Community Organizing & Human Rights

We have chosen to advance systemic social change and organize for the long haul to end the school-to-prison train and pushout in South LA and communities like it.

The cornerstone to this level of change is a parent-led movement and organizations that bring parents into the foreground of the public education debate. This is essential to making sure that the leadership of education reform is shared with those most impacted by an unequal education system.

Since June 2005, we have combined our community organizing approach with a human rights framework. We use international human rights standards as the basis by which we analyze conditions in our schools and communities.

We chose to use the definitions embodied in international standards precisely because they raise the bar of what we demand from our public education system and reflect more closely what parents expect from schools:

• that their children will be treated with dignity and respect in the educational process and discover their self-worth (right to dignity);
• that schools will not unnecessarily remove their children from the educational process (right to quality education); and
• that parents share in decision-making and can hold schools accountable (right to participation).

The integration of human rights has led to a clearer vision of the type of parent power CADRE is working towards – parents who are able to protect and promote children’s dignity, opportunity to learn, and self-determination, by being at decision-making and policy-making tables and having the tools to monitor accountability in policy implementation.