Luis Rodriguez knows of hardships and of growing up in gangs in Los Angeles. He has been addicted to drugs and has served time in prison. He knows firsthand how difficult it can be for urban youth to escape the crime-ridden streets.

Now a best-selling author, Rodriguez uses his experiences to argue in support of a new approach to dealing with prisoners and troubled students.

“To me, all revolutionary change has to have healing at the heart of it,” he said, arguing for a more compassionate approach.

This was a common theme during his talk on Nov. 9 at the Madison College Downtown Campus. Advertised as a simple discussion and book signing to promote his latest book, “It Calls You Back,” the event was an hour-long lesson on the pitfalls of our society.

Rodriguez told students of his experiences growing up in an L.A. gang and his acceptance of the violence that surrounded him.

“My one imagination was that I would have the most beautiful funeral,” he said of his life in the gang. “I was prepared to die for the barrio… I didn’t really have any other thing to live for.”

This is why, he said, it is crucial that we give the youth of today something more important to imagine.

For him it was the anti-war and social justice movement of the 1960s that got him to make the decision to leave that life behind. These movements gave him the power to imagine another way to live.

“I yearned for another way to go,” he said. “Unity, not from crime and the drug trade, but from real social and economic change.”

He remembered the first time he made the decision to leave his gang life – he was in prison, expecting to do six years. A friend had been trying to bring him further into the prison gang world but Rodriguez had resisted. Finally he was told that if he didn’t join up, he couldn’t be protected.

“I’m not worried about what I have to do to be free,” he responded. “I’m all for raza unity… but this is something else.”

Since then he had two children and multiple relapses, including 20 years of drinking, but his hardships have since led to him reconnecting with his family and opening a community outreach center for kids in gangs in L.A.

He spoke of how his life has taught him that we can’t blame the kids all of the time, and pointed towards a culture that essentially sets underprivileged children up to fail. His criticisms were especially directed at the U.S. prison system – the only prison system in the world that will give life sentences to kids, he claimed.

“How can we write people off like that?” he asked the crowd, “when we say nobody can change, what are we saying about us? … Are we saying the world can’t change?”

Rodriguez went on to say that we have to make sure kids know they live in a world that can change if they try. The movements of the ‘60s were what helped him to realize that, and he sees the protests and occupy movement of today as another chance for that to happen.

Alternatively, he suggested that prisons be made places for healing since the current prison system doesn’t work. He made the case that our society is failing to properly deal with crime in this country.

“Everything we have done in this country to stop gangs and drugs has only made gangs and drugs worse, because we’re not doing the proper work of caring, of holding people and getting them through what they need to get through,” Rodriguez said. He cited a 70 percent recidivism rate – one of the highest in the world.

Comparing the prison system to a corporation, he asked how we could allow such a high failure rate. In the world of business, if a product is put out, and 70 percent of the time it’s sent back, that would be absolutely unacceptable, so how is it acceptable when it’s coming from prisons?

“You can’t arrest your way out of this problem, you can’t just prison your way out of this problem. If you could, we’d be in great shape,” Rodriguez said.

The change Rodriguez wants to see is in how we treat prisoners and failing students. He emphasized how important it is that we realize that kids have been trapped in an environment that they did not create, and that we shouldn’t be blaming them for failing in a culture that they were thrown into. Instead, he thinks we should be using more compassion when dealing with troubled students and prisoners as opposed to automatically punishing them without addressing root problems.

“Every time someone is in trouble, don’t just throw it away, use that trouble to build community,” he said. :”The only way you can really change people is by relating to them with enough respect and love and caring, so that even if they go off, they know that that’s there for them.”