What can Homeland Security and work have to do with each other? A whole lot. Jobs bring stability to society. When young people look around and see there may be a place for them in the work force, a place with a living wage and hope for a future with a home and family, they’ll be concentrating more on their algebra than how to make pipe bombs. Take for example the work being done by Homeboy Industries, located on the Mean Streets of Los Angeles, as described by Edward Iwata in the July 11 issue of USA TODAY:

Homeboy Industries helps former gang members get jobs and hope. Their slogans are: “Jobs, not Jail” and “Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job.”

Gabriel Flores said, “When I got that first paycheck, damn, it made me feel good. I didn’t go steal a car or sell drugs for money, I worked for it.”

Rev. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest known to the homeless as G-Dorg or Father Greg, began Homeboy Industries in 1992 as a job-training program to salvage the futures of gang members.

The operations manager, Michael Baca, said, “Two years ago we were just a little non-profit. But now we’re a $3 million organization with businesses and investors – people interested in helping us with our mission.” Actors Angelica Huston and Martin Sheen are among such people.

From Los Angeles, an article by Steven Greenhouse on labor violations against janitors was published in the New York Times, July 13 th, showing the underside of work, where labor violations go with the job.

Isais Garcia, from the age of 14, cleaned office buildings, waxed floors and scrubbed bathrooms, as long as 16 hours a day.

For the first 40 hours, he says he was paid under the name of Ramon Cabaliero, and for the next 40 hours as Iziqueil Gonzales, names of former employess, so the company could avoid paying him time-and-a-half.

Mr. Garcia, a 24-year-old immigrant from Mexico, is seeking back pay from the cleaning company, with the help of California’s labor department. When Garcia complained to his company’s authorities, they told him if he didn’t stop complaining,, he would be fired.

Greenhouse sates that: “Janitors are denied overtime pay, classified improperly as independent contractors, locked in the stores overnight and forced to work their first two weeks unpaid, based on dozens of interviews and numerous lawsuits.”

Injustice breeds injustice. Garcia is taking his case to the courts, but how many can do this? When a man works under such demeaning conditions, there cannot help but be the temptation to pay back his employer And thus is violence bred.

On a higher note: We’re pleased as punch when we see our security men and women acting heroically, proud and grateful to those who remind us daily of the goodness of our ordinary people. Take the two police officer who saved 15 people in a Lawndale, Illinois fire.

Patrol Officer Micael Papin, and his partner, Victor Perez, who work the midnight to 3 shift, at first smelled smoke, and then saw the flames pouring from a house on their beat, and were able to rescue 15 people, despite the smoke and fire. No one was hurt. (As reported by Emily Ago for the Chicago Sun-Times, July 15, 2005)

And there’s more good news, this time from the Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2005, via The Associated Press: The story is about Larry Hoffman, who turned in $2,000 he found in $100 bills in the pocket of a shirt he purchased at a Goodwill store on April 1.

Since not one of the 24 people who had contacted the police was able to describe the shirt, Hoffmann was told to report to the police station to claim the money. He said he and his wife would share some of the money with the family and give the rest to various churches they attend. Good work, Hoffmann! What a wonderful example you are for all of us.

In Jay B. Rohrlich’s important study, Work and Love: the crucial balance, he tells us:

Nothing else with which we associate ourselves can give us the sense of objective identity that work can. Work situations in which people do not derive a feeling of personal responsibility for the outcome destroy the worker’s spirit. When we can say, “I did it,” we are enjoying the ultimate in self-definition. People who rely on saying, “I have it,” or “I belong to it,” for their sense of self are lacking a critical dimension of personal identity. They are not creating new forms, they are merely joining old ones, or someone else’s.

Let’s take a look at what our high school graduates are finding on their horizons: A war begun and sustained on lies, costing lives daily, primarily of young people, to say nothing of the maimed and mentally confused.

A job market that daily sends good jobs abroad, leaving the left-overs for our own people, who see no future for themselves or their future families.

A sense of futility that draws too many to a life of crime, prison stretches, and more crime upon release to the very circumstances that sent them to prison in the first place.

Home Security begins with providing a positive future for our people, with jobs to satisfy their souls, put a roof over their heads and nourishing meals on the family table.

Gangs, running helter-skelter on our streets, armed with the latest of guns and ammunition ,are destroying our nation from within. We must give our young people hope, the tools of a first-rate education, and jobs that won’t be sent abroad. The enemy is on our streets and in a do-nothing White House and Congress. Sending our youth to an ill-conceived war is not the work of statesmanship but of self-imposed blindness, and in all too many instances, greed.

Dear Lord, please give us wisdom, truth-speaking, and compassion for those who seek the blessings of our nation in troubled waters. Amen.

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