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Catherine R Medrano

Biography

Catherine Medrano, 24, led a successful struggle to improve wages and working conditions for janitors at the University of California at San Diego by organizing Students for Economic Justice. The effort dramatized her belief that social change is possible across ethnic, economic, and educational lines. Ms. Medrano, the seventh of nine children in a Mexican American family from California's Central Valley, is the first person in her family to graduate from college. She earned a 3.84 GPA at UC-San Diego, graduating magna cum laude, and intends to seek a doctorate in sociology at UC-Santa Barbara.

Catherine hates unfairness. She sees it when she returns to her home in the Central Valley of California and is determined to do something about it. "My community has struggled through problems of inferior schooling, economic hardship, drug abuse, incarceration, low-wage work, sickness, depression, and discrimination," she writes. "Through the eyes of my parents and community I have witnessed many sorrows."

She found the inspiration for her life's work while in her third year in college, when over thirty young Mexican Americans were arrested in local large-scale drug raids. Many were sentenced to prison.

The massive arrests and prison sentences motivated Catherine to write an honors thesis about the way that media descriptions of drug users and dealers affect police tactics. She argued that newspapers in the Central Valley create images of Mexican Americans as menacing drug lords while giving more sympathetic portrayals of white drug dealers and users. "My research projects that combine community issues with academic theory have solidly convinced me that I can continue to use academia to fight injustice and expose the weaknesses of our social system," she observes. "I do the work that I do because I love my family and my community."

The learning experiences of a lifetime remain her motivating force. "Witnessing the stark ways educational, economic, criminal justice and other social systems undermine communities of color," she writes, "has shaped the intellectual and community work I began as an undergraduate and will continue for the rest of my life."

Catherine intends to use her academic skills to do research in her home community. She also wants to work with community organizations that strive for social justice. Looking forward, she knows "it is very important to me that people challenge the status quo so that we may create a more humane society."

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