The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
Founded in 1968, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization. Often described as the “law firm of the Latino community”, MALDEF promotes social change through advocacy, communications, community education, and litigation in the areas of education, employment, immigrant rights, and political access.
30-Day Grassroots Outreach Funnels Outrage into Online Activism, Tripling Membership
Plus Three and The Raben Group (TRG) worked closely with MALDEF to coordinate a national online advocacy campaign around the hate crime death of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The campaign was launched on May 5, 2009 in order to raise awareness about hate crimes and the injustices being perpetrated through the local criminal justice systems. TRG drafted a petition to the U.S. Department of Justice that requested investigation and prosecution of the assailants on federal hate crimes charges. TRG also helped secure participation and support from national coalition partners including: the Coalition of Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), America’s Voice, USHLI, NCLR,LULAC, NALEO, Voto Latino, Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC).
The petition was extremely well received by the community, and by the end of the campaign it had received 50,000 signatures of support, with more than a thousand signatures in the first week. TRG and Plus Three contributed to the strategy for distributing the emails, writing and editing the content, and updating tell-a-friend and thank-you autoresponders. Shortly afterward, the Department of Justice officially announced three federal grand jury indictments of two of Luis Ramirez’s assailants and three of the police officers involved in the investigation. This national campaign received media attention from CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN.com, Associated Press, EFE, La Opinion, NPR, the Huffington Post, as well as other national print, radio and online outlets. TRG also helped place an op-ed about the hate crime on CNN.com.
