WALKING & TALKING: HOMEBOY ELECTRONICS

February 27, 2019 by J. Nelson

Hanging at the back of a recent Atlas Obscura tour of Homeboy Electronics, an outgrowth of offender re-entry nonprofit Homeboy Industries, I learned that I’m as likely as anyone to lose sight of how good I have it while choosing from my 3,397 flat screen TV options.

The reminder came from those we met along the way: former offenders and gang members. As they explained the presence of poisonous lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium in the plastics and metals of e-waste to those of us likely to upgrade their smart gadgetry just because the sky is blue, I couldn’t help but enjoy the role reversal. Who’s the “environmental” one here?

Director of Operations Brian Fox was our host and guide. Brian could not have been more energetic, knowledgeable, and passionate about the importance of educating the public on both the destructive potential of America’s 6.3 million annual tons of e-waste -and the power of second chances.

So when a discussion arose among those touring about whether or not recycling was even enough to combat such incredible overconsumption, I was glad when we decided we’d be of significantly better service by simply listening and tabling the debate for another time.

I’m glad we did, because it’s one thing to throw out your old printer. It’s another thing entirely to learn (and see!) just what escorting so many Epsons to the trash actually means to our presence on the planet. An electronics recycling facility is where those numbers take on real perspective, and that perspective makes you feel like you just encountered a fat black widow spider.

If I had to pick two key takeaways from Brian’s burn for us to grasp e-waste, I’d finger both throwaway culture and Right to Repair legislation. Educating oneself in these areas and discovering the value of refurbished tech are ways in which we can counter planned obsolescence. There are some pretty ingenious ways to give our smart gear “second and third lives,” which might actually be what it takes to make that gear truly “smart” in the first place.

And Homeboy Electronics is where do-overs dare.

It was in 1988 that Homeboy’s founder, Father Gregory Boyle, wrote “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” On his own, he began learning by doing and leading by learning. It’s the position of this blog (i.e. my view) that Homeboy Industries is re-entry and community reintegration at its best.

Now, through Homeboy Industries’ Workforce Development Department (known for years as “Jobs not Jails”), ex-gang members and formerly incarcerated men and women become Homeboy and Homegirl candidates.

And what started as a bakery now includes a solar panel program, Homeboy Groceries (for damn good chips and salsa), silk screen and embroidery, catering, and more (including an expanded bakery and Homegirl Cafe). Most importantly, what we saw on our tour of Homeboy Electronics was the key to all of this: former offenders doing the recycling rather than being themselves recycled through the criminal justice system.

But each Homeboy training and job placement program offers even so-called “high risk” individuals the opportunity to learn marketable skills, become environmentally aware and, in the case of used inkjets or iPhones, help bring the rest of us up to speed as well. Above all, Homeboy is a peer-to-peer network in the least technological sense, and it doesn’t offer its second chances in terms of a marketing agenda.

Homeboy Electronics has its own support store right at their facility. If you’re in the area, check out the selection of vintage electronic equipment, including reconditioned audio, video, and computers of every stripe. Why pay an eBay mark-up, do the flea market shuffle, or suffer through collector snobbery when you could support such a genuine example of post-incarceration rehabilitation?

Never mind what you’ll be saving.

Apple’s Grapple

February 29, 2016 by J. Nelson

Creation of Homeland Security not enough?

Office of Total Information Awareness left for the day?

Is the heart-shaped flower of police militarization wilting?

Did D.A.R.P.A. go dark?

Has the Patriot Act pooped out?

Nope. Nor have the corporations and power brokers of the surveillance state yet tapped out American taxpayers.

In other words, the FBI does not need the Genius Bar.

From Feds to street-corner cops and home security companies, law enforcement has more than enough control, technology, and boots-on-the-ground for continued counterterrorism success. And probably lots of fun civil liberties secrets, too.

The FBI has all the tools it needs and plenty more to keep American citizens safe. And when I say “safe,” I mean relatively safe, just as we’ve been since September, 2001. Stuff will happen; that’s just the trajectory of history, especially when we’ve been messing around with it as much as we have. But in trying to force Apple to write new software that will help them unlock an iPhone belonging to the perpetrator of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, the Bureau is overstepping its constitutional bounds. Apple worries that, if they comply, anyone who can grab or mimic their software will have access to every confidence Americans hope to keep electronically secure. Read more

NO EXCUSES FOR CUBA Pt. 2

June 12, 2015 by J. Nelson

I may have returned from Cuba a more informed tourist, but I remain a clumsy narrator, for I’ve experienced more than I know how to process at once.

So, with my eye ever on excuses (and a reliance on my iPhone camera for more complete coverage), I’ll just jump right in.

Our casa particular was in Habana Centro, the most densely populated district in the city of Havana, where much of life is spent where the action is: right outside the building in which one lives. Street sports like handball, self-regulating pet and child care, gossip, singing merchants, colorful laundry being pinned to decaying balconies, inventive refuse repurposing, prostitution, championship dominoes, and, of course, more vintage Chevy tweaking than outside a Barrett-Jackson auction are daily occurrences, rain or shine. Drivers use their horns in polite little taps to warn pedestrians, slower cars, and ubiquitous bicycle taxis that they’re approaching from behind, because walking in the middle of the narrow streets is necessary – and not because the city lacks sidewalks. This is about Darwinian natural selection: misshapen rebar barely clinging to crumbles of concrete isn’t just a photo op, it’s a reminder that falling chunks of rotting rooftops are common, especially following an afternoon downpour. Our local host was explaining this to my wife when a basketball sized slab of wall proved his point a few feet away.

