she’d like it. Then she’d invite him on the show and the book would deservedly race up the best seller lists to become a sort of Tuesday’s With Homie. Et voila! Fiscal problems solved!

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Write Oprah and tell her that “G” needs to be on “O.” (What the heck, it worked to get Betty White on SNL, it could work here. Pass it on.)