Born from struggle,
built on parent power.
Our beginnings are the roots of a movement.
OUR STORY
The story of how South LA parents redefined justice and education.
What began in the aftermath of the 1992 uprising has grown into more than two decades of parents organizing against unfair school discipline in South LA. Their solidarity and determination created systemic change across South Central and South Los Angeles.
1992 — Roots in Uprising
CADRE was co-founded in the years after the 1992 uprising, which was sparked by the acquittal of LAPD officers in the beating of Rodney King. In the immediate aftermath, a spirit of reconciliation and healing inspired activities of transformation in the community — planting the seeds of what would become a movement for parent rights at school.
Mid-1990s — Recognizing the Barriers
Maisie Chin, a community activist who had also worked in education reform, recognized the inherent racism resonating throughout the city and how it permeated school environments. Racist ideologies and policies that marginalized and punished students — feeding the school-to-prison pipeline — also worked to delegitimize and dehumanize Black and Brown parents in South LA schools. Through her experience in supporting community-based violence prevention emerging out of gang truce work, Maisie knew the impact of humanizing people while organizing communities.
Late-1990s — Rosalinda's Stand
For Rosalinda Hill, despite over a decade of commitment, volunteering, involvement, and even working in her children’s South LA schools, she experienced racist treatment firsthand. Even worse, her track record and presence on campus did not prevent the racist treatment of her children, including her youngest son in elementary school. She knew there were more parents like herself and envisioned a movement of powerful parents creating change.
1991-2001 — Planting the Seeds
Together, Maisie and Rosalinda cultivated conversations and built a core group—a cadre—of South LA parents that met weekly. They began to plant the seeds for CADRE’s mission and vision.
In the earliest days of CADRE, they spent countless hours in conversations on doorsteps and in living rooms with Black and Latinx South LA parents. They coordinated potluck meals, provided transportation, and worked to overcome any barriers that prevented parents from joining.
2000s — Exposing the Gaps
Those early conversations generated a foundational understanding that institution-led (or driven) parent engagement still rendered parents, and in particular Black parents, powerless to protect their children from racially dehumanizing and discriminatory treatment – especially in response to behavioral and academic struggles. CADRE’s co-founding parents were all trained by the school district, but they were still not consulted to prevent their children from being racially profiled and harshly disciplined — a pattern South LA parents recognized as deeply unfair school discipline rooted in LAUSD policy. Families dealing with unfair school discipline had no roadmap. CADRE became that roadmap.
CADRE recognized that within the historical conditions of poverty in South LA and in other communities across the country, certain parents were further excluded and marginalized, as were their children. This included families experiencing incarceration, lack of transportation, reliance on public benefits, forced migration, lack of documents, child welfare system or law enforcement surveillance, mental health challenges, language barriers, and unstable or informal employment.
2001 and Beyond — Redefining Parent Power
CADRE’s beginning years positioned parents to redefine parent power and participation in order to center racial justice monitoring, the humanization of Black and Brown families, and solidarity between Black and Brown parents across South Los Angeles and South Central communities.
This has meant continuing to address exclusion and marginalization and identifying issues that change not only educational policies but also practices, culture, climate, and power dynamics. It has also meant building a national ecosystem for the work, in particular, coalitions that can build the movement with a local, regional, and national lens.
To this end, CADRE builds on our legacy and continuously experiments and refines our practices in order to match the clarity gained regarding what is most empowering for our parents. After 25 years of fighting unfair school discipline, this strategic approach has created a comprehensive model of transformative parent leadership development grounded by beliefs, values, and principles that create the same healing, humanization, unity, and self-determination envisioned for our communities.
