I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

God can get tiny if we're not careful.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.