Born into Phone Plans

September 21, 2014 by J. Nelson

GUEST POST: 17-yr-old Grant Calderone on the future of phone plans.

If you’re asking me to shell out $749 for a smartphone, don’t market it to me like it’s a hamburger.

It’s hard to imagine Apple, Inc. desperate for anything, but the company has been squirming to return to prominence under the smartphone spotlight following the failure of its cheap and synthetic iPhone 5C.

We didn’t see the fall of tech’s Holy Roman Empire, but it was pie in the face of Steve Jobs’ legacy nonetheless. Now, with the the length of the iPhone 6+ exceeding six inches, infamous media manipulator Apple has detoured the public’s attention from design brilliance to bigness in one product. What’s next? A lifestyle clothing line featuring pockets fit for a smartphone king? A true visionary, MC Hammer sported iPants years ahead of their prime. Read more

The Mall at Men’s Central Jail

May 5, 2014 by J. Nelson 2 Comments

The LA County Jail doesn’t need tearing down, it needs Rick Caruso.

The Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail is an overcrowded dungeon, a house of horrors for pre-trial prisoners, the physically disabled, the mentally ill, and even jail visitors. An ongoing federal investigation into allegations of brutality at MCJ has exposed ghastly conditions, corruption, excessive force, free roaming retaliation, and secretive factions of Sheriff’s deputies and jailers.

Well is there a better location for a mixed-use mega-mall? Nope. Shake off your handcuffs and imagine Neiman Marcus, Blaze Pizza, Crate & Barrel, Abercrombie Kids, and Apple all competing for a share of this exciting retail market.

With the fate of Men’s Central uncertain, why not take a page from the old-timey tours and gift shops currently operated at Folsom and Alcatraz? Or from Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, fresh from its annual reunion of former guards and inmates? Even better, why not go further upscale and consider something along the lines of Boston’s quaint Liberty Hotel, formerly known as the infamous Charles Street Jail? All are popular tourist attractions that generate big bucks. They serve as walkable warnings to the mentally-ill and socially wayward, and provide the public with glimpses into America’s penal history – and future.

Too soon for a custody-themed Cellblock Shopping Town? Too “insensitive” of an idea? What’s stopping us, bad taste? Ha! Prison ideation saturates media and advertising anyway, so why not give the secret “crimeshopper” in all of us a little fun?

Let’s go from jail rats to mall rats and rake in the tax revenue!

Why not plan a “Shopping Daycation” around a jail-themed Apple Store or J.Crew? Men’s Central will forever be remembered as O.J. Simpson’s courtroom hotel and where lady-puncher Chris Brown will spend his 25^th birthday: why shouldn’t the city cash in? Yet turning a civil rights cesspool like LA’s Men’s Central Jail into one of SoCal’s hippest destinations for designer handbags and iPhones is the one idea no one has proposed.

Until now. Welcome to The Fashion Industrial Complex – the Mall at Men’s Central Jail. Read more

Jail Was Easier than Feeding My Grandmother

January 19, 2014 by J. Nelson

At 94, growing her hair long is the extent of her personal choice.

It was just an ice cream sandwich, placed in a bowl and broken up after it had thawed some. My mom had handed it to me, saying as she picked up a magazine, “Here, give your grandmother her dessert. Help your grandmother.”

She deserved the five-minute break; she’d been sitting next to her mother for the past 37 hours. Neither of my parents has left her side in years, whereas my brothers and I have the luxury of going wherever life takes those who aren’t trapped.

When I arrived I found my grandmother and my mom in a very nice hospital room. The staff was largely Catholic-Hispanic, so I knew both felt comfortable and free to exaggerate to their heart’s content. The large window perfectly framed the setting sun, and you couldn’t ask for a better time to look out at it. Which was all I wanted to do.

But my mom had put me on the spot by handing me that bowl. I resented her for it because I’m a selfish person first and an empathetic one second, plus I’d become aware of dueling feelings that had arisen within me. I felt both unworthy of and above this task. I was afraid of an up close look at what age had done to my grandmother, and while I wanted to believe this was normal, my brain defended that fear with pride and conceit. Read more

Excuses, Dishonesty, and Tragedy

November 30, 2013 by J. Nelson 2 Comments

A daughter’s collect call from jail interrupts Thanksgiving dinner

To look at Everett and Ella, you’d never know they’re the parents of a troubled, incarcerated daughter. They’re both successful in careers they love and they both espouse the family values with which they were raised, albeit modernized ones. Their home, where my wife and I were guests for Thanksgiving dinner, sits on a nice street in a neighborhood just about any set of young parents could happily work with.

When the phone rang the air at the table thickened slightly, as if a fly had entered the airspace. If the fly knows what’s good for it, it had better not land. A second ring offered a perspective on what it’s like to be the fly, buzzing in during dinner, which for Everett and Ella is a consistently early evening affair.

It was their old-school land-line ringing, and because, like a lot of us, they live and work by their iPhones, that meant that whoever was being ignored was family. Who else, besides mom and dad, first dials a land line these days? Regardless, ring number three provided satisfaction in the parental example they were setting for their four-year-old boy: no matter who’s buzzing around, during dinner, nobody touches the phone or the television. Read more

Creation of Homeland Security not enough? Office of Total Information Awareness left for the day? Is the heart-shaped flower of police militarization wilting?