An important announcement from our team: after many years of dedicated community work, Katrina Mendoza Garcia is leaving her role here at the West Side Community Organization. We will miss her and wish her all the best in her future endeavors!
We want to take a moment to recognize and thank Katrina for everything she’s accomplished. Katrina embodies the true spirit of the West Side, with deep family and community roots in the neighborhood and an unwavering dedication to the community. She has had many roles with WSCO, from a leader of our Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color table, to board member, to staff member. She was recognized as the West Sider of the Year in 2018.
For the past two and a half years, she’s led our team of organizers as the Programs and Organizing Manager at WSCO. Katrina supervised the work of our Housing Justice, Health & Environmental Justice, Community Care organizers, as they worked on the ground with neighbors to make positive changes in the community. Under her leadership, WSCO launched the West Side Tenant Union in 2022, and our organizers have gone on to build power with local tenants facing illegal rent hikes and unsafe living conditions, as well as support citywide, statewide, and national tenant protections. Katrina was the driving force behind many of our events, from block parties to Community Care circles and overdose prevention trainings. She supervised the work of our Health and Environmental Justice action circle as they challenged environmental racism and helped pass a bill to measure the cumulative impact of pollution.
We know that for Katrina, her fight for a better future for everyone was more than a job, it was also personal. She organized a series of summer block parties to connect neighbors in our Community Care Action Circle, culminating in the powerful Cempasúchil festival that brought together an incredible mix of cultures to honor the land, the ancestors, and demand justice for her son Gabriel who was killed in October 2022. As WSCO organized for justice for residents displaced from the West Side Flats, Katrina interviewed and engaged her family members who experienced displacement and supported the work of our West Side Community Advisory Council.
Organizing work can often be invisible. Katrina balanced hands-on leadership at every WSCO event with the behind the scenes work of developing WSCO’s internal leadership structures, including a leadership ladder and training on Power for West Side leaders. While she will be greatly missed on our team, we are grateful for the impact her work leaves behind and confident that her future projects will continue to build power and joy.
