Senior Staff

Robert García, Executive Director and Counsel

Robert García is an attorney with extensive experience in public policy and legal advocacy, mediation, and litigation involving complex social justice, human health, environmental and criminal justice matters. He has influenced the investment of over $18 billion in underserved communities, working at the intersection of social justice, sustainable regional planning, and smart growth. He graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School, where he served on the Board of Editors of the Stanford Law Review.

He is a nationally recognized leader in the urban park movement, bringing the simple joys of playing in the park to children in park starved communities. He helped build and lead diverse alliances to create the state parks in the Chinatown Cornfield in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, in Taylor Yard as part of the greening of the Los Angeles River, and in the Baldwin Hills in the heart of African American Los Angeles. The Cornfield is "a heroic monument" and "a symbol of hope," according to the Los Angeles Times. The Baldwin Hills park will be the largest urban park designed in the United States in over a century. He leads the campaign to diversify access to and support for national forests. He served on the Executive Committee of the Yes on Prop 40 Campaign to help pass California's $2.6 billion park, water and air bond in 2002, the largest in United States history, with unprecedented support among communities of color and low-income communities. He served as Chairman of the Citizens' School Bond Oversight Committee, overseeing the investment of $14 billion to build green public schools as centers of their communities in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2005. He has lectured on the vision for parks, schools, health, and transit at the conference celebrating the 150th anniversary of Central Park in New York City and at conferences at Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, USC, the Getty Center, the national Olmsted Conference in Seattle, and the Olmsted Conference in Portland, Oregon. Cardinal Roger Mahony appointed him to the Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research.

He previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York under John Martin and Rudolph W. Giuliani, prosecuting organized crime, public corruption and international narcotics trafficking cases. He helped release the former Black Panther leader Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt from prison after 27 years for a crime he did not commit, working with Johnnie Cochran, Stuart Hanlon, and others. He has taught at Stanford and UCLA law schools. He defended people on Death Row in Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi, and practiced international litigation at a large New York law firm. He has published and lectured widely on law and society. He has received a number of awards, including the Robert García Environmental Justice Award from the Planning and Conservation League named in his honor for improving the environment in California, the President's Award from the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, and the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Award.

His publications include:

The Urban Park Movement: Equal Justice, Democracy and Livability in Los Angeles, chapter in Dr. Robert Bullard's book on Environmental Justice to be published by the Sierra Club (forthcoming 2005).

Cross Road Blues: Transportation Justice and the MTA Consent Decree, chapter in book Running on Empty edited by Prof. Karen Lucas (2004).

We Shall Be Moved: Community Activism As a Tool for Reversing the Rollback, chapter in book edited by Denise C. Morgan et al., Awakening from the Dream: Pursuing Civil Rights in a Conservative Era (forthcoming 2005).

Healthy Children, Healthy Communities: Parks, Schools, and Sustainable Regional Planning, 584 KB [PDF], 31 Fordham Urban Law Journal 101 (2004).

The Cornfield and the Flow of History: People, Place, and Culture, 2.2 MB [PDF], (2004).

Dreams of Fields: Soccer, Community, and Equal Justice, 572 KB [PDF], A Report on Sports in Urban Parks to the California Department of Parks and Recreation (2002).

Equal Access to California's Beaches, 432 KB [PDF], Proceedings of the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (Summit II) (2002), www.ejrc.cau.edu/summit2/Beach.pdf, 60 KB [PDF].

The Legacy of Rodney King and a Testament of Hope, ABA publication Goal IX (2002).

Op/Ed, Perspective on the Rampart Scandal: This Case Calls for a Truly Outside Inquiry, L.A. Times, Feb. 20, 2000 (with Senator Tom Hayden and Paul Hoffman).

See more publications by Robert García.