Deadly Despair

I caught the phone on its third ring."Rusty's been shot. Can you come quick to Popeye's house?" I didn't recognize the young, breathless voice. I said I'd be on my way. It was 1:30 a.m.

While driving up 4th Street, I repeated the words over again in my head. Rusty had been "shot," he hadn't been killed. I conjured up quick images of Rusty. He was bien jugueton, always very playful and wildly funny. His humor was just a little bit crazed.

Once, when I was driving Rusty and a carload of his "homies" (which is short for "homeboys" and means buddies from his neighborhood), Rusty completely changed the lyrics of the song "Just Because," as it blared from my oldies tape, to "bag" on my large forehead. "Just because your forehead is so immense," he sang, and it went on like that for the remainder of the song. He substituted "Frenton" and "Bumper" to vary his kidding of my receding hairline. He had often told me that I didn't have a "forehead" but rather a "tenhead."

Rusty was also a chillon -- meaning he'd cry at any vulnerable or difficult time. Whenever I'd visit him in Central Juvenile Hall, he'd tear-up on me. The times we spoke in my office alone would almost certainly end with him losing the battle against his tears.

One such time was after he and about 30 of his homies had finished watching a local news show in our rectory that had done a piece on the gang problem in Los Angeles. This particular evening's installment was the last in a continuing series meant to drum up support from the citizenry to "wipe out gangs." The correspondent would end each segment with a 900 number urging people to call and donate money so these gangs could be "wiped out."

This last report featured Dolores Mission and juxtaposed our strategy with gangs with that of the local police precinct. Many of Rusty's homeboys were covered in this piece. When it ended, Rusty asked to speak with me. He was uncharacteristically somber. I sat him down in my office after evicting the six or so homies who were gathered there.

"What's up, homes?" I asked him, unfamiliar with this grave expression on his face.

"That TV thing got to me," he began. He was staring off beyond me, and his gaze locked vacantly on my bookshelf. He cradled a pair of "locs" (sunglasses) on his knee. "They want to wipe us out, G. They even have a number you can call if you want to wipe us out. They are even asking for money so they can wipe us out. What d'ya think they want to do, G?"

"I guess they want to wipe ya out," I answered with a laugh, but Rusty was unmoving and grim. "I wish they'd help you out. I wish they'd give you better schools and jobs and things to do. But I guess they just want to wipe you out."

"And they were talkin's -- about you, too, G. How come?" The local police commander had made a few disparaging remarks about my preferred strategy with these "street terrorists."

"I don't really know, Rusty. I suppose it's because I refuse to hate you guys and that's what they want me to do." I paused. "Do you think I should hate you?"

Rusty shook his head and barely pronounced " no." Then nothing prepared me for what he did next. He silently grabbed his sunglasses and put them on, and then leaned his head way back and began to sob. We sat in silence. He cried for some time. I told him that I loved him and would always be there for him. All he said to me was, "I know, G, I know." He soon composed himself and joined his homies gathered in the parking lot of the church.

IT WAS THIS IMAGE OF THE chillon, of this super-sensitive kid, that dominated my thoughts as I pulled up to Mott and Eagle Streets and saw the yellow police tape draped from side to side. The ambulance pulled away too slowly. Not a good sign, I thought. I reached the yellow tape and saw a body wrapped in a white sheet.

Rusty had been killed instantly with one bullet to the head. He and his homies had been "kickin' it" in front of Popeye's house when a car with rival gang members came by. They all engaged in the ritual dance of "gang-bangers," meaning they "maddogged" each other (stared each other down), "hit up" each other (asked "Where you from?"), and finally "dissed" each other's neighborhood (said "F--- the Locos").

They drove away but all knew they would be back. Within minutes they returned with guns, and Rusty had just been too slow in diving to the sidewalk.

Since I had offered to inform his parents, the police at the scene allowed me to cross the line to identify Rusty. When the officer pulled back the sheet, Rusty had the same empty and sad stare on his face that had preceded his crying jag in my office that day after the TV program.

I hugged and tried to console the homies as they arrived, and then I left to tell Rusty's parents that their eldest son was dead. As I had experienced many times before, the words "Lo mataron a Mando" -- "They've killed Mando" (Rusty's real name) -- cut through the stillness of the early morning and the yelps of grief that began from his mother pierced the silence and our hearts with it.

Rusty's death was the fourth such murder in two weeks in our community. As I had been called upon to do just a week before, I preached to a church full of homeboys who were enraged by yet another loss from their neighborhood.

