What We Do
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.
For more information about the human rights standards used in CADRE’s campaigns, please visit our online library.
Community organizing activities:
- Community-based engagement and recruitment - door-to-door and community (churches, shopping centers) canvassing in targeted neighborhoods to engage and recruit parents in independent setting and manner that reaches parents who do not frequent school campuses
- Community-based human rights documentation - organizers and trained parents going door-to-door to survey and conduct surveys and in-depth interviews regarding experiences with parent participation and school discipline
- House meetings - targeted meetings after relationships are built with parents who live near each other and share CADRE’s vision for more in-depth discussion and sharing of stories
- Action committees - convening parent committees on an ad hoc basis related to specific actions to engage parents in planning and decision-making
- Membership meetings and building - holding Parent Action Meetings every 4-6 weeks to provide information, generate parent feedback, activate parents in events, and build relationships with one another; providing members with critical services as needed
- Core leadership groups - implementing parents as organizational and campaign-specific decision-makers through regular meetings that entail political education, strategic planning, and consensus-building
- Developing policy solutions - drawing analysis of problem and ideal solutions from parents, engaging feedback on solutions, and identifying policies versus practices, identifying responsible parties, and developing demands (action committees, leadership groups)
- Engagement of public officials - engaging school, District, or State-level officials as needed in order to share community-based research, policy solutions, and demands
- Monitoring policies and practices - training core leaders and new members to monitor, share results, and assess accountability gaps
- Building alliances - core leaders and staff entering into appropriate and strategic coalitions
- Developing new knowledge - transcribing community-based documentation into call to action reports/policy demands with parent voices
- Building organization - engaging members and core leaders in the development of organizational values and principles in order to build a parent-led, union-like entity that can alter the balance of power between South LA schools and parents long-term
