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

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" 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. "

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

" We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time. "

" I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members. "

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

" The poor evangelize you about what's important and what is the Gospel, and that that's where the joy is. "

" God is compassion. "

" Showing up in the lives of children is everything. "

" 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.' "

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

" I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.' "

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

" 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 powers, conditions, and desires that propel Mexicans and Central Americans into this country are so fundamental, so vast, that no action, legislative or other-wise, can discourage this flight. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

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

" Young people can change and grow. Every parent knows that. "

" As a society, we come up lacking in many of the marks of compassion and wisdom by which we measure ourselves as civilized. "

" I didn't take my vows to the LAPD. "

" 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. "

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

" The highest religious and spiritual ideals of any faith would invite us to a compassion for all lives destroyed by the violence that plagues us. "

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

" 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. "

" Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming. "

" I've never met an evil person ever. "

" 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. "