I spoke of Rusty's humor, and I shared the story of his tears in my office. I told his gathered friends that Rusty felt things deeply. That he laughed and cried readily and with ease, for he was a young man and great of heart. I insisted that this was what life was meant to be.

I said that we are meant to grow old together and watch our children grow and their children as well. And that all the while we are meant to have a great appetite for what life does to us -- making us laugh and cry and wonder. We are meant to feel things deeply. I went on like this in the church.

Then I told them that it was "gang-banging" that had killed Rusty. It was gang-banging that had killed Trigger, Cricket, Flaco, Chopper, and the others. It wasn't some particular gang but rather gang-banging itself. And to the extent that we have ever engaged in gang-banging -- ever maddogged, hit-up, or dissed someone else; packed a gun, pulled a trigger, or "gone on a mission" -- then we are responsible for this death.

I didn't know how to end the homily. Then it came to me. That is why Rusty cried that day in my office, I said to them. He knew that life was not meant to be nor to end like this. He cried because he knew that gang-banging was killing us all.

At the end of the Mass, the coffin was rotated and opened for viewing. As is customary, I was the first to see Rusty and give him my blessing. I noticed when the casket was opened that a drop of liquid rested on Rusty's heavily made-up face, probably a result of the intense heat of the evening and the terrible job done by the morticians. It looked like Rusty had one solitary tear streaking down his face. It remained there for the duration of the viewing -- a testimony to this lovable chillon and a challenge to the madness that had caused his death.

GANG ACTIVITY AND GANG-RELATED crime and death are not problems in our community, they are symptoms. They point beyond themselves to even greater problems of education, joblessness, boredom, dysfunctional families, intense poverty, and despair.

In the city of Los Angeles, our analysis of this "problem" has been consistently shallow. Tax dollars and public sentiment have been invested in campaigns to wipe out gangs, rather than address the source of such behavior. Many Christian communities and church organizations have cast their lot with the prevailing cultural response to gangs, and so "the jailer and the cop" keep receiving a blank check to do what they will.

But it is precisely because we are unwilling to hunker down and deal with the root causes of gang activity and violence that there is a marked increase in gang membership and gang-related deaths. We should not be surprised.

In areas of the city of Los Angeles where gang activity is most dominant, police officers have a secret code among themselves. If they receive a call that two gang members are fighting or that rival gangs are having a "rumble," especially if there is shooting between them, the police characterize the call as an "NHI" meaning No Human Involved. An NHI gives the police permission to have a lighter touch on the gas pedal and to arrive just in time to be too late, in time to mop up afterward. After all, NHI.

Our born-again vigilance loses sight of the fact that there are human beings involved here. The cry of the urban poor is partly expressed in the madness and despair of gang violence. In fact, many humans involved. The "hate 'em and hurt 'em" strategy of local law enforcement officials and the "take no prisoners" approach of the city's leadership never even get in the vicinity of a solution to this problem. Our churches have blessed campaigns to "take back our streets" and have forgotten that kids are involved. We have allowed them to be called the enemy.

People of faith must pose a countersign to society's prevailing analysis of the "gang problem." Christian communities must stand in hopeful defiance of tactics that seek to frame these youth as "enemies of the people." The gospel insists that we make connections between increased gang violence and the lack of job opportunities in the inner city; between ever-growing gang allegiance and the gap between the rich and the poor (the widest in 40 years); between gang-related deaths and soaring drop-out rates. If our churches adopt campaigns based on an attitude of "We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore," we'll succeed only in further alienating youth already paralyzed by despair.

Rusty was a 17-year-old Latino gang member. He was no "street terrorist," but rather a kid who dressed a certain way, drank on the weekends, was estranged from his parents, and could not see his way clear to imagine a future for himself. Perhaps it was this last fact that made his timing so deadly that night. Perhaps it was his deep sense of hopelessness that compelled him to stand defiantly while the others dove for protection.

Rusty and 80,000 young people like him in Los Angeles challenge Christian communities to redouble our efforts to become instruments of hope to youth unfamiliar with hope. The gospel leaves us the task to imagine a future, bright with possibility, for kids stuck in a despondent pattern of violence and self-destruction. "Gangsters" are not the enemy. Adults don't declare war on kids. Our energies of opposition must be directed toward the poverty, unemployment, and failures of the school system that keep gang-banging alive. The teardrop frozen on Rusty's cheek that hot, summer evening of his funeral Mass calls us all to a compassionate love, soaked with the sure hope of the risen Lord.

Greg Boyle was pastor of Dolores Mission Church, a Catholic parish in Los Angeles which runs Dolores Mission Alternative, a program for dropouts at risk, when this article appeared.