Thomas Vozzo - The Homeboy Way: A Radical Approach to Business and Life

www.loyolapress.com

2022 Thomas Vozzo

All rights reserved.

Cover art: hand lettering by Fabian Debora, grunge texture, Xurzon/iStockphoto/Getty Images

Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people mentioned in this book.

100% of author royalties go to support the mission of Homeboy Industries.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8294-5457-4

Based on the print edition: 978-0-8294-5456-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947920

22 23 24 25 26 EBOOK 5 4 3 2 1

To my father, who taught us the value of honesty and integrity, and to my mother, who always believed in usthey were truly loving parents.

I was on a Zoom call with a group in Dublin recently when the host of the meeting quoted an old Irish saying I had never heard before: It is in the shelter of each other that people live.

This saying captures the essence of Homeboy Industries.

If a prison is how society practices exclusion, then Homeboy Industries practices inclusion. Homeboy Industries is the largest gang intervention, rehab, and re-entry program in the world. Its been around since 1988, and many thousands of gang members have found shelter in the place and each others hearts. Homeboy Industries puts forward the idea that we need to build a system of care that offsets our over-built system of punishment.

Our CEO for these many years, Tom Vozzo, whose text you now hold in your hands, provides here his eye-witness account of Homeboys counter-intuitive way of proceeding. Before joining Homeboy, Tom had begun experiencing a disconnect between his values and those of corporate America. He soon discovered that there existed two Americas and that, indeed, the poor had been forgotten by one of them.

This realization formed his path to our place in Los Angeles Chinatown, where he chose to be in the proximity of folks in whose vicinity hed never been before. Tom offers his spiritual and practical accounting of this experience, presented here with clarity and tender grace. His words offer a window into a reality that is uniquely his own and beneficial to us all. His reverence for the complexity of things and his steadfast admiration for the poors indomitable spirit grace each page and underscore the power of a beloved community of belonging. Systems change when people do, and people change when they are cherished. This is the Homeboy Way.

More than a handful of times, Tom Vozzo has taken a crew of senior staff, all gang members, now in leadership roles, on very arduous hikes. They spend an entire day climbing to heights unthinkable for these guys who have only known the terror of street violence and who have lost nearly half their lives to prison. One particular Saturday, Tom took them all to ascend Mt. Whitney. A homie named Jos described it as Horrible. It was intense, and we were exhausted. It seemed like wed never get there. We stopped talking to each other, much less looking at each other. Everyone had their heads downjust tryna make it. It was all kinda every man for himself. Jos told me that many of the homies just wanted to give up and descend the mountain before reaching the pinnacle.

He also shared that Tom noticed the changes that had come over them. At one point, Tom calls them all to attention and proposes the way forward: You have to look up, he says. You cant just stare at the ground. Dont forget to admire what you see. Take in the beauty of this place and each other. He invited them to gratitude, which is always bound to happen when we lift our heads. When we stand tall with our eyes open, God becomes recognizable as love, and we realize that community trumps gangs; community trumps the daunting path ahead of us.

Tom and the homies reached the top, and they were thrilled. The tenor of their exhilaration was born from a call to not just put one foot in front of the next. Rather, their joy found its roots in an invitation to look to the sky and to find ones harmonious strength there.

Every morning at Homeboy, we begin the day with Morning Meeting. We celebrate peoples birthdays, sober dates, new jobs, and children being returned to our folks. We announce the tattoo removal hours, give a rundown of classes that day, declare the bread special from the bakery, and finally, we end with the Thought for the Day.

On one particular day, Tom gave the Thought. He had finished reading Dorothy Days autobiography, The Long Loneliness. He quoted the founder of the Catholic Worker movement: I longed for a church near at hand where I could go and lift up my soul. Tom spoke movingly of Homeboy as the place where he palpably feels his soul being lifted up. He has allowed himself to be reached by those on the margins, and the experience has altered his heart.

I am eternally grateful to Tom Vozzo for his singular leadership at Homeboy Industries. He has shown us his humble example of how we are meant to receive people whose burdens are more than they can bear and whose dignity has been denied. He has shown, in this book, a way forward and the path for us all to look up and see each other. This book points the way to our foundational joy in choosing to be a shelter for each other and to seek to live in each others hearts.

After working twenty-six years in the for-profit capital sector of our economy, and now after nine years of working with the poor, forgotten, and demonized people of our society, I see life much differently. I feel as if Ive awakened to a new understanding of the societal contract: the rules of how we interact for the betterment of society. The Homeboy Way is the how of mutuality, compassion, and kinship, leading to a better society.

I wrote this book because I feel fortunate to have learned so much during my time at Homeboy Industries. To put this in context: I had viewed my life by traditional measures, as being pretty successful and gaining a certain level of stature for what I accomplished. With heightened status comes the usual amount of confidence and sureness about the profound issues of life. And yet through my time at Homeboy, Ive come to learn that I didnt know as much about life as I thought. This blind spot I had is typical for so many of us. Through no fault of our own, by just being in the mainstream of society, we stay isolated from those most unlike ourselves and outside our station in life. Without having to come face to face with the marginalized or demonized members of society, we do not have to face the reasons for their circumstances, and we end up being absolutely confident in our view of them and their issues.

Homeboy Industries is the largest and most successful gang re-entry program in the world. It was founded and is led by Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest, who has dedicated his life to helping men and women get out of the gang lifestyle. As they transform their lives, these men and women show us why people should not be defined by the worst thing theyve done. Homeboy has helped thousands of people heal from complex trauma and become contributing members of our society. Homeboy helps the people everyone else in society has given up on.

Homeboy Industries is a model program with proven results. Its a special place that offers forgiveness, hope, and first chances. And, for so many people, it has become a sanctuary, for its one of the few places on earth where God is so very apparent.

I arrived at Homeboy exactly when they needed somebody like me with the skill set of running successful organizations. I also arrived at a time when I needed to learn more about myself and my spiritual trajectory. Along the way of helping Homeboy thrive over the past several years, I have gained knowledge and insight about my own spirituality and about the plight of the people Homeboy Industries serves.