John Layfield Quotes

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

It's our responsibility for the village to say, 'Hey we're going to create these programs,' whether it's sports, creative arts, music, we need some things to give young people positive things to do, and that's including jobs.

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.

There are young people all over the country who don’t always have the helping hand, the second chance that I had.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

I've always wanted to work with young people from disadvantaged areas.

We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'

The reason most of the children are having problems in any inner-city neighborhood is because they don't see enough positive role models in their own environment.

I think I would encourage leaders to start working with communities in order to inoculate angry, young teenagers.

It is incumbent upon all of us to build communities with the educational opportunities and support systems in place to help our youth become successful adults.

I've experienced first-hand the wonderful work organizations like J Bar J do for young people in Central Oregon and I am encouraged that the federal government is taking an active role in the Cascade Youth and Family Center.

I've also been working with the Challengers Club in the inner city of Los Angeles for 15 years now, I guess, and it's essentially an inner-city recreation club for boys and girls.

Our young people are assets to be cultivated and nurtured; let's begin treating them that way.

At Walmart, we recognize the need to support the development of our nation's youth.

I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming.

The problem is foster youth don't really have this network that other kids have.

I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.

My sister has a non-profit organization called Mission Change. It helps the homeless and kids.

There are thousands of boys being wasted daily to our country through being left to become characterless, and, therefore, useless wasters, a misery to themselves and an eyesore and a danger to the nation. They could be saved if only the right surroundings or environment were given to them at the receptive time of their lives.

Be in no doubt: we are completely committed to make sure we support young people with the additional resources that are necessary to give them the alternatives to the offer that's put forward by the terrible criminals on the streets.

The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center has this wonderful program where they take in the youth, feed them, help them learn how to cook, clean, they help them get jobs, help them learn how to save their money, and they have shelters all over the city.

Dick and I became increasingly committed to helping other parents - parents from low-income families in particular.

With gangs, there could be a positive outlook because it takes the older guys to come school these younger guys on the right roles.

We have the power, as lawmakers, to find ways to support our young men and identify solutions to the hardships they regularly experience.

Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!