We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.
Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important.
The employer is not going to choose the gang member who's just been released from prison: they're going to choose the person with the skills.
No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself.
Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.
The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.
The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'
I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.
It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for 'showing up' and embodying the message.
I always have a funny story at communion time that underscores that no one is perfect, and that communion is not for perfect people but for hungry people.
What is ultimately compelling for our children in helping them conjure images of a future for themselves is our willingness to walk with them as they do it.
I would hope that government officials have a healthy respect for the complexity of the gang problem. They should never lose sight of the fact that there are human beings involved. There is no single solution.
Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.
The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.
We are among the handful of countries that has difficulty distinguishing juveniles from adults where crime is concerned. We are convinced that if a child commits an adult crime, that kid is magically transformed into an adult. Consequently, we try juveniles as adults.
The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did.
There is no such thing as a bad cop, only disturbing and dominant cop thinking that will invariably lead to excessive force and tragic outcomes.
We can't get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease.
In Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world, we have 1,100 gangs and 120,000 gang members so it is a daunting, complex social dilemma.
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.