The Dawn Farm Education Series will host a free talk by Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries and best-selling author of Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion and Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.
In his talk, also titled “Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship,” Gregory Boyle will share how compassion, kindness, and kinship are the tools to fight despair and decrease marginalization. Through his stories and parables, all will be reminded that no life is less valuable than another.
WHO IS THIS FOR? All who care about our youth, our families, and our community; all who want to end violence, promote justice, and celebrate our common humanity; all who, like Father Greg Boyle, believe that, “It’s connection and kinship that ultimately heal people;” and all who would like to hear powerful, moving, experiential stories of what happens when, “You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship.”
WHO IS THE SPEAKER? Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, California, the largest gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. A Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in Los Angeles in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, Father Boyle and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. In 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life.
Father Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His 2017 book is the Los Angeles Times-bestseller Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, the White House named Father Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics.
DATE, TIME and LOCATION: Tuesday April 30, 2019; from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm at Washtenaw Community College Towsley Auditorium, Morris Lawrence Building, 4800 East Huron River Drive, Ann Arbor Michigan 48105-9481. Literati bookstore will be on hand for a book sale/book signing following Father Boyle’s talk.
COST and REGISTRATION: Admission is FREE. Registration is not required.
MORE INFORMATION and FLIER: Additional information is available on the web site, and a printable/downloadable flier is posted here.
