Sampling a Solution : Gore Gets Taste of Grass-Roots Enterprise at Eastside Bakery

Vice President Al Gore on Thursday praised youths and community leaders gathered at Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights for their efforts to create jobs and services in their neighborhood without government help.

Gore came to Los Angeles specifically to tour the Homeboy Industries bakery and the church’s child-care center, which was built by homeboys in 1992 and is staffed by local mothers. The vice president toured the Eastside projects in an effort to gather information for a new federal program that will allow communities to create ways to help themselves.

“Later this year, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about (community empowerment),” Gore told the crowd. “One of the reasons I’m here today is to learn from the successes you have provided with these projects that come from the grass roots and are based on ideas within the community.”

The bakery, which was created as part of the Dolores Mission’s Jobs for a Future program, is being renovated by onetime gang members and other homeboys. When the bakery reopens in August, it will employ about 20 youths.

“I think the vice president was interested in coming here because Dolores Mission hasn’t waited for the federal government to rescue us with programs,” said Father Gregory J. Boyle, director of the Dolores Mission’s jobs program, which was founded in 1990 by Boyle and members of the church’s Comite pro Paz en el Barrio (Committee for Peace in the Barrio).

“We’ve created jobs on our own. . . . Fifteen homeboys built the child-care center and the bakery now hires seven homeboys and will employ three times that number when it opens. Jobs reduce crime. Jobs make communities safe.”

Before answering questions from community members, Gore chatted with children at the child-care center, giving them high-fives and complimenting them on their artwork.

“His coming here is a new experience for us,” said Mario De La Cruz, who works at the bakery and gave Gore a Homeboy T-shirt. “I think it’s good for people on the top like that to see how we live over here.”

During a round-table discussion, Comite Pro Paz member Esperanza Vasquez told the vice president in Spanish that the federal government must work on creating jobs for youths, rather than building prisons.

“We have seen that crime is reduced when there are more jobs,” she said through an interpreter. “I have talked to many of these kids and what they tell me is that they need help getting a job so they can support their families and pay their rent. We need support for these efforts that we have started, but we can’t finish them unless we have the support from people like you who have the power.”