(Published February 3, 2020)
Gabriela De La Cruz was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. She grew up in a majority undocumented community. She has observed some of the hardships that undocumented people face, though she’ll never truly understand them because she had the luck of being born on US soil. She has known poverty and prejudice. She’s meeting privilege for the first time, as an adult.
Gabriela’s mother, Isabel, has been fighting for social justice forever. Therefore, confrontation and speaking truth to power have been part of Gabriela’s life forever. Gabriela knows there’s no such thing as neutral, so she is loudly pro-dignity, and anti-racist.
She studied climate science as an undergrad knowing that people on the margins are going to bear the worst brunt of the changing climate, while those responsible will likely survive unscathed. She won a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship in 2015, to support her in her pursuit of a PhD. The graduate pursuit ended after one semester, for various reasons, one of them being that her ivory tower of choice was a bit too racist.
Since then, she’s worked various jobs. Her current job is taking care of and learning from her precious baby. Because racism and misogyny are relentless, she continues to fight.
Fun fact: Gabriela’s motto is “eat fruit and be rude” (Earl Sweatshirt). Top fruits include persimmon.
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