Alabamas Homeboys

December 20, 2009 3:09 PM

Homeboy Industries (gang intervention organization) visits Alabama Village in Prichard Alabama. Videos, photos and an essay describe their visit.
posted by proneSMK (9 comments total)

that last link might not go where you wanted it to....
posted by HuronBob at 3:13 PM on December 20, 2009

It seems to go to the right place for me, HuronBob.
posted by ocherdraco at 4:54 PM on December 20, 2009

When I was in high school in Montgomery, Alabama back in the late eighties, our football team was sent to play Prichard's, but the cheerleaders were not allowed to go with them as they normally would. The whole area was considered just too dangerous.

On another note entirely...

I'm all for community activism and doing whatever can be done about violence among the young and poor, but there's something missing from all the anti-gang rhetoric. Namely, the role that the rest of society plays in creating the problem. Yes, you should try to convince the sixteen year old who's selling crack to try other, less destructive things, but you should also talk to him about the dearth of jobs, racism, the so-called war on drugs, the push to re-segregate the schools (particularly in Alabama), business's eternal push for lower wages and reduced benefits, the out-sourcing of manufacturing jobs, union-busting, and a political system that does not respond to the will of the citizenry. If we're going to have large scale change, that sixteen year old and the rest of his community will have to join together in some sort of political action.
posted by Clay201 at 5:30 PM on December 20, 2009 [8 favorites]

While I think the parallels between the lives of the two groups are fascinating, and the work described is worth notice, I'm a little frustrated that the piece doesn't locate this neighborhood within a larger context. As an Alabamian who lives outside the South, it bothers me that most of the reporting on Alabama I read that originates outside the region and looks at the state's lower extremes (of poverty, education, or anything else) does so without any grounding in what the surrounding communities are like in a way that actually takes away some of the effect of that reporting.

Prichard, for example, is eight minutes by car to downtown Mobile, the second largest city in the state. It is not an isolated town in the middle of the country. That the lives of the children in the neighborhood of Alabama Village are so completely disconnected from larger society is even more shocking when you think that they're less than ten minutes from skyscrapers. Repeatedly, in the piece, the Homeboys talk about how the poverty they're seeing in this community shocks them because it's so much worse than anything they've ever seen. But it isn't only shocking for L.A.; it's shocking for Alabama, too.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:38 PM on December 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't know who I love more in this piece. These young men have gone down to their depths, and come back so fully themselves, so fully human. And Father Greg is humbly amazing. Truly love in action; I can't think what LA would be without him. (And btw, for LA folks - if you've never eaten at Homegirl Cafe, you're missing out. Angela's Green Potion ... mmm.) proneSMK, thanks for posting.
posted by anshuman at 5:50 PM on December 20, 2009 [2 favorites]

Thanks - excellent post. I'm home in Alabama for the holidays - and as someone who now lives in New England, I'm always struck by the differences - and Prichard is certainly even more differnt than what I experience in other parts of Alabama.
posted by quodlibet at 6:21 PM on December 20, 2009

Thank you for posting this, proneSMK.
posted by ltracey at 6:31 PM on December 20, 2009

I was a prof at USA in the early 1990s and got lost in Prichard once. It is not remotely "rural." It's blighted and neglected in the same way Gary is, with a surprising number of dirt roads (just like Gary) and burnt-out bungalows, but it's not "rural." It's a suburb of Mobile.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 11:12 PM on December 20, 2009

Here's a link to Father Greg Boyle's speech from NPR's Word For Word.
http://spokanepoliceabuses.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/working-up-from-the-streets-rev-greg-boyle-on-word-for-word/

I downloaded this to my desktop and listen to it whenever I need to remember why words are important. It is so true and simply and beautifully done that it makes me weep.
And I can't imagine a better holiday tradition than listening to it with people you love.
"...and the soul felt its worth."

(and I am a fairly secular gay Jew in recovery, just sayin')

“It is not about service provider or service recipient. It’s about us belonging to each other”. — Father Greg Boyle
posted by mer2113 at 2:50 AM on December 21, 2009