First Lady Touts Programs for Youths

The former gangbangers at Homeboy Industries were not quite sure what to expect Wednesday when First Lady Laura Bush paid them a call at their silk-screening business in a grimy warehouse district in downtown Los Angeles.

Secret Service agents and the media swarmed the place as half a dozen young men screened logos onto bright yellow T-shirts.

“It’s crazy,” said Archie Dominguez, 26, a merchandise manager. “Of all the programs out there, she’s coming to Homeboy.”

Bush’s stop was part of a three-day trip to Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., to promote community- and school-based programs aimed at improving literacy and helping teens stay away from drugs, gangs and other risky behaviors. She was also in town for a Republican fundraiser.

At each stop, Bush has touted “Helping America’s Youth,” a grab bag of federal programs embraced by President Bush that includes Striving Readers, a program for struggling readers in middle and high school. She is also promoting the $150-million, three-year initiative to help children stay out of gangs that the president proposed in his State of the Union in February.

At Homeboy Industries, she asked her hosts what led them to the gang life, what kind of parents they hoped to be, and what they liked about the renowned gang intervention program run by Father Gregory Boyle.

“This is a second home for us,” Dominguez told her. “It’s like going somewhere where we feel loved and cared about.”

As Boyle explained to Bush, “Gangs are bastions of conditional love. Homeboy wants to be a bastion of unconditional love.”

Earlier Wednesday, Bush visited a literacy class at Sun Valley Middle School, which has dramatically improved its test scores in the last three years.

“We’re emphasizing the needs of boys because statistics show us that boys are more likely to fall behind girls in school, more likely to drop out of school,” Bush said in a school assembly. “Today in America, fewer boys than girls go on to college or to graduate school.”

In the classroom of teachers Matthew Watson and Kim Scott, the first lady took a child-sized seat to help read vocabulary words.