We can't get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease.
Anyone who knows gangs knows that lawmakers cannot conceive of a law that would lead a hard-core gang member to 'think twice.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the disconnect between lawmakers' intentions and the realities of gang culture.
Greg Boyle articulates a profound truth about the complexities of gang life, suggesting that lawmakers, who are often removed from the experiences of gang members, cannot fully understand the motivations and challenges these individuals face. The phrase 'think twice' implies that legal measures alone are insufficient to change deeply ingrained behaviors and attitudes shaped by a difficult environment. This reflects a broader commentary on the limitations of legislative solutions when addressing social issues.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about criminal justice reform, this quote can illustrate the complexities of addressing gang-related violence.
More from Greg Boyle
All quotes βIf there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.
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.
We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.
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.
The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.
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Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.
If you want to save capitalism there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that has ever won in any moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. Check your premises, convince yourself of the rightness of your cause, then fight for capitalism with full, moral certainty.
Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?