PEACEMAKING FOR HOMEBOYS
April 6, 2015
The latest broadcast of “On
Being” (http://onbeing.org/program/father-greg-boyle-on-the-calling-of-delight/5053)
is Krista Tippett’s interview with Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, who describes
Homeboy Industries, and the former gang members, many out of prison, employed
in Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles.
The interview begins with Krista Tippett asking Father Greg to describe
his early efforts to forge treaties among gangs in the area, which Boyle frames
as his failed attempt at "peacemaking,” as treaties were routinely
broken. Beginning with a bakery, the
non-profit bakery has become an incubator for enterprises catering especially to
gang members leaving prison.
I am reminded of Edwin’s Café (http://edwinsrestaurant.org/?gclid=CjwKEAjw3YipBRDL2bHhjLmFkQsSJADtzktjIBzQAufnexMHgv9GbSawz07QPF2AS2LMoV8y94px0RoC03rw_wcB)
outside Cleveland, created by a chef who is an ex-prisoner, which trains people
out of prison in culinary arts, restaurant management and now in sustainable
agriculture; reminded of the fact food services have been an avenue from prison
to the free world, and so have food and other micro-services, notably in
restaurants and bakeries, across the country.
With all the occupational barriers to employment for those who have been
incarcerated, it is ironic that the avenue open widest for ex-prisoners is to
pay them for the food they create, customers trusting that what they sustain
themselves with is safe and healthful.
I am reminded, too, of a utopian
vision I wrote in Paul Jesilow’s and my Myths
That Cause Crime 30 years ago (http://critcrim.org/?q=article/myths-cause-crime-free-download
, p. 190):
Prison
industries could be democratic, worker-owned enterprises including, as board
members, other groups such as guards and crime victims. Worker-owner prisoners
could leave prison belonging to the same enterprises extending into the free
world. For instance, make a product in prison, and worker-owner prisoners could
market the product upon release. Prisoners could own and be responsible for the
major sources of their livelihoods inside and then outside prisons. They could
share profi ts and business decisions with their guards and their victims in
the process. As I see it, if and when such co-operation happens, there is no
question whether it will work. The political challenge is whether powers that
be dare try.
That
would be utopian. Father Greg and others
have created communities of employment and care that make peace with ex-prisoners
and gang members real. I’m
sending this post to Fr. Greg and to Krista Tippett to suggest that Fr. Greg has
not turned away from peacemaking. He has
turned from trying to make peace among gang members by getting them to stop
violence in a way that created failure, by attracting them instead to a place
of loving, mutual acceptance and respect.
He has turned from imposing a regime to creating what Lloyd Ohlin called
a legitimate opportunity structure. To
my mind, peacemaking embraces the possibility of creating safe community—even as
one trusted friend to another—as an alternative for victims of violent
circumstances to find security. To
continue stuck on a path to making peace treaties enforceable was generating
its own disorder. To be responsive
enough to failure on one path toward peace to respond in another direction is peacemaking
itself—in the case of Homeboy Industries, peacemaking that works. Father Greg, I’d say you have let the spirit
of peacemaking lift you out of determination to impose peace. Hearing you is a treat. Love and peace, hal
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