The National Council of La Raza held its annual conference last week in San Diego.

About 5 thousand registered participants, and about 7 thousand more visitors, helped NCLR celebrate its 40th anniversary. Dozens of workshops, youth-group programs, regional-affiliate meetings, and other activities kept the attendees busy, and some great music kept the party-goers up late at night.

Highlights included speeches on separate days by presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain. Several major awards were presented. A special award has been named in honor of former NCLR President Raul Yzaguirre, who retired from NCLR but is now leading an institute at Arizona State University.

Raul is also Honorary President of the Board of Directors of Farmworker Justice.  NCLR will now annually present the Raul Yzaguirre President's Award. This year, the recipient was Gara La Marche, who is the President of Atlantic Philanthropies and formerly lead the domestic philanthropy of the Soros Institute.

Farmworker Justice, which is a subsidiary corporation of NCLR, held a workshop on pesticides and farmworkers. Speakers were FJ Deputy Director Shelley Davis and FJ Migrant Health Specialist/Research Analyst Pamela Rao, PhD; Bruce Goldstein moderated.  Shelley also spoke at another workshop about "promotores de salud" (lay health promoters).

Hate groups made their appearance outside the San Diego Convention Center screaming about how much they dislike Latinos (they want them to "go home"!!), holding placards condemning NCLR's name, and shouting about opposition to rational immigration reform.

The conference is attended by many interesting people and Farmworker Justice takes advantage of the opportunity to meet with many of them to spread the word about solving farmworkers' problems.

For more information on NCLR and the conference, please visit www.nclr.org.