How We Work
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Organizing-Movement Lawyering Partnerships
We document school conditions, criminalization, and push-out of parents and students with our organizing partners and jointly develop Public Records Act Requests for community analysis. We lift up that shared analysis as we monitor school district and county policy spaces to hold system leaders accountable for policy implementation and learning conditions.
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Communities of Practice
We support spaces that center solidarity with base-building organizations and honor the deep legacy and expertise of community organizing in the tradition of Ella Baker and other movement elders.
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Community Education Defense
We strive to co-create and democratize legal tools so that families can leverage their innate power to shift school culture towards centering the dignity of students and parents.
Our liberatory lawyering model of work grew organically out of our more than a decade-long partnership with CADRE. CADRE organizes Black and Brown Parents in South LA with a focus on racial solidarity/healing, long-term leadership development, and political education. CADRE’s vision is for transformed relationships between parents and schools that in turn create transformed conditions for learning.
They have led the way on all major school climate and discipline policy reforms in Los Angeles Unified School District. Maisie Chin, Co-Founder & Executive Director emeritus of CADRE, along with her organizing staff and parent leaders, took the time to give us loving and critical feedback. Through deep listening, we learned from CADRE how we could transform our understanding of how attorneys and organizers can work together.
