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 want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The power of community policing is in the relationship. This can happen only if an officer sticks around for a while.
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.
The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.
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.