The Pasadena Public Library will be screening “G-Dog,” a documentary about Father Greg Boyle, the white Jesuit Catholic priest who transformed the lives of thousands of Latino, Asian and African-American gang members in Los Angeles, at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 4.
Directed by Freida Lee, “G-Dog” details a virtual tour of Homeboy Industries, which Boyle founded and directed and which later became the world’s largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program.
Boyle was also former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.
Over the years, Homeboy Industries has become an international model for rebuilding the lives of gang members. Homeboy takes these kids off the street, and provides them free job training, tattoo removal, counseling, yoga, and fatherhood and substance abuse classes.
After going through an 18-month program, former gang members eventually land in jobs baking, cooking, serving, printing t-shirts and cleaning in the Homeboy businesses, which include a café, a retail store, a catering service, and a silk screen shop.
Homeboy Industries has reported an astonishing success rate, with 70 percent of the kids turning their backs on gang life, while other similar programs report a recidivism rate of 70 percent.
The film, first released in 2012, tells about how Homeboy has been “the one place in the ‘hood that turns lives around,” by swapping violence for community and building for the first time a sense of the future.
Thursday’s screening will be on Zoom. To get access, visit www.cityofpasadena.net/
