The Impact

The Impact

The voice is such powerful thing. All it take is one person to have a great impact, have a big influence, and keep it real with people who come from the ghetto whether it's religious words or keeping it real with someone it can really change spread positivity throughout the hood.

            When you’re coming from the hood you hear negative things just about every day of your life. For example, you have a warrant out for your arrest, or someone close to you was kill, or you getting evicted from your house. It is something that brings you down, in the book that I’m reading “Tattoos on the Heart” a young priest name Gregory Boyle. He share the word of God at Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles. G (what gangsters called him) knew the city was bad, real bad, maybe before he became priest of the church, he turned everything around by giving life to a lot of the thugs who keep getting in trouble or who trying to find a way out of the gangster lifestyle even if they threating to kill him like for example: when scrappy told G that he don’t know what to do and G hired him “Now what do I do? I know how to sell. I know how to gangbang. I know how to shank fools in prison. I don’t know how to change oil in my car. I know how to drive, but I don’t know how to park. And I don’t know how to wash my clothes except in the sick of a cell. I hire him that day…” (Boyle 30).  G made an impact on Scrappy's life by giving him a chance to change his life even though he threatened   to kill in him in the past, G held no grudge against him. Without G keeping it real with the homeboys a lot of the home boys would still be doing stupid stuff like robbing, selling drugs, or kill another rival.

            Other things that G would do is give love to people who didn't have love from other people. He met a kid name Lula who real name is Luis. He met Lula when he was 10 years old. Lula was not important to other people, but G notice him one day and ever since then they have been cool together. He wasn’t really smart in school, it took him awhile to understand things like for example: he didn’t know how to tell time nor did he know how old he was “he didn’t know how to tell time until Lupe Mosqueda, a member of our staff, taught him using a paper plate with moveable hands. He probably fifteen when he learned the concept of time. All of us at the Homeboy taught him to remember his birthday until he was fourteen” (Boyle 30).  G went out his way to take care and teaching him the important about life. Now imagine if G never met this boy or didn’t want to teach him anything Lula would probably be the same person he is today even though he wasn’t that smart, he still obtains more stuff then he probably would of back then.

G show a lot of love by helping people get clothing and calling them his son. It really hard when you live in the hood and you don’t know your father or he not really stepping up to the plate to be a father. When G got a call from Cesar, he asks him if he can buy him some clothes since he just got out of prison and didn’t have no fresh clothes. Cesar was happy to see G because he was true to his words and when you stay true to your words you have someone trust. After shopping G drop Cesar home, Cesar call him and start crying asking an urgent question “have I… been… your son? Oh, hell yeah I say” (Boyle 31). So you can tell these two had a good bonding in the past because G took care of him. G believe that god was working in Cesar life and that he is happy that Cesar have change is life around and leave the gangsta path alone.

            The things that G have done for the hood is far beyond what someone could ever do and that is call respect and having a voice.