Community Asset Development Re-defining Education (CADRE)
One of the things that I always talk about when it comes to why I use human rights specifically is really from my role as the cofounder of CADRE, which is in Los Angeles, California, and our work in organizing parents to end the school-to-prison pipeline…We really went door to door at the beginning of our existence. And one common theme to every story we heard from every parent, regardless of the issue they were dealing with at their children’s schools, was how their rights as parents were undercut and how they were mistreated…and their inability to advocate for their children or defend their children or prevent harm to their children. And so from early early on I tell stories of parents being misinformed or not being given the information they requested. Probably the most egregious example is how parents would be called, after the school has decided to suspend their child without due process and/or has already sent their child to walk home without supervision and without knowledge of the parents. It was those experiences and stories that led us down a different path in our organizing model to end the school-to-prison pipeline and eventually led us to the human rights framework.
