There is no 'them' and 'us.' There is only us.

You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

Don't forget, you are the hero of your own story.

You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done.

Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs.

You are exactly what God had in mind when he made you.

You can't reason with gang violence: you can't talk to it, sit it at the table, and negotiate with it.

Abject poverty, political instability, torture, and other abuses push thousands across our border. There is not a deterrent imaginable that equals the conditions that force their migration.

I wouldn't trade my life for anybody's.

God can get tiny if we're not careful.

Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

My job isn't to fix or rescue or to save. It's to accompany, see people, listen to them.

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.

If you are paying attention, then the day is going to be pretty joyful, and a lot of delight will fill it.

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.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.

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.

Like the suffering child, gang members act out of their despair, and their actions are all the more alarming now for our not having heeded their cry long ago. The shortsighted neglect that keeps us locked up in our outrage has also kept us from viable solutions.

Reactive and proactive policing are both necessary. Still, we need to lower expectations that such efforts can ever be responsive to crime.

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.

The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.

What do we know to be true about gang violence? We know we will fail if we fixate on the symptoms and not address what undergirds it.

I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would've thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn't anticipate it.

The mark of our society as civilized will come when we embrace confidence in the power of redemption.

I think that any program that's born from below rather than on high is going to survive.

Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.

Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

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.

When the vastness of God meets the restriction of our own humanity, words can't hold it. The best we can do is find the moments that rhyme with this expansive heart of God.

Relapse happens, especially when you're dealing with folks who are frankly the least likely to succeed based on their own pasts and difficulties. We can work with the most likely to succeed. I'm not interested in that.

God seems to be an unwilling participant in our efforts to pigeonhole Him.

At its best, an injunction creates a kind of vigilant heat that moves kids toward the light.

I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.

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.

I'm not always optimistic, but I am hopeful.

I've never met an evil person ever.

We are less than honest and commit a grave error if we insist that what happened to Rodney G. King was isolated and an exceptional case. The poor know better.

I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.

Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important.

I kinda don't do guilt. I gave it up for Lent years ago.

The arms of God reach to embrace, and somehow you feel yourself just outside God's fingertips.

Metro police can't infuse hope into those for whom hope is foreign. The algorithm does not exist that can heal the traumatized. Data-driven predictions won't result in the delivery of mental health services.

Gangs are born of a lethal absence of hope, and hope has an address: 130 W. Bruno St. in Los Angeles, CA 90012.

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.