The founder of Homeboy Industries, said to be the largest gang intervention program in the world, will be the next guest speaker for Conversations on Race and Policing, Cal State San Bernardino’s ongoing series.

Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who started Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles nearly 40 years ago, will discuss his latest book,  “Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times,” beginning at noon Wednesday, March 11, on Zoom. The program is free and open to the public.

“In ‘Cherished Belonging,’ Boyle calls back to Christianity’s origins as a spiritual movement of equality, emancipation, and peace,” according to the book’s webpage. “Early Christianity was a way of life – not a set of beliefs. Boyle’s vision of community is a space for people to join together and heal one another in a new collective living, a world dedicated to kindness as a constant and radical act of defiance. As one homie, Marcus, told a classroom filled with inner-city teenagers, ‘If love was a place, it would be Homeboy.’”

Boyle, who was a 2024 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S., became pastor in 1986 of Dolores Mission Church, sandwiched between downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights and said to be the poorest Catholic parish in the city. With the public housing projects Aliso Village and Pico Gardens nearby, the area also had the highest concentration of gang activity.

Two years later, Boyle started Homeboy industries on two principles: all people are inherently good (no exceptions) and all people belong to each other (no exceptions). “Boyle believes that these two ideas allow all of us to cultivate a new way of seeing the world. Rather than the tribalism that excludes and punishes, this new narrative proposes a village that cherishes,” according to the book’s webpage. “Pooka, a former gang member, puts it plainly: ‘Here, love is our lens. It is how we see things.’”

Since its founding, Homeboy Industries has turned around the lives of thousands of people through its 18-month employment and re-entry program and by offering its many services, such as tattoo removal and resources to help combat substance abuse.

The Conversations on Race and Policing series began after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and its aftermath. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, triggering extensive protests, demands for systemic reform in policing, and profound dialogues on race and racism. This also led to the inception of Cal State San Bernardino’s Conversations on Race and Policing, abbreviated as CoRP.

In subsequent court cases, three other former Minneapolis police officers implicated in Floyd’s death were given prison sentences.

The series has featured scholars, journalists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, activists, artists, educators, administrators and others from throughout the nation who shared their experience and expertise on issues related to race and policing.

Since then June 2020, more than 140 forums have taken place since, and video recordings of the sessions are posted online on the Conversations on Race and Policing Lecture Series Archive.

Next on the schedule, at noon on March 25, is Yelana Sims, assistant professor of history at the University of South Carolina whose research interests include race, technology and gender and sexuality. She is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled “When the Flesh Knows It Is Flesh: Black Women, Sex Work, and Technology 1880-2000.” According to her faculty webpage, the book “examines African American sex workers of the 19th and 20th century and their interactions with technology, focusing on how technological advancements were used to surveil and convict as well as advertise and enrich sex workers of this period.”

The series organizers are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, psychology), Stan Futch (president, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library),  Jeremy Murray (CSUSB professor of history), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College adjunct faculty) and Mary Texeira (CSUSB professor of sociology, emeritus), with support from the John M. Pfau Library and Project Rebound at CSUSB.

For more information, contact Madrigal at rmadriga@csusb.edu or Murray at jmurray@csusb.edu.

Also visit the Conversations on Race and Policing webpage for updates and other information.