Paloma Foster, a re-entry student parent at UC Berkeley, died June 21 at age 35.<\/p>\n
Foster impacted many organizations on campus, serving as a Golden Bear Orientation leader, ASUC Equity and Systems Impact Commission chair and an adviser on the California Policy Lab\u2019s Criminal Legal Research Advisory Board. She was also a policy fellow with Berkeley Underground Scholars, a campus organization for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students.<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley alumna Marlo De La Mora described meeting Foster at Transfer Weekend. She said Foster made her feel accepted as an older student on campus, and the pair became best friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe just made me feel so welcomed, and that we were gonna do this journey together, and she was a beautiful spirit inside,\u201d De La Mora said. \u201cShe always used to tell me that she had my back. She was like, \u2018I got you, girl. No matter what, I got you, girl.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
After experiencing incarceration and the foster system, Foster was passionate about public policy work and motivated by her personal experiences to reform the criminal justice system. A Regents\u2019 & Chancellors\u2019 Scholar at UC Berkeley, she was majoring in political science, with minors in public policy and ethnic studies.<\/p>\n
CPL researcher Alissa Skog noted that Foster, a first-generation Mexican American, encouraged her fellow researchers to consider the intersection of criminal justice and the immigration system and to provide resources in multiple languages for record relief, the process of making employment easier for people with criminal records.<\/p>\n
Talley Michel\u00e9 became friends with Foster through Underground Scholars and worked with her on the CPL\u2019s Criminal Legal Research Advisory Board. Michel\u00e9 said they bonded over their passion for advocacy and the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a really good problem solver, brainstorming a mile a minute, and she would get it done,\u201d Michel\u00e9 said. \u201cIf you\u2019ve ever heard of the saying, \u2018I\u2019ve got the Midas touch, everything I touch turns to gold,\u2019 that was Paloma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone around Foster described her as a loving mother who was always talking about her son, Cairo. Michel\u00e9 described him as Foster\u2019s \u201canchor\u201d and \u201cher reason why\u201d for everything she did.<\/p>\n
Institute of Governmental Studies\u2019 events and communications coordinator Ezra Hom-Bristow \u2014 who met Foster during Democracy Camp in Washington, D.C., an experiential learning program for students interested in public service \u2014 said she was \u201cextremely magnetic\u201d and \u201cpassionate in a way that invited people in.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe showed up each day and was such a light and an example for how to keep going in the face of what feels like insurmountable odds,\u201d Hom-Bristow said. \u201cI would just want folks to know and remember the example that she set as a fighter, but someone who fought with deep love in her heart and her feelings on her sleeve, and how much strength it takes to be that kind of a person, to be that kind of an advocate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paloma Foster, a re-entry student parent at UC Berkeley, died June 21 at age 35. Foster impacted many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[154133,26927,109054,109712,154134,154131,154137,426,154130,154136,154129,15175,154126,87884,143,145,144,154125,154128,154135,154127,149,154132,10978],"class_list":["post-381362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alissa-skog","tag-asuc","tag-cairo","tag-california-policy-lab","tag-cpl","tag-criminal-legal-research-advisory-board","tag-democracy-camp","tag-dodgers","tag-equity-and-systems-impact-commission","tag-ezra-hom-bristow","tag-golden-bear-orientation-leader","tag-institute-of-governmental-studies","tag-marlo-de-la-mora","tag-mexican-american","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-paloma-foster","tag-regents-chancellors-scholar","tag-talley-michel","tag-transfer-weekend","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-underground-scholars","tag-washington-dc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}