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.
— Greg Boyle
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.
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.
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 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.
The truth is this: Brutalized, victimized children invariably will brutalize and victimize when they grow up. Is our only response to this the certain promise that we will penalize them when they do? Or will we commit to keeping our children safe from brutality and victimization?
We can't just settle for the low bar of pope as media-savvy, canny Curia manager.
We need a pope to oversee not simply a modernization of the church but its total transformation.
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.
Showing up in the lives of children is everything.
You prevent kids from joining gangs by offering after-school programs, sports, mentoring, and positive engagement with adults. You intervene with gang members by offering alternatives and employment to help redirect their lives. You deal with areas of high gang crime activity with real community policing. We know what works.
Anyone who knows gangs knows that lawmakers cannot conceive of a law that would lead a hard-core gang member to 'think twice.'
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.
I've never met an evil person ever.
Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important.
Gangs are born of a lethal absence of hope, and hope has an address: 130 W. Bruno St. in Los Angeles, CA 90012.
We can't get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease.
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.
So complex are all the ingredients that cause gang membership that it seems virtually impossible to isolate one solution that can address them all and thereby manufacture a hope for the future upon which these kids can rely.
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 highest religious and spiritual ideals of any faith would invite us to a compassion for all lives destroyed by the violence that plagues us.
Most citizens viewing the tape of Rodney G. King being beaten by police officers were stunned and uncomprehending. Most citizens, that is, but the urban poor.
I didn't take my vows to the LAPD.
We need a pope to usher in a new era of inclusion, the end of a sinful clericalism, and a strong sense of duty to those on society's margins. The 1 billion faithful long for a leader who is fearless and driven - not by terror but by love.
You can't reason with gang violence: you can't talk to it, sit it at the table, and negotiate with it.
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.
We don't need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community.
The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement.
The mark of our society as civilized will come when we embrace confidence in the power of redemption.
As a society, we come up lacking in many of the marks of compassion and wisdom by which we measure ourselves as civilized.
I have a lot of people in my life, and I think there's something key: the thing that leads to intimacy and relationship and connection is tenderness.
I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.
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.
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.
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.'
As much as I dislike the suggestion of single solutions to complex problems, jobs are as close as we will get to a single, effective answer to the enormous problem of gangs.
God is compassion.
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.
Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities.
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.
The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did.
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.
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.
If the Los Angeles Police Department had enough officers, it could focus on one part of the community and stay there long enough to know and respect the people the officers are called on to protect and serve.
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.
I'm not always optimistic, but I am hopeful.
Richard Rohr is a theologian that I read.
For over twenty years, Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with those on the margins and those whose burdens are more than they can bear; it stands with the poor and the powerless, with the easily-despised and the readily-left out.
Reactive and proactive policing are both necessary. Still, we need to lower expectations that such efforts can ever be responsive to crime.