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" The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did. "

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" We need not wait for further, well-placed home video cameras to see that low-intensity warfare is being waged against low-income minorities. We need only listen to the voices of the poor; they can testify that they are dehumanized, disparaged, and despised by the police. "

" I'm the priest who has been mistaken for an ATM machine. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 spent the summers of 1984 and 1985 as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. In 1986, I became pastor of the church. "

" 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. "

" Homeboy Bakery is an alternative to kids who have found themselves, regrettably, in gangs and want to redirect their lives. "

" 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. "

" The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement. "

Law Enforcement

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

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

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

" I'm not going to be here forever. I don't plan on going anywhere, but I don't know anybody for whom death is an exception. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one. "

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

" The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible. "

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

" Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities. "

" Children find themselves adrift not because the informational signposts are illegible, but because there is no one around to guide and accompany them. "

" The power of community policing is in the relationship. This can happen only if an officer sticks around for a while. "

" I love movies. "

" In my barrio, jobs work and money saves lives. When I have had the funds to place a gang member on a job site and pay his salary, I've seen him stop banging. When, on the rarest of occasions, an employer has offered a job to one of these youth, I've witnessed kids suddenly have a reason to get up in the morning. "

" Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans' seeming refusal to believe in a person's ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed. "

" 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 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.' "