An Altar Boy with a Gun.
Raul Diaz is a social worker at Homeboy Industries, a center where formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women redirect their lives. Raul has guided many of the 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles who come through Homeboy Industries’ doors each year into becoming contributing members of the community. He was profiled by author Courtney E. Martin in the book Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists. He is also a runner, hiker, baseball fan, father, and proud native son of Boyle Heights.
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Raul Diaz is a social worker at Homeboy Industries, a center where formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women redirect their lives. Raul has guided many of the 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles who come through Homeboy Industries’ doors each year into becoming contributing members of the community. He was profiled by author Courtney E. Martin in the book Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists. He is also a runner, hiker, baseball fan, father, and proud native son of Boyle Heights.
The youngest of eight brothers, Raul was raised by one firecracker mom who fled an abusive husband, the father of her six initial sons, in Texas and relocated to the Pico projects of Boyle Heights without a single friend in 1968. In the early seventies, she met Raul's father—a Vietnam vet—who ended up being an absent father to Raul.