On Wednesday, Lamumba Sayers buried 20-year-old cousin , who was shot and killed while sitting in his car last month in Montbello. On Sunday, the Denver-born mixed martial arts fighter will go to Los Angeles on a city-funded search for strategies to end youth violence by creating jobs.
Sayers is part of a mission led by Denver City Councilman Albus Brooks, who next week will tour the facility and glean ideas from a program that uses career-creating job training to turn thousands of ex-gang members away from trouble.
“I think this could change lives,” said Sayers, whose Sayers Citywide Movers company is thriving as he employs more and more childhood friends and reformed gang members from his east Denver neighborhood.
“If you put the right opportunities in place, people will follow. If people have the job opportunities, where they can learn what it’s like to be a business owner, it can change everything.”
Brooks and five other Denver men — including former Crips and Bloods gang members — will tour Los Angeles’ Homeboy Industries, the nationally renowned,
gang rehabilitation program. The program, which dates to 1988, works with more than 10,000 former gang members a year, offering them full-time employment, tattoo removal, job training, education, legal help and counseling.
Founded by Jesuit priest the Rev. Greg Boyle, the group’s first social enterprise, Homeboy Bakery, launched in 1992, during a period of unrest that included the Rodney King riots. It has since grown into an array of nonprofits that train and employ former gang members.
Boyle, now executive director of Homeboy Industries, is known to say: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”
And Brooks likes that approach. Especially after this year, when .
“We’ve invested a lot of money in policing up, but not a lot of money in creating economic opportunities,” Brooks said. “We really need to look at appreciative ways we can get these folks gainfully employed and back into society and back into the success Denver is seeing right now.
“Go to some of these neighborhoods and unemployment remains high; triple what is in other neighborhoods,” he said. “People are not experiencing success in these neighborhoods, like Montbello, east Denver and Park Hill. How can we change that?”
Delivering opportunities and second chances is a hot topic right now.
President Barack Obama in November, after touring a drug rehab center and visiting with former convicts in Newark, N.J., amplified his push to revamp the nation’s criminal justice system, saying ex-cons have “made mistakes, but with a little bit of help, they can get on the right path.”
Tens of thousands of U.S. prisoners will soon benefit from federal changes to drug sentences in the coming year, as nonviolent drug offenders begin to walk out of prison early. Those former inmates will need help reintegrating into society.
That’s why a Homeboy Industries program — or something like it — could work in Denver, Brooks said. It would assist not just ex-convicts but young adults hoping to change their tack before they end up convicts.
And that change, as proven by Homeboy Industries, starts with a job. And not an $8-an-hour menial gig.
“That doesn’t bode well for the future for a lot of folks, especially in this economy,” said Haroun Cowans, an entrepreneur and executive director of the Impact Empowerment Group who will join the Brooks-led team for the Homeboy Industries tour.
“We need to think about how we can equip folks in the community to be able to participate in this economy in a positive way and give them goals that could really empower them,” said Cowans, whose group continues the mission of the Prodigal Son Initiative in Denver’s Holly Square neighborhood. “We want them to see themselves as a part of this prosperity and giving back to the community. It’s not just giving them a job but empowering them to be able to employ others like themselves.”
Homeboy leaders often host government and community leaders who come seeking assistance on how to help former gang members and ex-convicts with job training and careers.
Brooks and his team will visit the seven Homeboy social enterprises that provide both jobs and training to ex-gang members. They will eat at the Homegirl Cafe and tour the Homeboy Bakery and catering kitchen. They will see how Homeboy Industries workers make, market and sell their branded merchandise and run Homeboy Silkscreen and Embroidery. They will visit the Homeboy Farmer’s Market and the Homeboy Diner in the Los Angeles City Hall.
Ideally the trip will seed a program that is similar, but not identical, to Homeboy Industries. Last year, the group formalized Global Homeboy Network, an international group of like-minded organizations that sprouted from visits to the L.A. facility, Homeboy Industries spokeswoman Alison Camacho said.
“We know Homeboy will never be the McDonald’s of gang-intervention programs,” Camacho said. “What we consistently do is take the opportunity to share our model concretely, and we spend a great deal of time helping other organizations get off the ground.”
Sayers said he has seen firsthand how a job — and a dedication to God — can change lives. He recently asked one of his new hires about the biggest need in their community, especially among the young adults who were turning toward gangs.
“We are hungry out here and we ain’t got no way to eat. If you can keep a lion fed real good, he will become friends with the gazelle and they can live in harmony,” Sayers said, recalling what the man told him. “I’ll never forget him saying that. He told me ‘A lion can live with a gazelle.’ “
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or @jasonblevins
