Line of Sight Podcast · Don Heider PhD, Brigit Helms PhD

Homeboy Industries with Father Greg Boyle

·31 min·2 clips

Boyle says “we’re used to being watched, but we’re not used to being seen.”

1. Line of Sight speaks with Father Greg Boyle about Homeboy Industries and gang intervention in Los Angeles. 2. Bridget Helms and Don Hyder introduce Boyle as the Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries and as the executive directors of Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. 3. The episode asks what Homeboy Industries is for: jobs, healing, and a way out of gang life. 4. Boyle says Homeboy is now 36 years old and recalls that the first 10 years brought death threats, bomb threats, and hate mail from people who demonized gang members. 5. He says gang members never showed hostility because they knew Homeboy represented hope, not judgment. 6. Boyle identifies October 1999, when the bakery burned down, as the moment the Los Angeles Times editorial helped shift public support. 7. He says the editorial framed the issue as “tough on crime or smart,” not “tough on crime or soft.” 8. Boyle explains that gang members initially asked for jobs, so Homeboy tried to find employers and then started businesses when employers would not hire them. 9. He says the organization later moved “by year 15” from being job-centered to “healing-centric.” 10. Boyle argues that an educated or employed gang member may still reoffend, but “a healed gang member will not reoffend, period.” 11. He describes therapy, anger management, and a broader communal culture as the practical parts of the program. 12. Boyle says the “secret sauce” is that people are “seen,” not merely watched, and that every staff member contributes to that experience. 13. He uses the image of a “room flooded with light” to distinguish healing from insight. 14. Boyle says Homeboy’s front doors matter because people must choose to walk through them, and no one is recruited or coerced. 15. He says many people arrive after a death of a friend, the birth of a son, or a long prison sentence, and they are greeted warmly because “we see you.” 16. Boyle estimates that gang-related homicides in Los Angeles fell from 1,000 in 1992 to about half that, then nearly half again, while he describes Homeboy as an “exit ramp.” 17. The conversation turns to storytelling, and Boyle says people pay attention when he tells stories from his work as a priest and advocate. 18. Boyle’s tone stays reflective and conversational, with the hosts asking follow-up questions that let him expand on language like “extravagant tenderness” and “belonging.” 19. People interested in trauma-informed social work, reentry, or faith-based community work. 20. Listeners seeking a fast celebrity interview or policy debate.

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