Undergraduate / PERSONAL STATEMENT - "Students demonstrating against the war, people of color.. [4]

FIRST DRAFT OF MY PERSONAL STATEMENT FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL APPLICATIONS: I think I need to make it shorter while keeping the elements strong. Please help me.

Students demonstrating against the war, people of color demonstrating against racial discrimination, women demonstrating against gender discrimination: all occurring on the campus with tear-gas, SWAT-team sweeps, and daily violence were commonplace in 1968. This was my first year at CAL, the University of California at Berkeley where I was an undergraduate student studying sociology. Although I did not understand much of what I was confronted with during this time, I did learn about the many levels of injustice plaguing the campus and the nation. In response, I organized discussion groups with my fellow students, tried to attend class meetings off-campus, and connected with grass-roots organizations addressing both the problems of exploitation and discrimination and the escalating tensions within the campus and the communities surrounding it. Concurrently, a personal crisis confronted me when my father abandoned me over a question of his physical parentage. I was experiencing injustice and upheaval within and without. This all culminated one afternoon in the spring of 1969 when I arrived at my off-campus house from classes and found I found all of the twelve other students, with whom I shared a nearby house, face-down on the ground being interrogated and arrested by SWAT for demonstration-related activities. After a year of attempting to survive in college with missed classes, missed security, and now a missing father, I made the difficult decision to leave the university and seek some grounding and sense of security with my extended family in Los Angeles.

My mother and father lived in the communities adjacent to Berkeley. I grew up with my mother in San Francisco and, although both of my parents were extremely bright, they had little involvement with the social issues of the day and neither had ever attended a college. However, the lack of a college education did not deter my mother from raising me to value books highly, to seek knowledge, to verify sources, to question authority, and to find my own way. Moreover, as a single mom, she raised me to be a survivor under all circumstances, which would become apparently necessary when she died unexpectedly in 1970 while I was in Los Angeles. I carried her last words to me in my heart, "you can do anything you set your mind to, but go find what is in your heart". I did not return to the Bay Area for many years, however, this became my mantra and carried me through my eventual marriage, birth of my four children, divorce, and careers in the Hollywood film industry, the aerospace and computer industry, and the business, banking and mortgage industries.

Throughout this journey, I have continuously fed my mind through personal research, journals, and involvement in social justice issues. As my personal power and wealth increased over the years, my curiosity about the power relations of the privileged and wealthy in relation to the disenfranchised and poor of this world never abated. I continuously read books and articles, attended workshops and symposiums, researched Internet sources in my , and served in local community organizations and advocacy groups who were helping people who were struggling to survive, especially the homeless.

In the fall of 2006, I returned to college. Two months previously, my home had gone into foreclosure, three months before that I had taken sole and permanent custody of my two grandsons, ages two and five; two months before they came to live with me, I had been laid off from Countrywide Home Loans. Looking for work during one of the extreme economic downturns in the nation's history since the Depression was daunting and I was facing the real possibility of entering the ranks of the homeless who I had been helping. Nevertheless, I was trained for survival and my "new family" required me to look for other options. I felt I needed to retool my skills through formal education if I was to remain marketable. In college, however, I discovered I needed more than this.

Through my performance in junior college, I found that I had an excellent mind and the maturity to use it to its maximum. I became a stellar student, member of the college and state honor societies, and recipient of numerous scholarships. What had been extreme adversity was transformed into possibilities limited only by what my mind could conceive. I applied, once more, to the University of California, this time at Santa Cruz. It has been a lifetime since I left UC, but my passion to use my life and career to make a difference still remains. I realized that this is what I need to live, not just survive. The many causes I have advocated through the years, both actively and passively, animated this passion. As a strike supporter of the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez in the Imperial and Coachella valleys during the grape boycotts of the sixties and, later in the seventies, as a lay-paralegal at the Center for Law and Justice in East Los Angeles, I was able to help organize resistance to immigration policies and to legal and economic exploitation. As a grass-root organizer in South Los Angeles during the eighties and nineties, I was responsible for educating the minority residents on their housing rights in response to predatory actions by the city's redevelopment agency and the real estate industry. As my family responsibilities increased, I assumed a less active role in advocacy that often entailed study and research of the complex social and legal structures that surround many of the social justice issues. I have fed the hungry at Grace Resources in Lancaster, CA and, prior to college, I submitted the results of my personal research on affordable and sustainable low-income housing alternatives to address the critical needs of the homeless in Los Angeles to the mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. I have witnessed the challenges to social justice and I am intrigued by the power politics and social constructions within the breech between the modes of analysis of social processes and the inquiry of spatial and geographical practices.

My independent studies and my formal education are, and will continue to be, informed by my social justice experiences from their inception on the campus at Berkeley and throughout my life in community action group and grass-root advocacy. Given the wealth and creativity present in humanity on this earth, every human being should have the means of sustaining a living in order to provide the necessities of life. I intend to pursue my graduate studies in social justice and law. I would like to obtain a M.P.P. and J.D. in order to teach Public Policy and Law. Through teaching assistant opportunities in my courses at UCSC, my experience and background complimented the, passion, motivation, and determination I have to share knowledge and encourage independent critical thinking. I believe that these core qualities constitute a great professor and my teaching experiences confirm my passion and demonstrate that my aspiration to be a professor is within my reach.

Today, my mantra from my mother is still valid although the order of instruction has changed. I now believe that finding what is in my heart and pursuing the education necessary to make a difference empowering me to do whatever I set my mind to. With the knowledge of sociology, politics, and law, social injustice can be addressed from the local to the global level. Combined with my life experience and knowledge, I will help build a better set of relationships that are more just and equitable within the societies of our world. As a senior student preparing to attain my bachelors' degree, I look forward to using my academic knowledge and life skills to accomplish these goals.